Contradicting Popular Opinion
A.K.A.
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks: mini columns
Intro
I’ve a kid, and a lack of faith in baby-sitters. What follows is that I don’t go to movie theaters as much as the other folk around here at IP movies. I tend to get caught up on last years crap via DVD. It’s just the way it goes.
So don’t be surprised if I miss the theatrical release of anything not called Spider-man 3
But anyway back to my games of DVD catch-up. (Not to be confused with DVD Ketchup, which is f*cking delicious!)
As it stands, I’ve seen several that merit Mini-CPO columns. Here are two.
Melinda and Melinda
This is a Woody Allen movie from 2004. I’ll do a little plot summary, as this thing didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Two writers are at a dinner. They hear an anecdote about a dinner party. One of them thinks the story should be made into a romantic comedy; the other thinks it should be a drama. We see their two ideas of the story.
So it’s like two movies in one.
The problem is that neither of the movies is any damn good. That, and it seems that neither writer was listening to the same damn story. The connection between the two tales is weak. The link basically consists that chick from “Neighbours” and Pitch Black playing a character named Melinda, and a couple of shared props.
Other than those details, the two “movies” are completely different: different casts, different situations, different back stories, different plots. The relationship between the two is slightly less meaningful than say if you were to watch an episode of “Taxi” followed by an episode of “Who’s the Boss?”
The “tragic” version of the story stars bland indie queen Chloe Sevigny (I give her no umlaut) as well as former Hacker and Dracula 2000 sidekick, Johnny Lee Miller. They’re married, they cheat on each other, and Melinda is consistently sad.
This story is just really bad. It’s ridiculously stagy. There are minimal close-ups, the blocking is awkward, the acting is below the level of bad University Theater, the characters all have these ridiculously stupid last names, and the dialogue is awful. Seriously, David Goyer would read this script and say, “Man these lines are going to be hard to pull off.”
And not only is it wretchedly bad, it is also pretentious. The characters make throwaway references to Madame Bovary. The guy hired to play piano at a dinner party went to Yale and writes operas. Man that piano guy was f*cking annoying too. Imagine a black guy that talks like Martha Stewart pretending to be a hunky Woody Allen. Now hit yourself in the face with a hammer. Isn’t that better?
It’s really sloppy too. There are scenes that are there for no good reason, and others missing that should be there. Maybe this thing is intentional to convey the premise of “making the story up on the spot.” But, even so, it doesn’t make the movie anything I want to see.
As for the “romantic comedy,” the main problem with that version is that it is neither romantic nor a comedy. Discuss.
This version’s cast includes Will Ferrell and the always immensely unlikeable Amanda Peet. The former does a bad Woody Allen impression through half of his screen time and still manages to OUTACT just about everybody else in all of Melinda and Melinda. Will Ferrell is the best actor in the movie. Think about that thing. Granted most of the acting in the flick has a “just read from a cue card” feel to it.
As for Amanda Peet, Lord help her. Let me put it this way: Groundhog Day is to Bill Murray as Saving Silverman is to Amanda Peet. If I have to explain that analogy further, you probably won’t understand.
Steve Carell is also in this story, but he doesn’t really have anything to do. So I won’t even mention that fact. Shit, too late.
At any rate, the romantic comedy aspect plays like every other mediocre romantic comedy. Although, since it has to share time with the other story and the writers framing device, it is mercifully short.
Taken as a whole, Melinda and Melinda is a fairly painful experience. And it doesn’t surprise me that Match Point doesn’t sound any better. At least according to my friend DC who says:
If you’re looking for a heinously boring film, there’s always Woody Allen’s new one, Match Point,
which feels longer than Kong and has dialogue worthy of a Japanese translation of Octopussy,
rendered back into English by lazy interns: “You play an aggressive game of ping pong, Mr. Bond.”
That sort of thing. No movie should contain the line, “It would be fitting if I were apprehended.”
I’ve got more from him later.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Lemme see if I can get this straight. You have a movie that stars the two prettiest people in the world. Both of them are playing James Bond. They’re married and neither knows the other is a secret agent or assassin or whatever. Shit ‘splodes, and gets shot up.
What the f*ck happened to screw that up? The flick should be fun right? Mr. and Mrs. Smith isn’t though, and that thing disturbs me. It just isn’t any fun. Worse than that matter is that it isn’t sexy either. There aren’t even any memorable action sequences. What the f*ck?! What level of incompetence is being shown here?
Maybe it is the lack of a villain. The two aren’t really working against anybody or anything in particular. They kill some random folks, consider killing each other, and then team up against… something I guess.
It is one of those movies that has a concept, but not a plot per se.
I’m not gonna bitch about the super weapons, or how Pitt’s body armor would have been useless against Jolie’s rifle. The movie never claims a level of credibility beyond a sub-par E.C. comic anyway. The concept behind the movie requires a huge effort on the suspension of disbelief muscle already. Sand on a beach.
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. seem particularly good at what they do, and tend to rely on luck to get things done. Maybe that’s part of the problem.
Hell, it’s hard enough to believe that Brad Pitt and Vince Vaughn are competent enough to run a comic book shop, let alone an assassination syndicate. To his credit, I will say that Vaughn is probably the best part of the movie. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that he’s money…
I think the problem is Angelina Jolie. It isn’t something as simple as too much Angelina, not enough of her Jolies (although that might have helped). She’s just not very good. Granted her character isn’t very complex. The character of Mrs. Smith can best be summed up by the two words, “frosty box.”
No I think I’ll just blame her.
Damnit Angelina! Didn’t you learn anything from Billy Bob?
I feel better now!
Outro
Were this the Holistic DVD column like that weekend fella writes, I might try to connect these movies.
Shit, I’ll do it anyway. Aside from a title similarity, each movie prominently features one of the stars of Hackers. The former might actually be worse than Hackers, it’s hard to say…
Underworld Evolution as reviewed by DC.
I just saw Underworld: Evolution against all better judgment. Andrea has accused me of being a goth chick in a past life, and probably in this one too, but it’s like I told her: sometimes I just gots to know.
It’s way better than the first one on account of the fact that at least one thing happens in the
movie and they probably had way more money to squander on sets and monster effects. So we get more slimey rubber to supplement the (less bad) CGI and also decaying gothic ruins instead of (as in the first film) a monotonous series of progressively darker danker sewers and warehouses. The main problem carries over: once the movie gets two monsters within the same vicinity, it has no idea how to manage the combat so that they aren’t just shooting and punching each other over and over again. They come up with a few new tricks (the vampire elder does this cool thing where he skewers people on his wing-talons) but then use them to death without any real variation. It frustrates the shit out of me. It can’t be that hard to think of cool things for monsters to do with their bizarre powers and additional limbs. That, and the sex scene is the most sterile softcore (nay, sadcore) thing that I have seen in recent memory. It’s pretty much Showtime of the Living Dead.It makes the corny eighties pool-sex from Tequila Sunrise look like A History of Violence. They
didn’t even scratch or bite each other or make monster faces or anything. Haven’t these people
seen The Howling? The whole point of monster sex is that monster shit happens in the middle of it
and makes everyone in the theater either A.) creeped out in a whole new way or B.) turned on in a
way they will never admit to their movie-dates…well, unless they’re A.) goth and B.) trying too
hard. Every movie I watch makes me like Cronenberg more.
DC is a braver man than I for seeing that flick. There is no way I am going to pay ten bucks to see that movie. Well, maybe 5 bucks if I could bring in a bunch of drunken friends, a couple of bottles of Maker’s Mark, and we MSTied the hell out of it.
Not five bucks each though.
