Movie reviews, now with ungainly metaphors!

[seriousfic]

Will Eisner Frank Miller's The Spirit

Well, that was pretty much what I expected, a misfire. I get the feeling Miller sorta got the Spirit, but he didn’t know what to do with him. No matter how many monologues the Spirit has or how much black he’s swathed in, he’s still a cartoon character. And Miller knows that a cartoon’s pants should fall down, but he makes the undies black boxers. They should have Bat-signals on them or be hot pants with the word ‘juicy’ written on the back. Something funny. So there’s a lot of hit-or-miss comedy stuff which makes it impossible to take the dramatic stuff seriously, like a Spirit/Ellen Dolan/Sand Saref love triangle (there’s your problem, trying to make a noir film with a femme fatale named after typography) and an increasingly suicidal Spirit’s obsession with the Octopus. You wish they’d just pick a tone and stay there, because when drama isn’t convincing, it just ends up being boring.

There’s exactly one scene where the tone finds a good balance. The Spirit is trussed-up, as you will, and the Octopus and his assistant explain their evil plot to him with visual aids, like full Nazi regalia and a dissolving kitten. Named Mittens. I especially like how the assistant, Silken Floss, says that she likes working with the Octopus because they get to dress up in fabulous costumes and commit crimes. In fact, with Silken Floss’s obvious competence as compared to the Octopus, you start to wonder if Frank Miller was making a Kim Possible movie. Octopus is Drakken, Silken Floss is Shego, Ron Stoppable grew up to become the Spirit, and after the heartbreak of her father’s death, Kim Possible became Sand Saref.

That’s another thing. The origin of Sand Saref is pretty much like it was in the comic book, only it’s really dated (they throw in a lame scene where this cute rookie cop explains that Sand Saref has an Elektra Complex… Frank Miller, I do not think that word means what you think it means) and a femme fatale who is a femme fatale because she literally wants shiny things—that’s not me being facetious, that’s her stated motivation—you just can’t take that seriously. Maybe in the sixties, when everyone thought Vietnam was a good idea and Yoko Ono was good relationship material, a girl whose cop father is killed in the line of duty and then ends up hating cops could’ve played, but it really doesn’t work here. And I just realized Frank Miller did the whole thing much better with the Elektra Saga. So it’s kinda like how Jim Starlin built a career ripping off the New Gods, then when he actually got a chance to write the real thing, he killed them off in a story that was embarrassingly bad even given the premise?

Anyway, they should’ve picked from the beginning whether they wanted to make this an action/comedy with a tragic heart, or a campy cult classic with Samuel L. Jackson dressing up as a samurai. And really, they should’ve actually done some research into Frank Miller before giving him the job. Like, how he writes comics, he doesn’t direct movies? I mean, it’s literally shocking how Hollywood can hand over a multimillion dollar film, a potential billion dollar franchise, over to someone who literally has no idea what he’s doing. A producer credit, a consultant’s fee, that I could understand, but making him the director? Dude must interview well.

Okay, one last thing before we hit tl;dr. The film is practically littered with WTF-worthy references to Frank Miller’s bibliography. The fight in the mud pits is, I think, a reference to the fight with the Mutants in The Dark Knight Returns, the Spirit repeats Daredevil’s famous “It’s a nice piece of work, Kingpin… you shouldn’t have signed it” line (only here with Eva Mendes’s ass substituting for a bombed apartment building… an improvement, I’d say), the Spirit even says someone from a mugging and tells them to call their shrink (as in ASSBAR)… only it happens twice, the first time with a woman who freaks out a little that he’s been stabbed, the second time with a man who asks the Spirit to marry him. See what I mean about it being Howard Bealean in its watchable insanity?



Slumdog Millionaire

I liked it. I don't know how much of that is the movie actually being good and how much is it ending with a Bollywood musical number. More movies should do that. Superman Returns would've been a lot less of a downer if the credits had featured Superman and Lex Luthor dancing out the never-ending battle between good and evil.

It's not really, you know, a deep insight into the human condition or anything, since the characters are all stereotypes and the moral is "love conquers all" like in any rom-com, but every time things get too slow, there's this game show host who says "Who wants to be a meeyinaire?" and we move on.

There's really only one place where the movie flat-out falls down, and that's in the hero's brother, Salim. Like I said, all the characters could be summed up in one sentence, but Salim is just nakedly doing whatever the script requires. If the script requires Jamal and Latika to be separated or reunited, Salim steps in and greases the wheels. He does more hero-villain flip-flops than your average Heroes character and by the end, you just cringe whenever he shows up. I'm just saying, there's a group of characters who rape their brother's girlfriend after threatening said brother at gunpoint, and there's a group of characters who die noble, redemptive deaths. You should not be able to make a Venn diagram of these two groups.

Comments

[mightbefound.livejournal.com]

Anyway, they should’ve picked from the beginning whether they wanted to make this an action/comedy with a tragic heart, or a campy cult classic with Samuel L. Jackson dressing up as a samurai.

Yeah, I think that this was really the biggest issue. About two or three times the movie took a big 180 degree turn in terms of feel, and never went back. I thought it was interesting as-is, but could have been a lot better.

[distractedone.livejournal.com]

I saw The Spirit. It was unwatchable, and it sucked. Samuel L. Jackson always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He's such a bad actor.

[stinglikeabee.livejournal.com]

He does more hero-villain flip-flops than your average Heroes character and by the end, you just cringe whenever he shows up.

YUP. I really didn't get Salim's death scene. Obviously it was a nice contrast to Jamal's rise to riches, but the dude was such a total shitbag it just ruined the ending for me.

[ky02121.livejournal.com]

Slumdog is so overrated to me. Dev Patel gave a horrible performance. How is sitting there with your mouth open drooling acting? I can't believe he got a SAG nod.