Why does everything I used to like suck now?
What has happened to movies over the past two years or so? I find myself going to fewer and fewer movies and its not because I dont have the time having been unemployed for 14 months now. Its something I used to enjoy doing almost every weekend but now in the middle of summer I look up the local showings and all I see is crap. The past two Saturdays I basically forced myself to go to a movie and ended up being disappointed. First off was Clerks 2 and while I cant say I was a huge fan of the original I respected the way he went about making the movie. Kevin Smith used credit cards and part of his tuition money to make the movie with his friends. It cost 35k and it ended up making over $50 mil with theatrical and dvd sales. It launched his career and while Mallrats was pretty awful, Chasing Amy and Dogma had some pretty good moments. Then Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back came out and its good if you smoke a little something and turn your brain off at the door. Of course he followed that up with Jersey Girl and that was one of the worst movies I have ever seen, almost as bad as Solaris. It was his attempt at going mainstream as he had promised to never make another Jay & Bob movie. Of course he changed his mind after it tanked and went back to his bread and butter with Clerks 2. So that’s where I was 9 days ago hoping to at least get a few laughs.
The movie was shot in digital and I for one am not a fan of this as it just doesn’t recreate film unless great care is taken. What I notice is the backgrounds are generally in focus instead of just the actors, things stick out and it becomes distracting. Its a lot like the home video camera effect, it just sort of looks amateurish to me. Next Kevin put his wife in the movie, something that should never happen again in fear of the universe collapsing upon itself. She is wooden, angry looking, and just plain awful…it takes you right out of the movie. There is the reason she hasn’t been in anything other than his movies, SHE ISNT AN ACTRESS, and it shows. She actually appeared in Playboy a few years back and looked pretty good but in this movie she looked as though she was battling the flu or something. And then the heart of the movie began and it literally felt at times Kevin was working off of a checklist of things he hadn’t covered yet and was inserting them on the spot.
Rimjobs…..check
Racially insensitive remarks…check
Beastiality…check
Male controlling fiance’…check
Making fun of loyalty, hard work, commitments, responsibility, and personal growth…check
Then he threw in an elaborate dance number and a montage for good measure. And not just a regular montage, it ended the movie. Who ends a movie with a montage? Who ends a movie with a montage that shows people cleaning up a building? Kevin Smith I guess.
Can you tell I didn’t like it yet? That’s not to say I didn’t laugh, a couple times I did. The Lord of the Rings diatribe was funny as it was something I had said to numerous people as well. However the donkey show makes no sense at all, it looked out of place because it was. Maybe I was expecting too much but it just seemed to me that some scenes in the movie were copied from other movies, much better movies, and were done poorly. And to top it all off, he left the ending wide open, making sure not to shut the door completely. Hey he should be the one laughing because I spent money to watch it, so in the end maybe the donkey screwed me.
Next up was Talladega Nights, I am a big Will Ferell going back to his SNL days. His Harry Carey skit is still in my opinion one of the funniest things I have ever seen, not to mention the more cowbell sketch. He was great in Old School and even better in Anchorman where he has so many great lines it almost sensory overload the first time you watch it. So I was pumped to see him mock the red states with him as a NASCAR driver. However it became pretty obvious they tried much too hard to give it an actual plot instead of it just being a mockumentary that would have served it much better. It was funny in parts but the second half of the movie just died on the table, one long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep on the heart monitor. I walked away wondering why the end-credit bloopers were better than the actual in-movie jokes.
Who knows, maybe I just grown cynical but movies just don’t seem to have the same feel to them. Even the Coen brothers have been on a luke warm cold spell that I hope ends with Hail Caesar. Perhaps originality is just harder to come by. Ill stick with independent movies like Little Miss Sunshine, that is if it ever comes to my little corner of the world.
But hey dont take my word for it, I am just a unemployed man with no money, no car, no woman, and there you are.