What you’ve heard by now is true. Meryl Streep continues to show audiences that there will be a gaping void that no current American actress will be able to fill when she decides to stop making films. Will Meghan Fox or Rachel McAdams be making that charge into the valley? Unless Jennifer’s Body or The Time Traveler’s Wife becomes the Sophie’s Choice of our generation, I doubt it. Nora Ephron is competent and fairly skilled behind the camera. She switches between her two story arcs enough that we have a solid sense of the characters involved, but not so much as to induce motion sickness. There are beautiful shots of Europe and New York deli meats, and what appears to be real joy coloring each of the frames.
Amy Adams is cute without being entirely Hallmark-y (most of the time), and Meryl Streep surprises the audience by casting aside her Look-How-Funny-Julia-Child-can-be imitation and imbuing the woman who had a life apart from being a caricature with real emotion. Take a look at the scene where Julia Child receives a letter from her sister announcing her pregnancy to see how devastating Streep can be as an actress.
Weeks later, I still find myself disarmed by the film. Julie and Julia held up a mirror and showed me one cynical, jaded S.O.B. in the reflection. Wait, married people can be happy? They can have healthy sexual relationships, face difficulties and overcome them, and maintain their sense of individuality? People work and achieve success based on their dedication? Lives can end happily? But that can’t be true! I’ve seen Closer, The Secret Lives of Dentists, and the trailer for Revolutionary Road! I kept waiting for the bottom to fall out, for something horrible to happen in the narrative. Julia Child’s husband is locked up by McCarthy! Julie Powell gets a divorce! My eyes searched the screen for clues to this darker side, for the crumbs that would lead to an unhappy ending. Nope, nothing but rainbows and roses as far as the eye can see.
Even when Julie Powell has a “fight” with her husband that leads to him storming out and saying potentially hurtful things, the movie doesn’t skip a beat. With Henry Wolfe’s “Stop the Train” playing in the background (a more complicated song than the movie might advertise), Julie lives her life in a sped up what’s-it-like-without-my-husband montage. Apparently it involves blogging. It won’t ruin the plot by telling you that he does return and says the one romantic line that all girls want to hear: “So what’s for dinner?” I can’t wait to use that line on my loved one.
The movie has moments of real humor and as awkward as it is to see Stanley Tucci make out with Meryl Streep, actual romance. There are indeed worse movies to be dragged to by (I mean with!) your significant other. A brief warning. Don’t watch this movie if you’re single and not happy to be as the constant canoodling and happiness in the film will leave you on the couch double fisting Maker’s Mark and Cherry Garcia while watching Casablanca in the dark. Why can everyone find the love of their life but meeeeeeeeee?
For a movie about Julia Child, one of the most famous cooks in the world, and Powell, who began her own blog about cooking, there seems to be a real lack of food preparation in the film. Powell fails a few times in her culinary travails which are the dramatic high points in terms of her narrative, and Child is really good at chopping onions, but we see very little of Child’s cooking methods or what set her apart from thousands of cooks around the globe (besides being a 6-foot-two tall female).
In a world of economic downturn, endless wars, and Tool Academy 2, Julie and Julia lends its audience a brief respite and a reminder of what happiness looks like which is a valiant endeavor. The highest praise a critic can really make about a movie is that people should watch it, and most people should watch Julie and Julia. Ultimately, however, the film’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Nice guys finish last for a reason (awwwww), and so do nice movies. They’re fine as far as the wind blows, but they’re not interesting enough for a second glance.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Collecting Dust
Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, the writers of Saw 4, 5, and 6 (aka the ones that stopped being relevant), have brought us another entry in the torture porn genre. Dunstan also directed the piece which toys with being a solid movie before it succumbs to its various flaws.
The film opens with a very brief set up as a couple returns home to find a box in their bedroom. When the box moves, the husband gets to be the token “Don’t do that” guy and opens it. After the appearance of the Collector, Dunstan cops a page from Fincher’s playbook in Seven and splices shots of his villain with industrial music. Jerome Dillon provides the original music for the film which is effective in small doses but feels gratuitous in scenes where people are walking/running through a house (Honey, did you leave the Nine Inch Nails Pandora station running again?). Dillon actually did the stereo mixing for a NIN video, so that gives you an idea of what to expect.
After the opening scenes, the movie works fairly quickly towards its premise. Josh Stewart plays Arkin, a handyman whose wife apparently made some poor life choices and is in debt to loan sharks. Forced to come up with the money to save his family, Arkin, who is conveniently a former jewel thief, decides to rob the house of a family whose home he just worked on.
The family deserves to be robbed of course because they are rich. And rich people suck. Dunstan doesn’t try very hard to make us like or dislike the family before we’re treated to an hour of them being tortured. Instead, he divides the family neatly into two distinct sections: family members we want to see cut open and ones we don’t. There is the husband who is generous with Arkin and the beautifully innocent Aryan child that is too young or cute to be gutted like a fish. In the see-you-later group, we have the older daughter who (gasp!) smokes and the jaded mother who (double gasp!) uses Botox. Outside of the oldest daughter Jill (Madeline Zima), who has as many dimensions as a piece of looseleaf, each member of the family turns in an effective performance as individuals whose sense of domestic tranquility is shattered.
Shortly after Stewart breaks into the home, he finds that there is another intruder in the house, and what follows is a suspenseful cat-and-well-cat game as Arkin and the Collector move from room to room. Dunstan does a fine job of making the mansion feel claustrophobic, and he ratchets up the tension as the Collector begins his work with Arkin scurrying around the edges.
A brief side note: Yes, it seems odd that the Collector can set up his devices so quickly (Ten bear traps? Really?), but in a genre where men wearing hockey masks don’t die and horribly burnt individuals wearing knives attached to their gloves kill you IN YOUR DREAMS, you should probably check your sense of reason at the door.
At the heart of the film is a philosophical choice. Arkin must choose between the selfish cost-benefits analysis that is utilitarianism and get the heck out of Dodge and the foolhardy bravery that is altruism. The Collector, on the other hand, represents the force of nihilism. There is only meaningless death and nothingness in his world. Arkin sticks around to be the hero which is less of a shock, but oddly, he seems to be responsible for almost as many bodies as the Collector as he fails fairly miserably at freeing the family.
Josh Stewart, as Arkin, is one of the biggest surprises in the film. For once, we have a likeable horror movie lead who can act. When Stewart sees an open window and struggles to make the right decision, actual fate seems to hang in the balance. When razors chomp down on his hand, the audience feels it, and when he outsmarts the Collector, we cheer him.
Opposite Stewart is Juan Fernández who plays the Collector (Fun fact that will probably tickle no one’s biscuits but mine: Fernández was one of the main villains in Crocodile Dundee II.). The physical interaction between the two is interesting and keeps much of the movie afloat, but there is one glaring problem. The Collector is boring. We aren’t given much of reason as to why he does the horrible things that he does which is ok, but we also aren’t given much of a personality and therein lies the flaw. Jigsaw sets better traps, and Michael Myers has a better mask.
In one particular scene all of the pieces try and come together only to be undone by hasty directing. The oldest daughter of the family returns home with her suitably sketchy boyfriend to make whoopee in what they believe to be an abandoned house. As they sneak into the house and start getting busy in the kitchen, the Collector looks on in rapt amazement, wondering which trap the lustful couple will set off. The audience then experiences a jarring shift in perspective. Looking on with the Collector and eagerly anticipating the same outcome that he does, we find ourselves in uncomfortable shoes. Unsure what to do with this buildup of tension, Dunstan bizarrely has the daughter notice the Collector who abruptly forces each of the characters into the traps himself. It’s this type of impatience with allowing scenes or characters to develop that plagues the film.
What ultimately destroys the film is its niche within the horror movie genre— torture porn. Never has a genre of film been a more fun topic for discussion over Thanksgiving dinner. It combines the revolting nature of torture with the joyless, formulaic titillation of pornography! Why is it that we will pay ten dollars to watch people not just die but suffer in the worst of all possible ways? Morbid curiosity? The American sense of one-upmanship and how- can-we-top-thatness? An underlying sociopathic craving that needs to be filled? None of the answers prove to be optimistic ones. If torture porn films can lend anything to the world, it should be that they end the debate about Guantanamo. Torture is just plain ugly.
Sadly, torture porn films don’t seem to be as quick as the flash in the pan critics have predicted. Horror directors have as of late turned to a disturbing degree towards instigating shudders of revulsion rather than plucking the sublime strings of fear. Walking out of Hostel a few years ago, I remember vividly feeling the weight of what I had just seen. The film wallowed in supposedly stylized ugliness. I was never particularly scared while watching the film as I was sickened.
This line between horror and disgust has largely been disintegrating within the context of modern horror films. The best horror films usually take one of two paths. They either revel in camp, encouraging their audiences to laugh even as they cringe (90% of films made in the 80s and early 90s), or they uncover something darker about ourselves—whether it is our mindless consumption (Dawn of the Dead), the fact that we can be as horrific as any monster (28 Days Later), or the notion that teenagers make horrible camp counselors (Friday the 13th Series). Scream then made it ok for the audience to know and understand the rules of horror films and opened the door to all sorts of postmodernist self-referentiality, but torture porn directors have tried to create new rules that aren’t particularly interesting. Horror should revolve around fear and not revulsion.
The Collector could be read in several interesting ways. Perhaps it is the philosophical struggle about what to risk in the face of evil. Perhaps it is that the huge houses that Americans live in can so easily become our prisons. The huge projector screens and giant chandeliers that we furnish these homes can be our death traps. The his-and-her sinks and granite countertops that people in House Hunters MUST have can be our graves. Eventually, the movie casts those ideas to the side, and instead the audience is treated to fish hooks piercing skin, people’s teeth being pulled out, mouths being sewn shut, and cockroaches eating through skin. Sigh.
The movie also features a bizarre moment of latent homophobia. As Arkin is tortured in the basement, the Collector begins to move towards the hiding place of the token innocent child in the movie, and Arkin tries to distract him to no avail. Until that is, Arkin calls him a “faggot.” Upon the first mention of the word, the Collector pauses and seems perturbed. Arkin then repeatedly calls the Collector a faggot until he ignores the little girl and goes back to Arkin. Call me a serial killer if you must, a severely deranged sociopathic asshole nutball, but no homo thank you. So being called gay is the villain’s weak spot? Really?
The movie loses all hope of being worth a second glance with a shockingly poor and obvious final act that sets the audience up for a sequel that no one wants to see. Horror sequels are the norm because capitalism is beautiful, and audiences don’t really care that they are spoonfed the same garbage (and as someone who has seen every Halloween and Saw film, I can say trash tastes yummy!). We don’t even have to add numbers to sequels any more. We can just add indefinite articles. Hmmmm, what would make a good sequel to Fast & Furious? THE Fast and THE Furious! That must have been an easy day at the office.
What writers and directors need to realize is that audiences demand sequels for characters that they actually want to see again. Whether it is Michael Myers stoic brutality, Jason’s campy ridiculousness, Freddy’s corny puns, or Leatherface’s subtle sensitivity (yes, I did just type that), we respond viscerally to these characters that we root for almost as much as we do the heroes/heroines in the films. And sometimes, yes, we root for them more. The Collector possesses none of these gifts, and as a forgettable addition to the canon of horror movie monsters, he doesn’t need nor deserve a sequel. Perhaps one day, directors will realize that the truly shocking ending would be one that provides closure. Now THAT is a scary thought.
The film opens with a very brief set up as a couple returns home to find a box in their bedroom. When the box moves, the husband gets to be the token “Don’t do that” guy and opens it. After the appearance of the Collector, Dunstan cops a page from Fincher’s playbook in Seven and splices shots of his villain with industrial music. Jerome Dillon provides the original music for the film which is effective in small doses but feels gratuitous in scenes where people are walking/running through a house (Honey, did you leave the Nine Inch Nails Pandora station running again?). Dillon actually did the stereo mixing for a NIN video, so that gives you an idea of what to expect.
After the opening scenes, the movie works fairly quickly towards its premise. Josh Stewart plays Arkin, a handyman whose wife apparently made some poor life choices and is in debt to loan sharks. Forced to come up with the money to save his family, Arkin, who is conveniently a former jewel thief, decides to rob the house of a family whose home he just worked on.
The family deserves to be robbed of course because they are rich. And rich people suck. Dunstan doesn’t try very hard to make us like or dislike the family before we’re treated to an hour of them being tortured. Instead, he divides the family neatly into two distinct sections: family members we want to see cut open and ones we don’t. There is the husband who is generous with Arkin and the beautifully innocent Aryan child that is too young or cute to be gutted like a fish. In the see-you-later group, we have the older daughter who (gasp!) smokes and the jaded mother who (double gasp!) uses Botox. Outside of the oldest daughter Jill (Madeline Zima), who has as many dimensions as a piece of looseleaf, each member of the family turns in an effective performance as individuals whose sense of domestic tranquility is shattered.
Shortly after Stewart breaks into the home, he finds that there is another intruder in the house, and what follows is a suspenseful cat-and-well-cat game as Arkin and the Collector move from room to room. Dunstan does a fine job of making the mansion feel claustrophobic, and he ratchets up the tension as the Collector begins his work with Arkin scurrying around the edges.
A brief side note: Yes, it seems odd that the Collector can set up his devices so quickly (Ten bear traps? Really?), but in a genre where men wearing hockey masks don’t die and horribly burnt individuals wearing knives attached to their gloves kill you IN YOUR DREAMS, you should probably check your sense of reason at the door.
At the heart of the film is a philosophical choice. Arkin must choose between the selfish cost-benefits analysis that is utilitarianism and get the heck out of Dodge and the foolhardy bravery that is altruism. The Collector, on the other hand, represents the force of nihilism. There is only meaningless death and nothingness in his world. Arkin sticks around to be the hero which is less of a shock, but oddly, he seems to be responsible for almost as many bodies as the Collector as he fails fairly miserably at freeing the family.
Josh Stewart, as Arkin, is one of the biggest surprises in the film. For once, we have a likeable horror movie lead who can act. When Stewart sees an open window and struggles to make the right decision, actual fate seems to hang in the balance. When razors chomp down on his hand, the audience feels it, and when he outsmarts the Collector, we cheer him.
Opposite Stewart is Juan Fernández who plays the Collector (Fun fact that will probably tickle no one’s biscuits but mine: Fernández was one of the main villains in Crocodile Dundee II.). The physical interaction between the two is interesting and keeps much of the movie afloat, but there is one glaring problem. The Collector is boring. We aren’t given much of reason as to why he does the horrible things that he does which is ok, but we also aren’t given much of a personality and therein lies the flaw. Jigsaw sets better traps, and Michael Myers has a better mask.
In one particular scene all of the pieces try and come together only to be undone by hasty directing. The oldest daughter of the family returns home with her suitably sketchy boyfriend to make whoopee in what they believe to be an abandoned house. As they sneak into the house and start getting busy in the kitchen, the Collector looks on in rapt amazement, wondering which trap the lustful couple will set off. The audience then experiences a jarring shift in perspective. Looking on with the Collector and eagerly anticipating the same outcome that he does, we find ourselves in uncomfortable shoes. Unsure what to do with this buildup of tension, Dunstan bizarrely has the daughter notice the Collector who abruptly forces each of the characters into the traps himself. It’s this type of impatience with allowing scenes or characters to develop that plagues the film.
What ultimately destroys the film is its niche within the horror movie genre— torture porn. Never has a genre of film been a more fun topic for discussion over Thanksgiving dinner. It combines the revolting nature of torture with the joyless, formulaic titillation of pornography! Why is it that we will pay ten dollars to watch people not just die but suffer in the worst of all possible ways? Morbid curiosity? The American sense of one-upmanship and how- can-we-top-thatness? An underlying sociopathic craving that needs to be filled? None of the answers prove to be optimistic ones. If torture porn films can lend anything to the world, it should be that they end the debate about Guantanamo. Torture is just plain ugly.
Sadly, torture porn films don’t seem to be as quick as the flash in the pan critics have predicted. Horror directors have as of late turned to a disturbing degree towards instigating shudders of revulsion rather than plucking the sublime strings of fear. Walking out of Hostel a few years ago, I remember vividly feeling the weight of what I had just seen. The film wallowed in supposedly stylized ugliness. I was never particularly scared while watching the film as I was sickened.
This line between horror and disgust has largely been disintegrating within the context of modern horror films. The best horror films usually take one of two paths. They either revel in camp, encouraging their audiences to laugh even as they cringe (90% of films made in the 80s and early 90s), or they uncover something darker about ourselves—whether it is our mindless consumption (Dawn of the Dead), the fact that we can be as horrific as any monster (28 Days Later), or the notion that teenagers make horrible camp counselors (Friday the 13th Series). Scream then made it ok for the audience to know and understand the rules of horror films and opened the door to all sorts of postmodernist self-referentiality, but torture porn directors have tried to create new rules that aren’t particularly interesting. Horror should revolve around fear and not revulsion.
The Collector could be read in several interesting ways. Perhaps it is the philosophical struggle about what to risk in the face of evil. Perhaps it is that the huge houses that Americans live in can so easily become our prisons. The huge projector screens and giant chandeliers that we furnish these homes can be our death traps. The his-and-her sinks and granite countertops that people in House Hunters MUST have can be our graves. Eventually, the movie casts those ideas to the side, and instead the audience is treated to fish hooks piercing skin, people’s teeth being pulled out, mouths being sewn shut, and cockroaches eating through skin. Sigh.
The movie also features a bizarre moment of latent homophobia. As Arkin is tortured in the basement, the Collector begins to move towards the hiding place of the token innocent child in the movie, and Arkin tries to distract him to no avail. Until that is, Arkin calls him a “faggot.” Upon the first mention of the word, the Collector pauses and seems perturbed. Arkin then repeatedly calls the Collector a faggot until he ignores the little girl and goes back to Arkin. Call me a serial killer if you must, a severely deranged sociopathic asshole nutball, but no homo thank you. So being called gay is the villain’s weak spot? Really?
The movie loses all hope of being worth a second glance with a shockingly poor and obvious final act that sets the audience up for a sequel that no one wants to see. Horror sequels are the norm because capitalism is beautiful, and audiences don’t really care that they are spoonfed the same garbage (and as someone who has seen every Halloween and Saw film, I can say trash tastes yummy!). We don’t even have to add numbers to sequels any more. We can just add indefinite articles. Hmmmm, what would make a good sequel to Fast & Furious? THE Fast and THE Furious! That must have been an easy day at the office.
What writers and directors need to realize is that audiences demand sequels for characters that they actually want to see again. Whether it is Michael Myers stoic brutality, Jason’s campy ridiculousness, Freddy’s corny puns, or Leatherface’s subtle sensitivity (yes, I did just type that), we respond viscerally to these characters that we root for almost as much as we do the heroes/heroines in the films. And sometimes, yes, we root for them more. The Collector possesses none of these gifts, and as a forgettable addition to the canon of horror movie monsters, he doesn’t need nor deserve a sequel. Perhaps one day, directors will realize that the truly shocking ending would be one that provides closure. Now THAT is a scary thought.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
500 Days of Sucking
So what happens when you genetically cross the material Wes Anderson puts into the shredder after he wakes up from a bender with Diablo Cody with the gimmicks of How I Met Your Mother and the emotional honesty and depth of a greeting card? You get a deformed mutant baby named 500 Days of Summer.
This movie tackles all the tough questions. How can hipsters find love when the world is so like messed up? Does love really even exist man? Are we fated to find happiness? Yawn. Generation Blogosphere’s Annie Hall, this isn’t.
The movie name drops more than a drunk Washington intern at a Congressional happy hour. In short order, the audience gets references to the Smiths, Pixies, Belle and Sebastian, Magritte, and JD Salinger. A note to young writers and directors: next time you want to mention “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” in your movie, make sure you don’t. In case the audience is too dense to figure out obscure symbolism, the director, Marc Webb, is sure to pick such songs as “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” and “Here Comes your Man” to really drive his points home.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who gets a mulligan for this pile of garbage because of his role in Brick, plays Tom Hansen, an unhappy young professional who loves Morrissey almost as much as he loves cardigans and skinny ties (Someone tell me Band of Outsiders got some money from this movie). He writes greeting cards for a living which is like a corporation trying to takeover real feelings, you know? As a result, he feels an intense, Sartrean ennui about his world which flavors the misogyny that doubles as his interest in women.
Chloe Moretz plays Rachel Hansen, the blond, wise beyond her years younger sister, who pops up in the film because it worked in Bottle Rocket and wasn’t there a little girl in Little Miss Sunshine? People liked that movie didn’t they? Didn’t Salinger also include young children who somehow see through the phoniness of the adult world? But I digress.
Much like the film, which likes to skip back and forth and show alternate versions and compare reality and expectations and all that stuff because editing makes movies artsy. Except I kept waiting for kids sitting on a couch to pop up and tell Bob Saget to hurry up and get to the point already.
Geoffrey Arend is McKenzie, Tom’s friend, because someone has to be the token funny friend. Except you should be more funny and less token. If you find yourself playing the “What movie is this guy from?” as a way of killing time during the film, let me help you out. The snozzberries do indeed taste like snozzberries.
There’s also a friend named Paul, but really, who cares?
Back to the central questions of the plot. Why is Tom hopelessly depressed? Because that’s how life is, maaaan. Why does he choose a life of suffering and soul-crushing boredom at work? Because apparently architecture didn’t really work out for him, and all college graduates are supposed to be miserable in their professional lives. Or something.
Tom meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who offers him the chance at happiness because as every psychologist will tell you: the surest way to find happiness is to expect other people to provide it for you. The increasingly annoying narrator (Is that the Stranger from The Big Lebowski talking to me?) interrupts to tell us that their story is not a love story, however. Good thing we’re given 500 days to come to the same conclusion then.
But back to Summer. I’d like to spend about a paragraph on Summer’s character as it’s obvious that the scriptwriters didn’t. Apparently, Summer is that special type of girl that makes men look back at her on the bus and give her discounts on apartments (Does she get out of speeding tickets too?). Summer has a cute haircut, cute bangs (helllllooooo Jenny Lewis), and cute outfits that always have bows on them so the male viewer has to keep checking himself so he doesn’t feel like he is transforming into Humbert Humbert. The movie dabbles in the worst type of pornography with the film. Summer is not a character so much as an infantile reflection of male desire. Want me to pick up on your awesome taste in music? Check. Want me to make out with you in the copier room at work just because? Check. Want me to rent porn with you and then try out what we’ve seen? Check. Want me to come to your apartment in the middle of the night after we fight so you can be validated in your feelings that you were right? And the list goes on and on.
Webb focuses on parts of Summer to a disturbing degree. Like a porn director focusing on his actresses’ assets, Webb is sure to highlight Summer’s huge blue eyes and her beautifully sheepish smile every chance he gets. At times, that’s all Summer seems to be, like the Cheshire Cat before it fully forms in front of Alice. All of which is a shame because Deschanel is so damn likeable. If only she didn’t have to look like a baby seal asking to be clubbed for most of the movie.
That’s the point though, right? Summer is Tom’s dream girl so we have to see her through the lens of Tom’s infatuation. Men make the mistake of believing that the women they love must obviously love them back. Except the movie never shows us enough of Summer’s personality to make us care even when the love narrative disintegrates. She remains unexplainable, a mystery in only the most pointless of senses.
Except the writers do try to explain why Summer can’t find love and why Tom desperately needs it. Both Tom and Summer’s parents are divorced. What are the kids to do when mom and dad aren’t alright? The cheap psychology of the writers is horrific in its casual laziness. Although to be fair, Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, the dynamic duo behind this script, were also responsible for that stirring Freudian analysis of modern love known as The Pink Panther 2. Their poor attempts at understanding the ways trauma affects human beings is reminiscent of Rob Zombie trying to explain why Mike Myers kills people in his Halloween remake (hint: he had messed up parents). Horror villains and romantic break ups are scarier when there isn’t a reason that can explain the pain away.
The movie does stumble on some genuinely cute/funny moments along the way as Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel break free from the script long enough for the audience to see what they could be like if given better cue cards. The movie also gets kudos for resurrecting the Penis game from when I was in middle school, and my classmates and I thought it was hilarious.
At some point, the director and writers seem to want to make the point that infatuation is not love, and it’s hard to tell the difference. Fine, except I just made that point in one sentence. To carry a movie, you need more than a vague, overarching point.
But as the cute animations in-between the scenes show us, the seasons begin to change and Tom’s life changes in the same way. It’s sort of like how life is a journey. And how you need to give it 110%. And how a bird in the hand is worth two in the… nevermind. Eventually Tom breaks free from his work after delivering a painfully uninspired rant about greeting cards and love and embarks on finding his future as an architect.
Ultimately the movie tries to side with Tom’s romantic notions of fate against the cynicism of the world as Tom meets a new lady who again likes the same things he likes. He sure is lucky to find women whose interests only mirror his own. The director then taps his audience on the shoulder and smacks them in the face with his symbolism stick when this new lady reveals her name. I’d love to spoil the punch line that the movie has been building up to over its-God-knows-how-long timeframe, but I’ll leave the mystery alive for now.
Unfortunately, the movie’s ending is the more cynical choice. Given the chance to explore the pain of failed relationships and what actually makes love hard to find and harder to keep, Tom gets a new girl and that swagger back in his step. Aren’t you happy for him and that all of those disturbing questions have been swept under the rug?
As you can probably figure out, I wouldn’t recommend watching this movie unless you’re a young male with a chip on his shoulder because your girlfriend totally left you for some other bro. Although as much as I dislike this film, I guess I can recommend it as a date movie. If your significant other does like this film, you know it’s time for a change in the seasons.
This movie tackles all the tough questions. How can hipsters find love when the world is so like messed up? Does love really even exist man? Are we fated to find happiness? Yawn. Generation Blogosphere’s Annie Hall, this isn’t.
The movie name drops more than a drunk Washington intern at a Congressional happy hour. In short order, the audience gets references to the Smiths, Pixies, Belle and Sebastian, Magritte, and JD Salinger. A note to young writers and directors: next time you want to mention “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” in your movie, make sure you don’t. In case the audience is too dense to figure out obscure symbolism, the director, Marc Webb, is sure to pick such songs as “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” and “Here Comes your Man” to really drive his points home.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who gets a mulligan for this pile of garbage because of his role in Brick, plays Tom Hansen, an unhappy young professional who loves Morrissey almost as much as he loves cardigans and skinny ties (Someone tell me Band of Outsiders got some money from this movie). He writes greeting cards for a living which is like a corporation trying to takeover real feelings, you know? As a result, he feels an intense, Sartrean ennui about his world which flavors the misogyny that doubles as his interest in women.
Chloe Moretz plays Rachel Hansen, the blond, wise beyond her years younger sister, who pops up in the film because it worked in Bottle Rocket and wasn’t there a little girl in Little Miss Sunshine? People liked that movie didn’t they? Didn’t Salinger also include young children who somehow see through the phoniness of the adult world? But I digress.
Much like the film, which likes to skip back and forth and show alternate versions and compare reality and expectations and all that stuff because editing makes movies artsy. Except I kept waiting for kids sitting on a couch to pop up and tell Bob Saget to hurry up and get to the point already.
Geoffrey Arend is McKenzie, Tom’s friend, because someone has to be the token funny friend. Except you should be more funny and less token. If you find yourself playing the “What movie is this guy from?” as a way of killing time during the film, let me help you out. The snozzberries do indeed taste like snozzberries.
There’s also a friend named Paul, but really, who cares?
Back to the central questions of the plot. Why is Tom hopelessly depressed? Because that’s how life is, maaaan. Why does he choose a life of suffering and soul-crushing boredom at work? Because apparently architecture didn’t really work out for him, and all college graduates are supposed to be miserable in their professional lives. Or something.
Tom meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who offers him the chance at happiness because as every psychologist will tell you: the surest way to find happiness is to expect other people to provide it for you. The increasingly annoying narrator (Is that the Stranger from The Big Lebowski talking to me?) interrupts to tell us that their story is not a love story, however. Good thing we’re given 500 days to come to the same conclusion then.
But back to Summer. I’d like to spend about a paragraph on Summer’s character as it’s obvious that the scriptwriters didn’t. Apparently, Summer is that special type of girl that makes men look back at her on the bus and give her discounts on apartments (Does she get out of speeding tickets too?). Summer has a cute haircut, cute bangs (helllllooooo Jenny Lewis), and cute outfits that always have bows on them so the male viewer has to keep checking himself so he doesn’t feel like he is transforming into Humbert Humbert. The movie dabbles in the worst type of pornography with the film. Summer is not a character so much as an infantile reflection of male desire. Want me to pick up on your awesome taste in music? Check. Want me to make out with you in the copier room at work just because? Check. Want me to rent porn with you and then try out what we’ve seen? Check. Want me to come to your apartment in the middle of the night after we fight so you can be validated in your feelings that you were right? And the list goes on and on.
Webb focuses on parts of Summer to a disturbing degree. Like a porn director focusing on his actresses’ assets, Webb is sure to highlight Summer’s huge blue eyes and her beautifully sheepish smile every chance he gets. At times, that’s all Summer seems to be, like the Cheshire Cat before it fully forms in front of Alice. All of which is a shame because Deschanel is so damn likeable. If only she didn’t have to look like a baby seal asking to be clubbed for most of the movie.
That’s the point though, right? Summer is Tom’s dream girl so we have to see her through the lens of Tom’s infatuation. Men make the mistake of believing that the women they love must obviously love them back. Except the movie never shows us enough of Summer’s personality to make us care even when the love narrative disintegrates. She remains unexplainable, a mystery in only the most pointless of senses.
Except the writers do try to explain why Summer can’t find love and why Tom desperately needs it. Both Tom and Summer’s parents are divorced. What are the kids to do when mom and dad aren’t alright? The cheap psychology of the writers is horrific in its casual laziness. Although to be fair, Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, the dynamic duo behind this script, were also responsible for that stirring Freudian analysis of modern love known as The Pink Panther 2. Their poor attempts at understanding the ways trauma affects human beings is reminiscent of Rob Zombie trying to explain why Mike Myers kills people in his Halloween remake (hint: he had messed up parents). Horror villains and romantic break ups are scarier when there isn’t a reason that can explain the pain away.
The movie does stumble on some genuinely cute/funny moments along the way as Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel break free from the script long enough for the audience to see what they could be like if given better cue cards. The movie also gets kudos for resurrecting the Penis game from when I was in middle school, and my classmates and I thought it was hilarious.
At some point, the director and writers seem to want to make the point that infatuation is not love, and it’s hard to tell the difference. Fine, except I just made that point in one sentence. To carry a movie, you need more than a vague, overarching point.
But as the cute animations in-between the scenes show us, the seasons begin to change and Tom’s life changes in the same way. It’s sort of like how life is a journey. And how you need to give it 110%. And how a bird in the hand is worth two in the… nevermind. Eventually Tom breaks free from his work after delivering a painfully uninspired rant about greeting cards and love and embarks on finding his future as an architect.
Ultimately the movie tries to side with Tom’s romantic notions of fate against the cynicism of the world as Tom meets a new lady who again likes the same things he likes. He sure is lucky to find women whose interests only mirror his own. The director then taps his audience on the shoulder and smacks them in the face with his symbolism stick when this new lady reveals her name. I’d love to spoil the punch line that the movie has been building up to over its-God-knows-how-long timeframe, but I’ll leave the mystery alive for now.
Unfortunately, the movie’s ending is the more cynical choice. Given the chance to explore the pain of failed relationships and what actually makes love hard to find and harder to keep, Tom gets a new girl and that swagger back in his step. Aren’t you happy for him and that all of those disturbing questions have been swept under the rug?
As you can probably figure out, I wouldn’t recommend watching this movie unless you’re a young male with a chip on his shoulder because your girlfriend totally left you for some other bro. Although as much as I dislike this film, I guess I can recommend it as a date movie. If your significant other does like this film, you know it’s time for a change in the seasons.
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