Cinema Sideshow

People Are Drooling Idiots: 'Transformers 2' Makes $60 Million in One Day

A few days ago, I wrote a review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for a new outlet. The piece was short, and didn't say anything that hasn't been covered by every other right-thinking critic in America (in other words, it's very loud, very long, and sucks). I thought it was going to be my premiere piece for the site, but now know that it's going into storage so I'll have a backlog of reviews already written when the site's overhaul is unveiled in July.

This is just as well, really. Since I wrote it, I've read far, far better reviews than mine. Mike Russell of the Oregonian called Tranformers 2 "a barely strung-together collection of visual ideas and set pieces, with some of the most hilariously stupid and generic dialogue ever financed by hundreds of millions of dollars." Roger Ebert said that it was "a horrible experience of unbearable length."

And over at the site io9.com, Charlie Jane Anders wrote a lengthy, awe-inspiring deconstruction insisting that the film's really a post-modern masterpiece, "like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane."

My review was not as good as any of these. Mainly because my own limited resources were unable to come up with the words to convey how aggressively wretched Transformers 2 actually is. It's so awful, it made me want to punch Michael Bay in the cock ... with Shia LaBeouf's face. And I kind of like Shia LaBeouf.

Now, today, comes the unsurprising news that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made a record-breaking $60 million on its first day in theaters. This, after almost every review tried to warn people that it's incomprehensible dreck, and that the sight of Megan Fox licking her lips in slo-mo is no trade-off for two-and-a-half hours of being bombarded by Michael Bay's obscenely expensive, ear-splittingly loud, stupidstupidstupid Monster of the Id on celluloid. They went to see it anyway. In droves.

Because most people, it turns out, are morons. Whenever that thought crosses my mind, and it does fairly often, I usually put it down to my admittedly curmudgeonly nature. But no, it's now official -- a very large swath of America is made up of drooling retards with enough leisure time and enough disposable income that they can throw it away on fucking terrible, ass-stupid, ridiculously long wastes of time even after they're warned not to do it. These are the people we're saving by passing seatbelt and helmet laws, by the way. And they breed. Also, this is why the rest of the world hates us.

Mike Judge's Idiocracy is becoming more and more prescient with each passing year. If the one-day landslide business for Transformers 2 is any indication, in a few generations Americans will live exclusively on fast food, all television will be reality shows in which people compete for prizes by kicking each other in the crotch, and movies will be three-hour extravaganzas consisting entirely of loud explosions, barely legal titties, and fart jokes.

The first two paragraphs of my inadequate Transformers 2 review, by the way, go like this:

In the old Looney Toons cartoons that I watched every Saturday morning, Foghorn Leghorn would torture his farm-dog nemesis by jamming a metal bucket on his head and then banging on it with a wooden spoon. I never knew what that felt like until Michael Bay did to me for two-and-a-half hours with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

At once a feature-length ad for the military, a soft-core Maxim spread featuring Megan Fox, and an extremely loud music video, Bay's second shot at turning the popular 80's toy/cartoon into an action flick is the sort of film that people suggest you "turn your brain off" to watch. It would be nice if that actually worked, but with Bay insisting that you pay attention to EVERY! LOUD! THING! that he throws at the screen, you can't even allow your mind to wander to, say, your grocery list, or what you had for dinner, the way you can with a normal bad movie.

But as I remember the actual experience of watching the movie, I realize that the above is painfully weak. Honestly, having my head inside a metal bucket upon which someone is hammering with a spoon would be an improvement on watching Transformers 2. Comparatively, it might even be a pleasure. Because I left the theater actually feeling stupider for having watched it, as if exposure to two-and-a-half hours of maximum Bay-hem caused genuine brain damage. Had I checked, I might have found bits of soft, greyish-pink brain matter oozing from my ears as I staggered through the lobby, bumping into walls.

Which might, in fact, be Michael Bay's master plan. Perhaps he's found a way to literally make his target audience mentally retarded through repeat viewings of his films, thus assuring that they'll continue to enjoy his work even more as his career progresses. And maybe he figures that if he can make film critics into babbling, single-digit-I.Q. mongoloids as well, we'll all be unable to type, and then we can't review his movies anymore.

Well, I have news for you, Mr. Bay. This future retard isn't going to go along quietly. You can have my brain cells when you vacuum them from my cold, dead, Transformers-desiccated skull. After I punch you in the cock.

'The Proposal': Slightly Better Than You'd Expect, Until It Isn't.

The early portions of The Proposal, the by-the-numbers romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, are actually somewhat promising. Of course, by "promising," I mean that, despite being utterly predictable in absolutely every respect, the acting is decent, the writing competent, and the DP kept everything in focus most of the time. This may seem like faint praise, but given the state of the modern American rom-com, that places it head-and-shoulders above most of the genre.

The premise, of course, is as stale as a week-old bagel: Bullock plays Margaret Tate, a stern book editor who's going to be deported to her native Canada. She ropes her assistant, Andrew (Reynolds) into agreeing to marry her. Under pressure from a cartoonishly broad INS agent (the usually-much-better-than-this Denis O'Hare), the two jet off to spend the weekend with Andrew's family in Sitka, Alaska. The expected hijinks arising from his parents (Mary Steenbergen, Craig T. Nelson) and grandmother (Betty White) believing that they're a real couple ensue, as the plot chugs forward exactly as you'd expect.

Despite kicking off with what is, perhaps, the tiredest gag in the rom-com playbook (Reynolds fetches coffee for the boss, juggling two obviously empty cups until the time comes to bump into someone, then he covers his shirt with a cascade of latte), The Proposal does a fair job of delivering its weak goods in the first two acts. Much of this can be attributed to Reynolds, a grossly underrated comic talent who can deliver bad dialogue with such cocky finesse that one (almost) forgets that it's dreck. (As a side note, this is one of many reasons that the recent Wolverine failed utterly -- the filmmakers cast Reynolds in a role that ought to have taken full advantage of his snarky, whip-smart charm, then sewed up his lips after just a couple of lightning-short scenes.)

Bullock is fine, as she always is, and surprisingly doesn't milk humor out of falling down or tripping over something for a change. She does take a tumble off of a boat about halfway through the movie, but it's done less as a reason to laugh at her goofiness than as a transparent device to get Reynolds to put his arm around her. Her plastic-surgified face has relaxed a bit since her last film, which makes her look almost like a normal human again -- although not so much that we can ignore the 12-year age difference between her and Reynolds, an issue that the film never addresses.

But Bullock also has a way with dialogue, and when she dryly delivers a line like, "What am I allergic to? Peanuts. And the entire spectrum of human emotion" it elicits a genuine chuckle.

Somewhere around the two-thirds point in the film, however, it feels like everyone involved just sort of gave up. An intriguing character line with Andrew's father resenting him for leaving Alaska and the family business is pretty much dropped until film's end, when he just shrugs and decides that he doesn't mind anymore. Andrew's pretty, pleasant ex-girlfriend (Malin Ackerman) hangs around and then offers nothing to the story whatsover, and Steenbergen's mom is just that, The Mother, with little in the way of a developed character other than a perpetual smile and a few hugs.

Everything plunges sharply downhill with a pointless scene in which Bullock encounters White in the woods, dressed in a Native American outfit and dancing around a fire. This is supposed to be hilariously wacky, but with no set-up to explain why, exactly, the 90-year-old grandma would be wearing a headdress and chanting to the Indian gods, it merely comes off as exactly what it is -- a desperate attempt to wring comedy from an old lady, and an opportunity for Bullock to do a silly dance. Everything that follows from this point is similarly slipshod, until the movie limps to a sad, lame, stupid conclusion.

Two small moments that shine involve roles so small that they're almost cameos -- The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi as an editor summarily fired by Bullock, and Oscar Nuñez of The Office as an unlikely stripper at an impromptu bachelorette party. As with the presence of Reynolds, both actors elevate the slim material briefly, but they can't save a movie as poorly executed as this one.

[My seatmate for the screening, Mike Russell, shares his views in the Oregonian, kicking off with an observation that I chose to leave out of this review because I was already pretty wordy. But just so I can say, "Oh yeah, and this, too" -- read his review here.]

Ask Pixar to Make a Film About Girls? Why, That's Just 'P.C. B.S.!"

 


(The following is a longer version of a piece that I posted to Cinematical, which I edited a) for space, and b) to make it a tad less ... strident. You can read that version here.)

Over at NPR.org, writer Linda Holmes dared to blog an open letter to Pixar politely asking to see a few adventures with, maybe, girls as the main characters. Her tone was set nicely in the opening of her piece, titled "Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees":

This is not an angry letter. It is especially not an angry letter about Up, which I adored. I could have sat in the theater and watched it two more times in a row. I cried, but I also laughed so hard in places that it wore me out.

So I'm not complaining; I'm asking. I'm asking because I think so highly of you.

Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess.

Holmes points out that of the ten features that Pixar's released theatrically so far, all ten have been boy's adventures. She acknowledges that the movies "feature women and girls to varying degrees -- The Incredibles, in particular -- but the story is never 'a girl and the things that happen to her,' the way it's 'a boy and what happens to him.'" She mentions again that she loves Pixar's movies ... she'd just like to see a character like Up's Ellie or The Incredibles' Violet as the main character for a change.

There are over 100 comments on the piece and, this being NPR, the overwhelming majority of the responses are intelligently expressed and in agreement with Holmes point of view. But if you skip over to Jerry Beck's animation blog, Cartoon Brew, you'll find a lot of readers with a different perspective.

It doesn't help that Beck's post, which links to Holmes' piece, immediately colors her thesis with its own title, “Dear Pixar, How About a Chick Flick?” (his emphasis) even though a chick flick was decidedly not what Holmes was proposing. And from the tone of many of comments that follow, you'd think she'd suggested that Pixar fire all the male animators and hire angry lesbians in big, stompy boots to wipe boys off the Pixar landscape by brute force.

 "I suppose all the Disney Princess and Tinkerbell movies don’t count for anything? You have to try to force your P.C. B.S. on Pixar now?," writes one of the earliest commenters. "Come on! I’m sure when an interesting story with a female protagonist develops organically at Pixar, they will make that movie. Until that time, stop trying to ruin the fun for the rest of us." (Yes, it would seem that Pixar's films "develop organically," grown on a farm on the Pixar compound, perhaps, and no one there has any control over what gender the main character may turn out to be.)

"Let Pixar make the movies for boys and leave the chick flicks/teenybopper movies to Disney itself," writes another (male) reader, while yet another fellow says, "Everybody has an agenda. I’m sorry if this delightful movie didn’t service yours."

Why is it that when women -- who make up over half of the species, by the way -- respectfully point out that they're underrepresented in movies, it's seen as some sort of angry feminist screed? I've been writing about film for over ten years, and I've been hit with this accusation myself a number of times -- most recently, when I wrote here of my disappointment in that one aspect of the otherwise terrific Star Trek (and if you haven't read the comments there, check 'em out -- some of them are doozies.)

Some readers respond not with anger, but with puzzlement that we womenfolk aren't satisfied with the secondary roles that we continually play in films. Regarding Holmes' Pixar piece, one commenter wrote, "What about Jessie from Toy Story 2?? She is not the main character of the film, but her story is an integral part of the movie and I hope she will be back for Toy Story 3?. Eve also has an integral role in Wall-E."

Well, yes. But in each case, the movie isn't about them. It's not their adventure, any more than Finding Nemo is Dory's adventure, or A Bug's Life is about Dot. And the answer isn't sexing up Pixar to make girl's adventures for slavering pubescent boys, as one commenter suggested when he wrote, "Maybe Pixar should make a CGI adaptation of Tomb Raider or Aeon Flux. Those are franchises that feature strong, female leading roles that AREN”T princesses." Yep, that would be real progress, you betcha. And fun for the kids, too.

Pixar is a powerhouse in the entertainment industry. More importantly, they make family films that are watched, over and over, by children. And the prevailing message that Pixar's otherwise extraordinary body of work promotes is that males have adventures, and that females are second bananas or love interests. It doesn't take an angry feminazi to figure out that lessons -- both intentional and unintentional -- are being taught by their pictures, and this lesson, when combined with the overwhelming amount of "Disney princess" product being thrown at little girls, isn't setting an especially strong example.

A culture that promotes strong, adventurous boys while telling girls that their primary function is to be a support system and a pretty, pretty princess doesn't serve either men or women well. It also creates unrealistic ideas of what men or women are really like, as expressed in this comment on the Cartoon Brew blog:

I think the problem with girls in Pixar movies is that most of them are tomboys. Its not impossible for a guy to write a really strong female character, but more often the girls are saddled with boy qualities which is more often than not the creators trying to work out their own issues through that character.

Read that again. The writer believes that strong females -- even in the context of secondary cartoon characters -- exhibit "boy qualities." Because real girls and women are weak, and soft. And they don't have adventures.

This is a what Holmes was writing about, what women in our culture have to contend with, and what Pixar can, in a very real way, help to overcome.

For Christmas 2011, Pixar will release The Bear and the Bow, directed by Brenda Chapman, a woman with a long animation resume going back to Disney's The Fox and the Hound. It's an adventure-fairy tale about a girl who strives to become a great archer.

Oh, yeah ... and she's a princess. Of course.

Bobble Heads, Gunfights and Cartoon Pandas

Blogging as been light, as life has gotten in the way of movies. Yes, I said it! I do other things with my time than watch films and write about them! Sometimes, I have four-day summer cold/allergy-apocalypse attacks that keep me constantly medicated in a haze of Benedryl wooziness.

Yeah, it's been exciting.

Here are a few things that I've written about lately, though:

WTF: Terminator: Salvation Bobble Head Doll

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of strange movie tie-in merchandise. I have the Reservoir Dogs cutting-the-cop's-ear-off playset. My go-to ruler on my desk is a 13-incher from Wonderland, the 1993 movie about John Holmes. Hell, I still have my Fargo snow globe.

But ... this is just bizarre. The Terminator Salvation Bobble Head, bringing an unstoppable killing machine from the future to wacky, head-nodding life.  (Read more ...)

Triple Feature: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

In a famous moment from John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a reporter, having learned that the legendary bravery of a U.S. Senator isn't quite the tale of heroism that he expected, tears up his notes and says, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

It's not just a great line that efficiently sums up the movie's theme. It's also a savvy commentary by Ford on the way Hollywood approaches Western lore. And nowhere is it more true than with the legend of Wyatt Earp and the showdown at the O.K. Corral. (Read more ...)

DreamWorks Announce Upcoming Animation Slate

DreamWorks Animation has gone 3-D wacky, announcing eight upcoming animated flicks in various stages of production.

Variety reports that CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg will show investors the DWA schedule in New York this week, as part of their new plan to release five new features every two years.

Considering that Monsters vs. Aliens was the company's only 2009 release, that's a pretty ambitious goal. And like fellow studios Pixar, Buena Vista, Fox, et al, DreamWorks is throwing all their money at 3-D features for the next few years. (Read more ...)