Saturday, July 12, 2008

Approaching movie cliche saturation

I saw Wanted recently. It was arguably one of the worst films that I've ever seen, and I have been forced to watch a video of myself as a young child, playing with a cup. The cup, you see, gets played with. In act two, it gets played with some more, but this time I drool a little bit and grin like some cup deprived prisoner who's been kept by the insidious coffee mug people in a cupless prison for untold eons.

The big twist is that at the end, I drop the cup on its ass and go chasing after a bug.

This was so much worse than that it's hard the explain. It's like a really fat, sweaty guy who wants to hug you. As he approaches, you can see the sweat stains underneath his cleverly emblazoned squirrel t-shirt ("Oh, I get it, they're talking about testicles, not actual nuts. Huh. That, that was. Huh. I did not see that coming") and the slightly darker circle of perspiration around his bellybutton. In an instant, the entirety of his life is visible in your mind, before it collapses into a meaningless jumble of images as he embraces you, and you're sinking down, sinking into the wet and the comforting knowledge that, yes, you can cry now. It's OK.

The sweat stains are the narration of the movie. They're sort of the give away that yes, this will be disgusting. Each little pore of this movie is leaking out a fine mixture of angst, poorly written attempts at some sort of pseudo-Nihilistic world view, and dialogue attempting to tie you more closely to the main character. They operate on the premise that most people who'll see this movie are losers in some way. Which, really, I can't fault them for; I'm a loser in some ways, so are most people. The problem is that they insist on forcing this into your popcorn munching gullet so forcefully that any sympathy or understanding is swept away by the gag reflex against shit.

The action sequences are the actual flesh. It's... well, no offense fat guy who is hugging me, but it's a bit much. A bit, well, overdone. Remember how The Matrix was a decent film, and then by the third one it was a guy erotically fondling the controls of a mech suit and screaming for about an hour? It's like somebody saw those movies and was never informed that the first one was the good one. A tip.

Don't use slow mo on a terrible scene. That does nothing good.

If I'm slowly vomiting up the remains of a four course meal, I don't want to slow down the moment. I don't want to savor the sensation of food slowly rolling out of my acid coated mouth and into the toilet. Oh, look. There's that chunk of spicy apple tart. Coming up. Coming up. Still coming up. Oh, there it is, falling out of my mouth. Plop. Wow. That was so much better than just puking in real time.

The kicker to this movie is Angelina Jolie. Returning to the fat guy hug, imagine that, as he's hugging you, some naked, beautiful woman appears over his shoulder. Now, as you hug this behemoth, a slight erection begins to form in your pants. You can feel his confusion as this small mass balls against his sweating leg, and your eyes close slowly in disgust and horror. He pulls away and looks sideways at the ground, blushing furiously. You manage to stammer out a, "Uh, it was, uh good to see you again, uh, man."

The rest of the night night is spent punching your dick in rage and confusion.