Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Recharged Blogging Batteries with a "Bomb"
So in my last post, I broke the "in case of exhaustion" glass and took an evening off to watch a movie and recharge my batteries. Choosing an exhaustion movie is no simple task though. It has to be bad. It has to be something you actually hope will reek like a dirty diaper so the instinct to turn it off and get some sleep will overpower the need to anaesthatise the rational faculties.
I picked Gigli, the Bennifer bomb of legendary proportions, mentioned on almost all the critics "worst of" lists, and #25 on IMDB's list of 100 worst films of all time.
Sadly, I liked it. Not "liked it" liked it, but "didn't throw a shoe at it" liked it. Which for a movie these days isn't bad.
Sure, it had trouble picking a tone, and couldn't decide when we were supposed to like Ben Affleck's character and when not -- or why. But it had redeeming features, which is a lot better than the plethora of movies with no redeeming features. There were a number of very funny two or three minute speeches, a too-brief appearance by Christopher Walken, and a better-than-horrible performance by Jennifer Lopez -- who could actually be a decent comic actress if she focused on movies instead of that singing hobby.
Of course there was bad too: Al Pacino in an over-the-top, wrong-movie role; a truly awful impersonation of a retarded person -- it was probably totally accurate, but I as a movie viewer, now expect the Robin Williams/Dustin Hoffman version of impairment instead -- and a musical score fit for the Elmore Leonard remake of Dumb and Dumber.
I wish I'd just gone to sleep, but I guiltily watched the whole thing, warts and all. As long as there is something, anything positive to say, I tend to stick it out. It's a weakness, I know, something to do with having read too much science fiction. I can't tell you how many books I've plodded through, needlessly wasting months of my literary life -- hating the writing, hating the genius scientist and his buxom assistant -- just to find out whether they'll manage to run the anti-gravity device backwards. I don't need much.
So here I am, exhausted again, but now with no more glass to break. And that means you get to hear about Gigli. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
If you really, really liked this -- or even really, really hated it -- there's lots more:
I picked Gigli, the Bennifer bomb of legendary proportions, mentioned on almost all the critics "worst of" lists, and #25 on IMDB's list of 100 worst films of all time.
Sadly, I liked it. Not "liked it" liked it, but "didn't throw a shoe at it" liked it. Which for a movie these days isn't bad.
Sure, it had trouble picking a tone, and couldn't decide when we were supposed to like Ben Affleck's character and when not -- or why. But it had redeeming features, which is a lot better than the plethora of movies with no redeeming features. There were a number of very funny two or three minute speeches, a too-brief appearance by Christopher Walken, and a better-than-horrible performance by Jennifer Lopez -- who could actually be a decent comic actress if she focused on movies instead of that singing hobby.
Of course there was bad too: Al Pacino in an over-the-top, wrong-movie role; a truly awful impersonation of a retarded person -- it was probably totally accurate, but I as a movie viewer, now expect the Robin Williams/Dustin Hoffman version of impairment instead -- and a musical score fit for the Elmore Leonard remake of Dumb and Dumber.
I wish I'd just gone to sleep, but I guiltily watched the whole thing, warts and all. As long as there is something, anything positive to say, I tend to stick it out. It's a weakness, I know, something to do with having read too much science fiction. I can't tell you how many books I've plodded through, needlessly wasting months of my literary life -- hating the writing, hating the genius scientist and his buxom assistant -- just to find out whether they'll manage to run the anti-gravity device backwards. I don't need much.
So here I am, exhausted again, but now with no more glass to break. And that means you get to hear about Gigli. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
