Distric 9 film loosely (very, very loosely) reminiscent of Apartheid in South Africa and produced by the now infamous Peter Jackson. The Apartheid reference was the only reason we risked seeing this movie. Would it be an intelligent look at Apartheid? Using aliens as a tactic to get people to see it and learn about a unpalatably awful even in human history? Or would it take advantage of this unpalatably awful event to score a few bucks.
Well, my official rating is "I'm So Upset!", so that should answer that question. The movie was horrific. Aweful. Actually, I can't think of one film I have ever seen which is quite so bad. Even Very Bad Things (a supposed comedy) wasn't as bad as this... thing. Everything that was wrong in The Lord of the Rings, what was similar between it and King Kong, is present in this movie. Between the three projects, I have a beautiful outline of who Peter Jackson is and I don't think I need to actually see another one of his films to know everything about it.
Watching the movie was a little like watching I Love Lucy in that you sat in the chair saying, "Oh, come on. Don't do that. Don't. You'll-- You did it! Gaw!" But Lucy was more enjoyable. A little less frustrating and not so infuriating from start to finish. So that you can relax and truly notice how bad the movie is: the kid doesn't die. He gets to go home. Putting him in peril is just the gimmick used to keep you interested and not paying attention to anything else.
Actually, I am being a little over harsh. There were elements in the beginning, when the camera was still shaky documentary-ish, which were very intriguing. Frustrating, to be sure, pure debauchery, yes. But Apartheid was debauchery. It wasn't without merit. But everything that was interesting were dropped in favor of big guns and gooie explosions of human and alien body parts. It was as if the writer got some bad blockage going on and instead of working through it, he just quit, went to play Halo and that was the rest of the movie. The cinematics here aren't so much reminiscent of a documentary, but reminded me of the first time I watched Braveheart. They got so obsessed with fake blood they splashed the camera a few times; but it was quick and they changed camera so quickly, it seemed an accident. It happened very frequently here and is obviously no accident.
Then it gets all overdramatic. With the following idiotic scene: guns and bullets and explosions are everywhere. People are injured and retreating. One of them has a huge suit of armor and thinks he can stop the attack (which he could have 30 minutes ago if he was half as intelligent as a flaccid sea-creature) So the two heroes stop and turn to each other.
"Go on without me!" says one.
"No I won't leave you" says the other.
"Yes you must!" says the first.
"No!" repeats the other.
And somehow they are not killed. Pah! It was like watching Frodo make the zillionth 'I'm in pain' face by the half-way mark in the first and least pain-filled (for him) LOTR.
The movie may have had promise, but rather than delivering on it, it sadly devolves into an assortment of clichés. That's all there is to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment