View image "Squeal like a hog": The Not-Gay Gang, John Travolta, William H. Macy, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence.
Two of A.O. Scott's reviews today in the New York Times had me laughing out loud. From "Wild Hogs":
The main thing about these guys — the main source of the movie’s fumbling attempts at humor — is that they’re not gay. Really. Seriously. No way. They may worry about people thinking that they’re gay, and they may do things that might make people think that they’re gay — dance, touch one another, take off their clothes, express emotion — but they’re absolutely 100 percent not gay. No no no no no no. No sir, I mean, no ma’am. That’s what makes it funny, see.It's also "American Beauty" -- the cheapest kind of reversal gimmick.After camping out one night, for example, they have a conversation that’s overheard by a highway patrolman (John C. McGinley) who decides, based on his misunderstanding of the perfectly innocent things they’re saying, that they must be gay. But the thing is — get this — he’s the one who’s gay! You think he’s a stereotypical homophobe, but he turns out to be a homophobic stereotype. It’s magic!
From Scott's review of "Black Snake Moan":
Don’t be fooled though. Underneath the surface of racial and sexual button pushing, behind the brandished guns and bared breasts, is a heart of pure, buttery cornpone. Like “Hustle & Flow,” “Black Snake Moan” joins a dubious stereotype of black manhood to an uplifting, sentimental fable. In the earlier movie the hero was a soulful pimp with dreams of hip-hop glory.That's the way I felt about most of "Hustle & Flow," which was phony and ludicrous in ways I wasn't sure the filmmakers were intending -- especially when it came to the relationships between the pimp and his sex slaves, and the little white guy giving the pep talk about telling the story of " The Black Man."This time he is a retired blues singer with woman troubles and a vegetable farm. Really, though, the character, played with his usual fearsome wit by Samuel L. Jackson, is a tried-and-true Hollywood stock figure: the selfless, spiritually minded African-American who seems to have been put on the earth to help white people work out their self-esteem issues. No doubt “Black Snake Moan” is a provocative title, but a more accurate one might be “Chaining Miss Daisy to the Radiator in Her Underwear.” [...]
To their great credit, Mr. Jackson and Ms. Ricci understand that the relationship between Lazarus and his prisoner has its comic side, and some of their scenes together... play out like kinky screwball. Whether Mr. Brewer is in on the joke is less clear.
2 Comments
I love reading reviews of a movie that the critic loathes. That's where the true creativity of critique comes through. A bad movie is easy to write about- "The script is subpar", "the actors are dull", "plots moves along like a snail". These kinds of movies are just par for the course.
But then a critic will unfortunately makes his way into a theatre, showing something that just isn't bad; it's a complete waste of his time. This is when he resents everyone that got him into this theatre- from the filmmakers of the film in question to his boss. Then he translates all that anger and hatred into a healthy release: using humor to express what can't be expressed.
It takes quite a film for someone to write that way. It's like creating a balance: the lack of creativity the critic sees on the screen, he must compensate in the creativity in his review.
One of my favorite online critics is James Berardinelli of Reelviews.net. He's pretty good at making humorous reviews of bad movies.
From his review of Year of the Horse:
"Here's a pop quiz: Can you name three things to do to make the time pass more quickly while you're trapped in a theater showing Year of the Horse? 1. Count to 10,000. 2. Take a nice, long nap. 3. Get up and walk out."
Ernest Rides Again:
"I don't frighten easily. I've sat through any number of supposedly-terrifying flims without batting an eyelash, but Ernest Rides Again managed something that not even Halloween could accomplish. When the film came to a close with the promise of another sequel (Ernest Goes to School, for anyone who cares), I felt a shiver of pure horror race up my spine."
Hannibal Rising:
"Forget Borat - if you're looking for something hilarious, this is the movie to see. What's that? It's not supposed to be a comedy. Oops."
One of my favorite bad movies, and favorite reviews of it is "Battlefield Earth" and Ebert's review. I laughed all the way through each, and went to see the movie, bringing with me scores of other people several times, and laughed each time. What's happened to Travolta?? I snuck into (ssshhh) "Wild Hogs" and he can't act anymore. He's lost any ability he had. He's like the scene in which he's instructing... who was it, DeVito, in "Get Shorty" on how to act mean, well, someone needs to tell Travolta how to... just someone SLAP the man, please!
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