(no subject)

[catslash]

Sometimes I envy my mother for her relaxed moviegoing standards. She is much more willing than I just to let go and let the story engage her, and I think that would be kind of nice. There are times when I think that maybe I should chill and ease up on my exacting standards for what I want in a movie.

Then I see something like Hitch and I am reminded of why I am the elitist film snob I've become.

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. I'm really not that hard to please. All I want in a movie is intelligence. I don't even want intelligence in the story itself. If I did, I wouldn't have liked Harold and Kumar. I just want intelligence behind the scenes. I want it in the dialogue and the storytelling and the acting and the directing and the score. H&K is a good movie because its dumb story is backed up by off-camera smarts.

Hitch, on the other hand, is a bad movie because its stupid story is further hampered by terrible directing on all counts - in fact, I will remember Hitch as the movie that showed me in graphic detail how destructive bad directing can be; a clunky score; dialogue that is highly realistic inasmuch as large chunks of it are interesting only to those conversing; useless characters; mechanical, rote acting; and . . . okay, its stupid story. But the general incompetence just highlights the awfulness of the story. I could definitely believe that, had the creation of Hitch involved any actual application of thought, it could have been a lot more fun.

On a more amusing note, I found the best keychain ever. It says "yield to the princess" on it and the text is in the same shade of pink I used for the "PRINCESS" in this icon. I could not believe my eyes when I saw it, because it really sums up our Princess kind of perfectly, doesn't it?

Comments

[piney61.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Jeter is gonna give A-Rod that Princess keychain for Valentine's Day. That'd be so sweet....and then Tim McCarver would come in and try to destroy A-Rod, until Deion Sanders randomly shows up to pour a bucket of ice water all over McCarver. The symbol for Deion Sanders is a big shiny thing of "bling"

[meacoustic.livejournal.com]

I just want intelligence behind the scenes. I want it in the dialogue and the storytelling and the acting and the directing and the score.

I completely agree. And people wonder why I have a hard time with the fact that one of our theaters only gets movies like Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London. (At least the first one had Angie Harmon.)

[ealasaidh.livejournal.com]

Huh. Yanno, I saw "Hitch" today and I really liked it. I didn't expect to, either. I recognized all the standard elements you see all the time (Hitch looking morosely over the city as sad music plays; the gossip columnist being taken down a peg; the schlub getting the right girl; etc) but I was still interested. Was it brilliant? No. But I wasn't bored (the same cannot be said for, say, "Hide and Seek") and I wasn't actively in pain ("The Medallion"). It made me laugh, it made me cringe in sympathy, and therefore I am giving it a proverbial thumbs up.

I guess it boils down to taste and mood. And that, boys and girls, is why I don't issue proclamations about the intrinsic artistic merit of a film in my reviews. Movies like Citizen Kane deserve to be held up and admired, but the everyday, purely-for-entertainment stuff Hollywood usually turns out? No way. It's pointless to attempt objective judgements.

(although one has to wonder what was up with Hitch apparently being completely unaware of such an extreme food allergy)

[catslash.livejournal.com]

I think I picked on Hitch, as opposed to the zillions of really terrible movies I've seen, because a) it happened to be the movie I saw yesterday, and b) it's strictly mediocre. It does have its moments. Though I honestly can't think of any of them right now, I do remember laughing more than once, so it must have had them.

It really wasn't any different from any of the other "let's make some money" Hollywood flicks I've seen, though. It just happened to be the one whose flaws caught my attention. If we'd seen something else equally useless, I probably would have picked that one apart instead.

(I really did hate the score, though. I can handle annoying characters, bad writing, bad acting, all that stuff, but a horrible clunky score can wreck a movie for me. It's my one major movie peeve.)

Also, sometimes those generic Hollywood flicks somehow end up being better than they have any right to be, and Hitch was looking like it might be one of those, so I was also a little disappointed.

[hoedogg.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that Will Smith is so convinced of his greatness that he thinks he can star in any generic piece of Hollywood trash without putting in any effort whatsoever, and it will still be a hit. Which, if you look at the box office returns on any of his dozen recent shitty movies, is probably true, unfortunately.