Paul McGuigan, 2004
6.5
bland, boring, and awkward performances made this one almost unbearable for me. it annoyed the fuck out of me after a while, and, by the halfaway point, i was trash-talking it. you've got the most impropable coincidences popping up all over the place. once or twice it was fine, but everytime a character needed something, there it was, right under his hand. i would've bought these coincidences had i been more sympathetic to the characters but, as i said, the sheer lack of screen presence or charm made this quite an impossible task for me to achieve (and this must have been on the tail end of Matthew Lillard's funny sidekick career because even he doesn't seem to be buying it). Paul McGuigan's direction started out fine, even getting the film school geek in me really excited from frame one -- the images and metaphors are plentiful and interesting. but then it all starts to be a bit too much (it feels as if McGuigan wants to make it surreal but doesn't push it enough into that area to be totally effective. so, it just lays there, awkwardly trying to appeal to different opinions). the film also became a timeline mess (i still think there's one glaring error towards the end) and i had to check out from time to time just to make sense of where the thing was going. then you've got the whole tired Single White Female angle going and that was it for me. i checked out. a whole lot of boring. i do believe it was an honest effort on everyone's part but the end result was just far less interesting for me than intended, i'm sure. they did make some exciting choices for the soundtrack, though, but a lot of them just stood awkwardly (the dance studio scene, for one). all and all, just a boring, annoying, mess. (sorry,
Posted by Anonymous | 11:36 AM
