Ok-lets talk about a little phenomenon I call “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. We’ve all heard the story from baby-hood. King gets new clothes, said clothes don’t really exist, nobody wants to tell him he has no clothes for fear of looking dense, and it goes on. I think this little parable fits nicely into movie criticizing this days. Lets take a case study and I will explain.

“There Will Be Blood”.

Good premise-man becomes corrupt after striking it rich in the oil industry around the turn of the twentieth century. Great setting, cool characters, and an awesome bible pounding sermon from the local preacher boy. Should be a classic, no? No. Here’s my “guff” with this bloated celluloidic endeavor.

A good movie, like the devil, is made in the details. One word to director Paul Thomas Anderson:editing. This is the biggest little mistake so many directors make; they fall in love with their own work and can’t cut anything out. This movie sorely needed some snip-snipping in the editing room to make it more user friendly. A small detail but if unchecked a long and boring movie is born.

Another blarring detail that should normally be undetected in film watching: MUSIC. I like a movie score to move along with the emotion of the characters and give the audience a chance to anticipate what’s going to happen next. This movie literally pounded the score in to the scenes with jarring uneasiness. The opening sequence sported such annoying “something’s going to happen so hold on” music I really wanted to punch the composer. Luckily he wasn’t there so there will be no law-suit for me today.

The acting was ok but again:details. Daniel Day Lewis didn’t give his manic foil the depth he needed for viewers to really understand his motivation. He yelled and acted crazy, but by the end I really wasn’t sure if I liked him, hated him, or just wanted him to talk in a normal decibel range for once. And I usually love this man in every role he does. I’m a big DDL fan. Go team.

So, naked king story and how it relates. The reviews for this movie were staggeringly positive. “A masterpiece of our times”, “best leading character since Citizen Kane” (that’s sacred ground buddy), and so on. I thought this movie was long, boring, and unmotivated. It did have it’s moments of brilliance, but overall I wanted a shorter, more direct version of the story. However, not being a repudiated pundit-producing “scholar of the cinema”, I’m not allowed to not like it. But the hierarchy, in my opinion, was forced to herald this headache as genius so as not to call the king naked, if you get my drift.

I close with a comment posted by a movie-goer on a popular movie critic forum.

“I’m not going to waste my time in explaining how well this movie was done because it was perfect in every way. People who gave this movie a 0 obviously don’t have the brain capacity to absorb such a powerful movie about life. I’m sure those people most likely gave biodome a 10.”

The only thing my brain was absorbing was the need for sleep. I guess I’m a “biodomer”. Figures.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 10:42 am and is filed under movie reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.