As I began to prepare writing this review, I noticed something rather shocking: not only had it been almost three weeks since I had been inside a movie theater, I hadn't even watched anything on DVD. Seriously, that's quite a stretch for me. Of course, the fact I had to deal with finals and then take a drive out to Atlanta had something to do with my lack of movie going. Another important factor, however, is that it's Spring and this is the season of mediocrity -- come on, do you think Paul Blart's Mall Cop was number one at the box office because it was such a quality film? Spring is when the studios shake out their "well, I'm sure there's some idiot who wants to see this" movies. Summertime is the big blockbuster and the fall and winter are the "prestige" films -- the ones that are hoping to get some major award. Spring is just blech.
Duplicity, while most definitely not "blech," isn't too far off. The film is serviceable light comedy. I've heard other critics rave about the crazy twists in the movie. I'm dumbfounded by this just as I'm dumbfounded by people who tell me that movies like Syriana is too confusing and difficult to follow. I understand that a film like Syriana is a little more complicated than the average film but it's not Dostoevsky. If you pay attention to what's going on, it's not that hard to unravel. LIkewise, while Duplicity isn't necessarily predictable, there's nothing in the film that made me go, "whoah ... didn't see that coming."
I think the best thing I can say about Duplicity is that it's clever -- but clever much like that one kid in class who knows all the answers and won't shut up about it (hmmm, I think that may have been me back in the day). In other words, the film is clever but it's not brilliant. It's clever and it takes too much pleasure in its own cleverness: oh look at me, aren't I all interesting and whatnot.
Of course, the ladies -- the J included -- can always sit through anything with Clive Owen. I think I'm the same way with Natalie Portman ... there's a lot of crap I'm willing to sit through (oh, like perhaps the last three Star Wars films) if there's Natalie Portman somewhere on the screen. Like I said, I think this is fine popcorn fair. It's a lazy Spring movie that will soon be forgotten.
Oh so very long ago, I rushed through my backlog of film reviews so I could put up my review of Watchmen in a timely manner. I was quite excited for this -- one of those, "oh my god, I can't believe it's actually happening" moments. For people (meaning geeky guys) of a certain age (meaning middle-aged), the publication of Watchmen was one of those great watershed moments. I'm not sure what I could compare it with to let kids understand just how big of a deal this was. The closest I can figure is if twenty years from now, they decided to make a movie version of Lost. Of course, I'm assuming that kids watch Lost. How about if they canceled Family Guy and then made a movie version twenty years later? Would that work?
Regardless, suffice it to say that I was all geeked out and perhaps it was my high level of enthusiasm that led to such painful disappointment. The Mini-Ster and the J (this was a big-time, get together featuring the entire cast of characters and then some), both of whom were unfamiliar with the comic book, thought the movie perfectly adequate. Amigo #1, however, was just as disappointed as myself and, not coincidentally, he's also a fan of the original comic book.
Part of the problem -- maybe the biggest problem -- is that the film is too faithful to its source material. It doesn't fully take into consideration that different genres require vastly different narrative techniques. The Watchmen comic books were serialized -- that is, it's not a single graphic novel but a series of comic books published monthly (as most comic books are). There's an inherently episodic element to the way the narrative unfolds. By following this too closely, Zack Snyder's film adaptation lacks any sense of flow and coherence.
The other problem -- and this one to me is huge -- is that there are certain conventions that just can't be translated. The whole thing that made Watchmen special was that it tried to picture "normal" people as superheroes. While these guys could certainly fight well, they were still just people. During a key fight scene in the film, however, these guys seemed to have super powers akin to what you would see in The Matrix.
I'm sure I could sit here and nitpick at the 300 reasons why this film sucked (yeah, that's right, I said 300) ... and somewhere on the top ten would be the very simple fact that Malin Akerman cannot act to save her life. She's pathetically bad and only helps make a difficult to stomach film even more annoying and painful. But, like I said, I'm not going to nitpick. Perhaps a few years from now, I'll rent this on DVD and I'll have a change of heart but I highly doubt it.
RSS Feed