Why?
Why the fuck?
I find Jack Black funny. Very much so. I absolutely fucking loved Before the Sunset, and pretty much liked everything I've seen from director Richard Linklatter. I could write a love poem to the soundtrack.
So how could they have made such a piece of unwatchable trash? And how the hell did they hoodwink everyone, including several movie reviewers I normally agree with, into liking this disastrous underdogs-beat-all-odds rotten piece of excrement?
Well, I'll just assume you've already watched it and save myself the pain of recounting it. If you must have a synopsis, dreg up the cheapest, basest, most shopworn clichés and Hollywood formulae, and stitch them together. And add a fucking bucketload of (talented) obnoxious brats.
And it's fucking WRONG. This is the kind of movie that hedges its bets by making the main character be always right (not because he's, you know, right, but because the script bends backwards to prove him right), and the 'evil' characters are either bad! bad! bad! or such a fucking caricature that it's not even funny.
Let me illustrate. The always-great Joan Cusak plays the school principal. Not a bad guy per se, just an obstacle. So they make her nice enough, but comically uptight. By the way, she's the sole likeable character in the movie. Soooo...
At one point, it becomes clear that Jack Black must seduce her. He takes advantage of her in the most cynical of ways (not physically, because, she's old! and square!). He uses her, and throws her away just like that. I really expected something to come out of it, coming from the director that made the one romantic movie I wholeheartedly embrace. But no, we can assume she is out of a job and alone by the end of the movie.
I could so easily write out the outline of an 'anti-school of rock', leaving most of the plot intact, but showing Jack Black's actions under a different light, and I guarantee you most of the audience would be out to lynch him by the end. But thanks to a fascistically manipulative assfucker of a script, people embrace him... because he's following his dreams!
I hope said people's daughters have a professor like him, and end up as drugged out groupies at age 15 for a bad hair metal band (is there another kind?)
God, I feel soiled. It's been a week since I subscribed to Lovefilm, and I've already felt the need to kickstart my blog again. Shit.
2 comments:
Hey, I liked it.
Why do you always have to look for a message in films?
I found it especially funny at the very beginning when he just goes to the school to slack, and the over-nerdy students ask him to do his job. Yes, most of the movie was cheesy, yes, most of it was cliché over G-dforsaken cliché, but, I liked it. It made me laugh, I liked the music. I liked the fact that the guy could do all of this illegal and unethical stuff and come out of it unscathed, even a hero to these kids.
Maybe you should've seen it for free as I did.
Heh.
I didn't really hate the message in this film all that much, at least the main message- stick to your dreams, blah blah blah... I mean, it's the standard disney package. The other messages are a bit more suspect, but they are not so much messages as a... modus operandi of sorts (intellectuality=stuck up snobs that don't have fun, it's ok if you're a fucked-up loser screwing everyone else's life as long as you're fun, and going through life with the mentality of a five year old will let you reach your dreams). They're symptomatic of the real problem with the movie, the script.
What I really hated was the blatant manipulation it tried to pull off. there is no simpathy, no allowance for grey zones, which is a fatal flaw when everything I see tells me what the film considers right, is in fact wrong.
I really don't think I'm overanalyzing it. I can disconnect and enjoy a movie (like I did with,say, Constantine). I didn't dislike this movie because of the premise or the actions of the main character, but because of how the movie only allows for one interpretation. Oh, and because it was dumb as hell.
Finally, according to the movie, what he's doing is not untehical nor illegal, he is doing the RIGHT thing according to the movie. If he'd loaded them on the van and burned it to the ground, I'd be much more supportive.
And the soundtrack is truly excellent. One of the few places in the movie that seems untouched by the studio execs.
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