Saturday, November 1, 2008
With the rise of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogan, I thought Kevin Smith might have his first bonafide hit on his hands. Sadly for him, it looks like this one is performing exactly in line with his other films. Doesn't seem like there's anything he can do to break the cycle.
He has a lot of haters, but I love Kevin Smith. What did I think of his new one? It's not his best, but it's still pretty funny. Maybe the problem is that he's too obviously trying to jump on the Apatow bandwagon, and he's lost a little bit of his personal voice. Or maybe that's just me reading into things because of the cast he selected for this one.
Smith's style has always been to make filthy minded comedies about sweet, likable people, and this one might have the sharpest contrast between the sweet and the filthy. I'm all for that, but he's done better before. The sweet stuff, and the romantic element, aren't as affecting as his work in Chasing Amy, I think mainly due to the slightly artificial rom-com structure he forces on this one. And the movie, while funny, just isn't as funny as, say, Clerks 2. Smith is a master of dirty humor in movies, and the older he's gotten the more he's upped the ante... but maybe he goes to far. Not to say that his movie is offensive, in fact he makes the least offensive dirty movies I can think of. Rather, sometimes it's like, in an effort to make his movie a little dirtier, he forgets to put in a solid joke. I mean, you know, refernces to ass fucking and strapons aren't immediately funny, but sometimes Smith presents them that way.
6 comments:
I agree with you about the feel of this movie seeming off. Usually his film bask in their immaturity while making some observant points about relationships, and not always happy ones either. The ending of this one where a misunderstanding that could have easily been worked out in a matter of minutes led to an entire extra act of the movie. Was there anyone in the audience that didn't know Zach didn't sleep with that other girl?
Otherwise the characters were still people that would be great to hang out with and the movie-making subplot captured a kind of exuberance I wish he had focused more on.
yeah...the misunderstanding was kind of based on zach storming out and not talking to the other characters again for a month, and no one bothering to contact him about completing the movie (or even, you know, to say "what's up") until a month later. so he and miri were both in a total vacuum of information.
everywhere i go, there's this name: Pepe Silvia! Pepe Silvia... I got boxes of Pepe here, man!
It was then that I realized... there is no Pepe Silvia.
so i marched myself down to carol in HR to tell her that pepe didn't exist and i knocked on her door and i went "CAAAAAAAROL! CAAARRRROOLLLLL!" and then i opened the door and THERE WAS NOTHING! NO DESKS, NO CHAIRS, NOTHING! THERE IS NO CAROL IN HR!
(offers cigarette)
yeah, going back to the original point, I thought the characters were well written and well played, and Smith did a good job of capturing the awkwardness and mixed emotions they would feel after sleeping together. that was all fantastic, but then he kind of ruins it by having Zack abruptly pack up his shit and hide from everyone else.
I mean, have you ever known anyone to do something like that, unless they were mentally ill? The rest of the relationship was handled so well, that it was a shame that Smith felt the need to throw in some obviously false, overblown drama, making a character behave in a completely unbelieveable way just to further the plot. If Zack had sulked like a normal human being and talked to Miri again in the morning, everything would have been solved.
Then the ending, while funny and entertaining, struck me as way too typical rom-com. In fact, it seemed like almost the exact same ending as "Hitch", complete with the conversation through a closed door, and someone being mistaken for a new boyfriend. Kind of a underwhelming payoff.
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