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Basic-ass filmpinions, and now I am traumatized

OdradekOdradek
in Chocolate

Or what about Adaptation? That’s generally supposed to be weird. Unfortunately, it revolves around a man trying to write a screenplay based on a very dull book about two people in a swamp looking for a flower they never find. By the time he figures out that the real story is rather more interesting, we’ve been watching him be painfully shy and nothing much else for about an hour. Also, the central gimmick is that, by blatantly manipulating cinematic conventions in an incredibly contrived way, we are led to believe that the hero’s identical twin with the exact opposite personality is a figment of his imagination. Hey, how weird is it to remake Fight Club in such a way that the imaginary guy is blatantly imaginary from the start, but he ultimately turns out to be real after all? Still, if you watch it on DVD, the extras include footage of the director being sick, so there’s that.

Of course, it’s all extremely subjective. A lot of people find Jim Carrey funny, whereas I consider his best movie to be The Cable Guy, which makes it absolutely clear that if you meet somebody who behaves like that in real life, he may briefly be amusing, but he’ll become annoying very quickly, and may actually be so mentally ill that he’s dangerous. But I reiterate that “weird” is a more deceptive quality than most, since comedy at which nobody laughs is not comedy, yet weirdness can be no fun at all but still be weird.

Consider films like Santa Claus Conquers The Martians or Surf Nazis Must Die. They’re worthless heaps of dreck, yet they constantly feature in various media promoting “cult movies”. even though absolutely nobody ever suggests that they are in any way enjoyable, so their “cult” presumably has zero members. The half-witted Medved brothers did a lot of damage by making it fashionable to watch films for no reason other than that they’re terrible. Thus we ended up with Snakes On A Plane, or the even worse Iron Sky, both of which assumed that if the central premise was sufficiently “cult movie”, nobody would mind if the script was dreadful. And Iron Sky may yet get away with it just because Moon Nazis!, even though it’s painfully bad.

Comments

  • Sredni VashtarSredni Vashtar
    “I'm surprised. Those clothes… but, aren't you…?”
    This person seems kind of intellectually shallow and boring, not because I disagree with them so much as they seem to have no real imagination.
  • OdradekOdradek
    My dreams exceed my real life
    Also there's not really any indication in Adaptation that Charlie's brother is imaginary.
  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    the extras include footage of the director being sick
  • Sredni VashtarSredni Vashtar
    “I'm surprised. Those clothes… but, aren't you…?”
    I occasionally find myself baffled by some of the conclusions people have ostensibly come to regarding works of fiction, whether in terms of plot or subtext, so I don't find that sort of thing unfamiliar territory.

    But regardless, this person just doesn't seem very thoughtful or creative. Like, I get not sharing the "bad movies can be 'fun' for the wrong reasons" mentality, but it's like this person just straight up cannot understand or empathise with anything that is not in their realm of direct experience.
  • Section42LSection42L
    We can do anything if we do it together.
    Baldanders said:

    Also there's not really any indication in Adaptation that Charlie's brother is imaginary.

    Charlie’s brother is imaginary in the real world, but not in the world of the film.

    Did this guy just think he was watching a literal version of Charlie Kaufman’s life?
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