Wife: Enjoyed it, mostly, especially the nods to the Jungle Cruise puns and the ride experience (she's a huge theme park junkie.) Was off-put by a handful of culture war nods here and there, but strongly desires to try and ignore those and enjoy movies anyway.
Son: Didn't like it. And he's a huge Dwayne Johnson fan. I didn't talk to him in detail, but I don't need to, I don't think. What put him off was almost certainly Emily Blunt's completely unlikeable "stronk wamman" character, which was so over-the-top that even culture warriors must think that it's a parody. He was also put off by the stereotypically German villain who was a Nazi, even though the movie takes place in the middle of World War I, not World War II. I guess all blond guys are naturally Nazis to Disney or something. Full disclosure: my son has absolutely no German ancestry, but he is blue-eyed and blond-haired.
Me: I certainly noticed the culture war nods, and they had the predictable effect of turning me off, but given that I expected them anyway and they were usually less obnoxious than many other movies have had, does the movie have anything else to recommend it? Not a ton. It was marginally entertaining most of the time, but eminently forgettable. I certainly won't be buying this one, and I highly doubt I'll ever have any interest in ever seeing it again. But that doesn't mean that I thought I wasted my time in seeing it. (It helps that we got our tickets for $5 each, and we had enough rewards to get drinks and popcorn for free.) It came across as desperately trying to recreate, almost to the same beats in many ways, the winning formula of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Which honestly, were more mediocre than people give them credit for being too.
Dwayne Johnson was reasonably charismatic most of the time. He's always been that kind of force on the screen, and I've rarely been able to say that I disliked him in anything he's been in, or any of his characters, even. For the most part, his characters, regardless of what the screenwriters attempt to do, all seem to come across as just "him" from real life anyway.
Emily Blunt I usually quite like, but her character here was insufferably unlikable, and not really due to any fault of hers. The character was just written that way. I told this to my wife while we were watching the credits a bit. She said she was a likable unlikable, i.e., you were supposed to get to like her over time, just like Mr. The Rock's character does. But I didn't. And no, that's not what I meant. I meant she's just a completely unlikable person, to the point that it ruins the believability of the kinda sorta chaste romance between them, and ruins... well, it ruins a lot of stuff, actually. My wife is talking about a character like Katherine Hepburn plays in Bringing Up Baby, for instance, or Paula Prentiss in Man's Favorite Sport. We're not talking about that kind of likable unlikable. We're talking about just plain old unlikable.
She also could have been determined and strong without being masculine, bitchy and entitled. For a great example, turning again to Katherine Hepburn, check out the African Queen, also a movie about a grumpy old skipper of a river boat in the tropics who's convinced reluctantly to travel upriver by a determined woman. I have no doubt that the river-going German U-boat scenes were greatly inspired by that movie, too.
Most of the rest of the cast was underused and forgettable. Jack Whitehall tries to channel John Hannah from the Mummy series of movies, but rather than making him funny, they mostly just made him prissy and gay. Paul Giamatti is notable for doing what is basically little more than a cameo. I don't know why a much cheaper, generic guy couldn't have done that role just as well. Jesse Plemmons, who notably almost played the role of Finn in the first of the sequel trilogy Star Wars films, was kind of interesting, but criminally under-used for being one of the more interesting characters. The Venezuelan guy who was the arch-assassin who was supposed to kill Jason Bourne in the Bourne Ultimatum played an old conquistador turned into the rivery version of Davy Jones from the Pirates movie was also underused, but given that he was only a vaguely familiar face, speaking Spanish most of the time, that doesn't matter too much. I did notice that he tried to deliver his Spanish lines with a Spaniard accent, but I have no idea if it was a good one or not. Given that it was supposed to a 500 year old Spaniard accent, I don't know if anyone knows, for that matter.
Anyway, I want to get my capsule review in early before the usual suspects start panning the movie as being terrible. Like Black Widow, it wasn't terrible. It also wasn't in the least compelling, or memorable, or likely to be much of a draw. If you're the kind of person who likes going to movies for its own sake, enjoys the theatrical experience, and doesn't care if the movie is anything more than a forgettable excuse to get out of the house and eat some popcorn, it's fine. If you demand anything at all more than that, though, it fails to deliver.
Addendum: It's curious that Scarlett Johansson is now attempting to sue Disney over the Black Widow movie, claiming that they're in breach of contract because of their hybrid release cannibalizing ticket sales. While that may very well be true, and Disney is such a terrible company with such terrible, wicked leadership that they deserve to get reamed in court and more, I also suspect that Scarlett Johansson has been sold a tale of wishful thinking, narcissistic pandering. The movie isn't that good. There's no way that you're entitled to another $50 million because of strong ticket sales. You made $20 million for making it, now sit down and shut up, you entitled, bratty little princess. Kevin Feige is weighing in, acting like a typical slimy, soulless bureaucrat with no more integrity than your typical earthworm. I've also noticed a pronounced pattern of him kissing up to any marginally attractive women actresses too, every chance he gets. What an off-putting beta the guy is turning out to be. The drama around the movie is more entertaining than the movie itself was. But because there's no hero to root for, only dysfunctional villains to root against, it's possible that the only happy ending would be if a combination of The Big One earthquake, wildfires, tidal waves, and rioting Third World imports just burn all of LA to the ground and wash the remains out to sea.
My son disagrees. He says The Black Widow was worth seeing because Florence Pugh is hot. I suppose that might be true, although the movie makes a point of never putting her in anything flattering, so it's hard to tell. She kind of looks straight-hipped and man-shouldered to me. Like a somewhat burlier than average 12 year old boy with long hair. Yuck. I vaguely remember thinking she was cute and feminine in the latest Little Women remake a couple of years ago, though.
1 comment:
I haven't actually seen much of the usual suspects review this movie yet. Although, in the commentary field of Clownfish TV's video on the movie, they DO mention an interesting point which I thought of but didn't articulate quite so clearly: at every point, this movie reminds you of better movies that it's copying. It's not just The African Queen meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets the Mummy with maybe some Raiders of the Lost Ark thrown in too; it's a copy of a copy of those movies, all grafted together without much thought for why the elements that worked in those movies worked.
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