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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Art Humiliating Life

The most tedious 90 minutes of my recent life was spent watching 'The Ugly Truth' with Gerard Butler and the eye-pleasing (but woefully cast) Katherine Heigl. For those of you lucky enough not to have seen this pile of filmic fecal matter, Butler is a TV anchor newly hired by a regional station at which Heigl works as a segment producer. He is rude and irresponsible (but, you know, charmingly so) and she is uptight and humorless (but still impossibly beautiful and reassuringly accessible). They both have one-track minds, but the tracks are as different as could be. Hilarity, the filmmakers would have us believe, ensues.

Apparently, as an unmarried male not overly keen on shaving every day, the writers of the film think Butler's character is one I should very much identify with, if not actually wish I was more like. If only I had the spinal fortitude to say every stupid and childish thing that popped into my head, wouldn't I just feel so much better?

He is supposed to be the wacky guy who is great fun at parties and, despite his abrasive manner, impossible not to like. The opposite is true, however. It is extremely easy to dislike him. Rather than being the life and soul, he is actually the crass, juvenile bore who thinks that he is being oh-so-controversial by pointing out sexual innuendo in every word he or anyone else utters, whether the double-entendre is valid or not. He is not the guy that makes the party, he's the guy that everyone wishes would just go home.

I can hear and see him now, head tilted slightly back and to the side, one palm flat against his chest: "I'm just being honest", he proclaims after his latest 'that's-what-she-said' moment. I've heard funnier things said at a war crimes trial.

A film like 'The Ugly Truth' is more disappointing in the fact that it (and its writers) think they are saying something noone else has ever said before, something that viewers would otherwise have difficulty admitting to themselves. That the film is puerile, cliche'd and so painfully predictable is actually less offensive than how controversial it thinks it's being. Men's apparent interest in sex and sex alone is hardly virgin territory (pun intended), this is a topic that has been covered exhaustively by everybody from Woody Allen to the producers of 'Friends'.

That being said, perhaps I am being too hard on the makers of 'The Ugly Truth'. Perhaps they do know they are on well-trodden ground, and the vulgarity employed in the delivery of the story is quite deliberate and an honest, if misguided, attempt to put a different spin on the analysis of the primal drivers of male instincts. By way of the movies unabashed vulgarity they are admitting they think that any laugh is a good laugh and it is, of course, much easier to get the desired result through shocking your audience than through subtle jokes that get their response after a few seconds thought.

Nonetheless, in summation 'The Ugly Truth' contains no truth, but is grotesquely ugly. The acting is poor, the plot is tired and obvious and the script is as clumsy and witless as it gets.

Exhale...

This, sadly, is a trend with modern comedies. Most of them are not funny in the slightest and rely on base toilet humor for all their laughs. Interestingly enough, the best comedy today is found in films that are otherwise quite serious in tone and content. A great recent example is Anne Hathaway's turn in Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland' as the White Queen. Her character's gag reflex is perpetually on a hair trigger and there are a couple of key dramatic moments whose seriousness is broken by the Queen dry-heaving at the sight of blood or other unpleasantness. It's beautiful in its simplicity and the more one thinks about it, the more it seems to suit her character. She is the White Queen, pure and virginal, of course she would think dragon's blood is gross. This little peccadillo humanizes her character without weakening it.

With that rant out of my system, let's move on to the main point of this post. Where have all the great stories gone?

One of the best in the last two decades is Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs'. A pure character study, the movie contains all the great components of classic bank heist films but, in a stroke of story-telling genius that manages to infuse the film with all the associated tension and excitement, you never actually witness the robbery whose aftermath you are now watching.

Primarily a drama, it too has its lighter moments. Mr. White and Mr. Orange, played by Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth, respectively, are laying on the floor in the gang's hideout, both soaked in Orange's blood which flows unfettered from a gunshot would in his stomach. White is cradling Orange as his life is ebbing away and in a hauntingly tender moment even combs the younger gangsters hair to comfort him. Steve Buscemi's Mr. Pink enters the scene, ranting.

"This is bad, this is so [expletive] bad." He spits, pacing back and forth in front of them. Turning to Mr. White, he asks "Is it bad?", meaning both the overall situation and Orange's injury.

White looks at the half-dead Mr. Orange, quivering in his arms, his skin now grey from the massive loss of blood. He turns his incredulous gaze back to Pink. "As opposed to good?" He snaps. Subtle, yes, ironic, yes, funny, without question.

This kind of movie is becoming increasingly rare in the 21st Century. Watch 'Reservoir Dogs' today and you will find it looks and feels as contemporary as it did the day it came out which, surprisingly even to me, was in 1992.

One of the great character studies of very recent years has been 'Precious', the story of an African-American teen who lives in a world of unspeakable hardship. Before I knew anything about the film my hopes were buoyed that good screenwriting was not a thing of the past, but the inescapable fact is that the film is based on a book that was written in 1995.

It seems to me that all the best writers in Hollywood work for Pixar. Home of the 'Toy Story' movies, 'Finding Nemo' and the absolute masterpiece that is 'Wall-E' (no dialogue at all for the first fifteen minutes but so visually captivating you don't even notice), Pixar has perfected the art of combining social commentary with well-paced and original story-telling. Whilst making some concessions to dramatic convention, these films make their points in far less ham-fisted ways than films like 'Avatar', which think they are making statements about great moral truths but are in fact simply pointing out the obvious. Obvious, at least, to anyone who spends any amount of time thinking about the world they live in.

The 'Transformers' movies, whilst undoubtedly impressive technical achievements, are about as vapid and thin in terms of their story than anything to come out of Hollywood in the last twenty years. Director Michael Bay's apparent intention is to remove all nuance, subtext and depth from the stories he brings to the screen, and simply try to out-nerd himself with each release.

Endless unnecessary remakes (Robin Hood, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre), 'event' films like 'Avatar' (where the film itself is the star, not the story or cast), or comic book translations like 'Iron Man' (which I actually quite enjoyed, thanks RDJ...) are becoming what Hollywood does, and little attention is paid to plot or character development. It's not even as if every movie has to take itself and its main players particularly seriously, there is room for humor and the light-hearted approach does not detract from the overall value of a story at all. Take every twenty- and thirty-something male's favorite movie, 'Swingers'. This is a funny movie, a VERY funny movie but is also multi-layered, sophisticated and has some genuinely revolutionary things to say about human relationships, particularly those between men as they work through the personal and professional wasteland that is their mid- to late-twenties.

Not every movie has to be as serious as 'Road to Perdition', but the artfully-crafted story and character are becoming increasingly rare beasts. Movies can and should be fun, but when the choice for viewers is between 90 minutes of bodily functions or 90 minutes of deafening explosions, I'd rather just read a book.