The story wasn't great and the depiction of PT Barnum wasn't exactly accurate, but those aren't the reasons you watch a musical. The music is fun, even if it wasn't what I expected. As someone else pointed it, it's a strange mesh of 1800s aesthetic and modern music. But I actually thought that was fun and unique instead of being a bad thing. The choreography was a lot of fun to watch, too. The bar scene between Jackman and Efron and the trapeze scene with Efron and Zendaya were my two favorite parts of the movie. Sure, the story is predictable, but musicals aren't exactly known for having deep twist-and-turn plots. If you just relax and enjoy the spectacle - like you might do at a circus - it's a fun movie.
This could've been a good movie if it'd had decent pacing and been about an hour shorter. The story was okay, even if it was predictable from a mile away, and the suspense and atmosphere were done well. It just took forever to get going. The first act of many suspenseful horror movies is the good guys figuring out that something is "not quite right" with the town/person/etc., but in A Cure for Wellness that part took an hour and a half. It takes Lockhart DAYS to piece together what any half-intelligent viewer figured out pretty shortly after he got to the institute, then suddenly everything happens in the last 25 minutes.
It's bad, and not even in the cheesy over-the-top Syfy Originals way. It's just boring. The acting is bad, the home-invasion thing has been done to death, and the characters make pretty much every stupid decision possible. They bring in characters to get killed for no reason after ~5 minutes of screen time. The little brother is 100% useless. I swapped between bored and annoyed the entire time, don't watch this.
Mark Lindsay Chapman, Dean Stockwell, and David Morse are the only good actors in this movie. The little girl is not only bad at being blind but bad at acting in general, but I forgave that. Acting isn't as easy as it seems in the first place, and faking blindness is even harder. The writing is pretty good though; much of the dialogue is word-for-word from the story it's based on, and even some of the more minor events are left in to keep a sense of connection to the personalities of the characters.
Overall if you're considering watching this instead of reading the book, I recommend it. It's a very accurate translation. The only exceptions are the cutting of most of the violence and profanity - which wasn't strictly necessary in the first place - and the removal of one passenger on the plane that sleeps the entire time and contributes nothing to the story. If you can get past the supporting cast's bad acting - and the lame 90's special effects, which I personally find endearing - it's actually a pretty interesting and tense story.
**SPOILER WARNING**
I tried to use spoiler tags but this awesome well-oiled machine of a website doesn't seem to let them work correctly. Just don't read any of this at all if you haven't seen it yet and plan to do so.
James McAvoy's acting was the best part of this movie. The fact that you could tell which alter he was portraying even when he wasn't in costume was pretty impressive. The use of odd camera shots and discordant music to create an unsettling atmosphere was good too. As for the story? Not so much. I'm not going to rant about how incredibly inaccurate this portrayal of DID was - how it's insulting to people who have the disorder, how the whole "people can change their body chemistry" part is 100% false, how it portrays the mentally ill as dangerous - because I could go on about that for hours. That's a big part of why I didn't like the movie, but it's also just overall not very good. The story isn't anything special: Guy kidnaps some girls, girls do typical stupid things that only people in movies do, most of them die except for the one who is shown in the first 30 seconds to obviously be the protagonist because she's different and special, girl gets away, the end. And that "twist"? A 10-second cameo by Bruce Willis establishing that this is actually a sequel to a totally unrelated movie. How self-important can you be as a director? No one had any reason to assume this was a sequel. It wasn't hinted at until it was thrown in your face in the last 15 seconds of the movie. Shyamalan is just going to assume that we've all seen all of his movies? Anyone who hasn't seen Unbreakable is going to have no idea what that twist is supposed to mean. I HAVE seen Unbreakable and I still think it was a lame, lazy cop-out for a director who is known for his plot twists.
I was hoping the twist would be that it was supernatural the entire time, that he didn't have DID at all but was actually possessed by a demon or something. That would excuse the awful, completely inaccurate portrayal of the disorder as well as his mystical ability to gain super strength for no reason. It still wouldn't excuse the plot holes, though, like why the other two girls didn't crawl out of the vent while he was locking the blonde one in her own separate room. It also wouldn't excuse why we were forced to watch a bunch of shots of a little girl going hunting and getting molested by her uncle only for nothing to ever come of it. We get it, she's a damaged special snowflake who's had a hard life. Was that really the only reason we had to watch that? To establish that she's human and she's had some negative events in her life like literally any other normal person? Please.
I liked this movie a lot more than I expected to. It's funny on the surface, but incredibly depressing if you think about it. I probably won't watch it again because it made me sad, but still a very good film.
Lots of film snobs here, I see. Yes, it's going to be stupid and full of cliched jokes that have been done before. Hell, just look at the poster. What else did you expect? If you go in knowing what kind of movie it is, then berate it for being that kind of movie, you're wasting your time and are probably the kind of person who isn't happy unless they're bitching about something.
It's not a bad movie. It's stupid, chock full of profanity and dick/shit jokes, and not very creative. But it's enjoyable for what it is, and I liked it.
Comments 1 - 7 of 7
Movie comment on The Greatest Showman
Mortelle
The story wasn't great and the depiction of PT Barnum wasn't exactly accurate, but those aren't the reasons you watch a musical. The music is fun, even if it wasn't what I expected. As someone else pointed it, it's a strange mesh of 1800s aesthetic and modern music. But I actually thought that was fun and unique instead of being a bad thing. The choreography was a lot of fun to watch, too. The bar scene between Jackman and Efron and the trapeze scene with Efron and Zendaya were my two favorite parts of the movie. Sure, the story is predictable, but musicals aren't exactly known for having deep twist-and-turn plots. If you just relax and enjoy the spectacle - like you might do at a circus - it's a fun movie.Movie comment on A Cure for Wellness
Mortelle
This could've been a good movie if it'd had decent pacing and been about an hour shorter. The story was okay, even if it was predictable from a mile away, and the suspense and atmosphere were done well. It just took forever to get going. The first act of many suspenseful horror movies is the good guys figuring out that something is "not quite right" with the town/person/etc., but in A Cure for Wellness that part took an hour and a half. It takes Lockhart DAYS to piece together what any half-intelligent viewer figured out pretty shortly after he got to the institute, then suddenly everything happens in the last 25 minutes.Movie comment on Keep Watching
Mortelle
It's bad, and not even in the cheesy over-the-top Syfy Originals way. It's just boring. The acting is bad, the home-invasion thing has been done to death, and the characters make pretty much every stupid decision possible. They bring in characters to get killed for no reason after ~5 minutes of screen time. The little brother is 100% useless. I swapped between bored and annoyed the entire time, don't watch this.Movie comment on The Langoliers
Mortelle
Mark Lindsay Chapman, Dean Stockwell, and David Morse are the only good actors in this movie. The little girl is not only bad at being blind but bad at acting in general, but I forgave that. Acting isn't as easy as it seems in the first place, and faking blindness is even harder. The writing is pretty good though; much of the dialogue is word-for-word from the story it's based on, and even some of the more minor events are left in to keep a sense of connection to the personalities of the characters.Overall if you're considering watching this instead of reading the book, I recommend it. It's a very accurate translation. The only exceptions are the cutting of most of the violence and profanity - which wasn't strictly necessary in the first place - and the removal of one passenger on the plane that sleeps the entire time and contributes nothing to the story. If you can get past the supporting cast's bad acting - and the lame 90's special effects, which I personally find endearing - it's actually a pretty interesting and tense story.
Movie comment on Split
Mortelle
**SPOILER WARNING**I tried to use spoiler tags but this awesome well-oiled machine of a website doesn't seem to let them work correctly. Just don't read any of this at all if you haven't seen it yet and plan to do so.
James McAvoy's acting was the best part of this movie. The fact that you could tell which alter he was portraying even when he wasn't in costume was pretty impressive. The use of odd camera shots and discordant music to create an unsettling atmosphere was good too. As for the story? Not so much. I'm not going to rant about how incredibly inaccurate this portrayal of DID was - how it's insulting to people who have the disorder, how the whole "people can change their body chemistry" part is 100% false, how it portrays the mentally ill as dangerous - because I could go on about that for hours. That's a big part of why I didn't like the movie, but it's also just overall not very good. The story isn't anything special: Guy kidnaps some girls, girls do typical stupid things that only people in movies do, most of them die except for the one who is shown in the first 30 seconds to obviously be the protagonist because she's different and special, girl gets away, the end. And that "twist"? A 10-second cameo by Bruce Willis establishing that this is actually a sequel to a totally unrelated movie. How self-important can you be as a director? No one had any reason to assume this was a sequel. It wasn't hinted at until it was thrown in your face in the last 15 seconds of the movie. Shyamalan is just going to assume that we've all seen all of his movies? Anyone who hasn't seen Unbreakable is going to have no idea what that twist is supposed to mean. I HAVE seen Unbreakable and I still think it was a lame, lazy cop-out for a director who is known for his plot twists.
I was hoping the twist would be that it was supernatural the entire time, that he didn't have DID at all but was actually possessed by a demon or something. That would excuse the awful, completely inaccurate portrayal of the disorder as well as his mystical ability to gain super strength for no reason. It still wouldn't excuse the plot holes, though, like why the other two girls didn't crawl out of the vent while he was locking the blonde one in her own separate room. It also wouldn't excuse why we were forced to watch a bunch of shots of a little girl going hunting and getting molested by her uncle only for nothing to ever come of it. We get it, she's a damaged special snowflake who's had a hard life. Was that really the only reason we had to watch that? To establish that she's human and she's had some negative events in her life like literally any other normal person? Please.
Movie comment on Idiocracy
Mortelle
I liked this movie a lot more than I expected to. It's funny on the surface, but incredibly depressing if you think about it. I probably won't watch it again because it made me sad, but still a very good film.Movie comment on The Change-Up
Mortelle
Lots of film snobs here, I see. Yes, it's going to be stupid and full of cliched jokes that have been done before. Hell, just look at the poster. What else did you expect? If you go in knowing what kind of movie it is, then berate it for being that kind of movie, you're wasting your time and are probably the kind of person who isn't happy unless they're bitching about something.It's not a bad movie. It's stupid, chock full of profanity and dick/shit jokes, and not very creative. But it's enjoyable for what it is, and I liked it.