2011 was an incredible year for movies. I’ll be delving into its bounty next week with a year-end round-up. But as always, some movies just didn’t deliver. Saddled with impressive pedigrees or reputations, these three left me frustrated and disappointed…
Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen is back, I was told. It’s a return to form! His highest-grossing movie ever! Brimming with magic and wit! So I watched it, and saw… well, a series of Lost Generation caricatures more befitting a New Yorker article than a feature film. It’s pleasant enough, representing 1920s Paris as a haze of champagne and Cole Porter music, but also terminally self-satisfied. Its iconic writers and artists aren’t meant as real people, but automatons: they come onscreen, stroke the ego of Owen Wilson’s Allen surrogate, spout some stereotypical dialogue, then disappear. Corey Stoll has fun with Hemingway, and Adrien Brody makes a hilarious Dalí, but they’re still just idealized sketches. The film ends by disavowing nostalgia, yeah, but in a really facile and half-assed way. It’s a cute, fuzzy lark of a movie, a mildly cultured wish fulfillment fantasy, but that’s about it. (Extra points off for totally wasting Rachel McAdams as a one-note shrew.)
The Ides of March
I’m always game for a good political thriller. And a cast including George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Paul Giamatti? I couldn’t be gamer. But The Ides of March squanders them all on a silly, self-important story whose twists and turns are more funny than thrilling. Gosling plays a doe-eyed campaign strategist who worships at the feet of Clooney’s Obama-esque candidate. But the second he discovers that Clooney gasp spoiler once had sex with a cute intern, he pulls a 180 and becomes hell-bent on clumsy, nonsensical revenge. The movie’s political landscape is a total fantasy; its women are dispensable plot devices; and its dialogue is inert and overwritten, punctuated by random fucks like a bad Mamet imitation. Hell, the film’s most enjoyable moment is when Hoffman growls the words “tits and all.” I love movies about tense political chess matches. The Ides of March is a drunken game of political foosball.
The Future
In theory, I love a lot about Miranda July’s sophomore feature. I love the idea of filtering midlife ennui through oddball metaphors with all the clarity of a children’s book. I love loose, unconventional approaches to storytelling and I love kitties. But wow, I hated watching The Future. July and co-star Hamish Linklater play a thirtysomething couple who, dominated by entropy, move incrementally toward pet adoption. When they speak, it’s in a halting deadpan; when they make choices, they bow to the gods of whimsy. Eventually they break up—and this would be poignant, but all emotion has been smothered out of The Future by a pillow of affectations. The film’s occasionally inspired, as when July chats with a pair of friends who age, give birth, and die over the course of a few shots. But it’s all so solipsistic, so barren, and so grating, with two protagonists who only vaguely resemble real people. A hellish Future indeed.
Did you enjoy these, or were you similarly underwhelmed? What were your great disappointments of 2011?
Ash
Alice
Just got back from seeing “Young Adult”. Pretty unimpressed with the writing. The dialog seemed too “writerly” and unnatural. I know Diablo Cody won all sorts of awards for “Juno” and I suppose that’s partly why I was expecting more from her latest work.
My biggest disappointment was Kevin Smith’s Red State. It’s a project I was intrigued by when he talked about it years ago and I was excited that it finally got made. A horror film about Westboro Baptist Church extremists? It’s rife with interesting and dynamic material. But it ended up being a unfocused hazy hodge podge of various topics with no real point or cohesion, with no interesting characters or themes. I was mouth agape at the end of just how bad it was. I was stunned, and really bummed that a movie I had waited years for was such a spectacular train wreck.
@Hugh: I’ve been meaning to see Young Adult, but your sentiments are pretty in line with what I’ve been hearing about it. That’s unfortunate. But as long as I get Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt onscreen together…
@Mike: I also plan to still see Red State, though I have no hope for that one. And I used to feel the same way you did! Horror movie about the WBC, co-starring John Goodman? How could it fail? But I guess we underestimated just how tedious of a filmmaker Kevin Smith can be. It’s especially frustrating that he took it on the road, made a huge deal out of self-distributing it, only for it to be garbage. But I’ll still probably watch it out of morbid curiosity.
I actually liked how the famous people in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS were all caricatures, it made it funnier for me. Like, I know Hemingway wasn’t literally some loud drunk who yelled everything and only talked about fighting, but that’s totally how I imagine him! I hate hate hated the present-day storyline with Rachel McAdams, though, so frustratingly one-dimensional and not in keeping with the charm of the 20’s scenes.
I mostly agree with you on THE FUTURE. It had some ideas I really liked (loved the time-stopping segment, and the aging conversation you mentioned), but overall it’s just too cluttered to really work. I enjoyed Hamish Linklater’s performance though.