Movie Mediocrity

I had a rare two-days off from my summer job last week, and so I of course took the opportunity to go see a whole bunch of new movies currently playing in theatres. I had a lot of fun, but I must report that everything I saw was pretty solidly mediocre.

The Happening — Its not as horrendous as all the reviewers say it is. But its still pretty bad. Boy, what happened to the film-maker who made The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs??? After The Village and Lady in the Water, this is the third straight bust for Shyamalan. There are definitely a few good moments, and I sort of like the environmental theme that Shyamalan was shooting for. But not only is the film not remotely scary — its downright boring. After the first 15 minutes, you have a pretty good idea of what’s going on, and the whole rest of the movie just repeats the cycle of the characters running…meeting people…those people die…they run some more…they meet some other people…those people die…and on and on. Not exactly a nail-biter.

Hancock — Somewhere in here is a good movie about an angry, misanthropic super-hero. This isn’t it. The movie tries to paint Will Smith’s Hancock as a scoundrel in the early going, but its clear from the start that he has a heart of gold, so there’s no real arc to the character. Surprise surprise, he turns out to be a good guy after all. Shocker. As with The Happening, there are some fun moments to be found. Some of Hancock’s antics in the first 30 minutes are amusing, and there’s a great sequence about two-thirds of the way into the film when an adversary appears to battle Hancock in the middle of the city that suddenly had me involved in the movie again. But its over far too quickly, as are all moments of conflict in the film. One gets the sense that the film-makers were falling all over themselves to make this a “family” film, up to and including the really quite laughable happy ending for all. Oh, and just the fact that there’s a joke over the end credits about how Hancock’s super-hero costume is a total knock-off of Wolverine’s from the X-Men movies doesn’t allow me to ignore or forgive the fact that HANCOCK’S SUPER-HERO COSTUME IS A TOTAL KNOCK-OFF OF WOLVERINE’S FROM THE X-MEN MOVIES!!! Lame.

Wanted — Like Hancock, here’s another example of an idea with real teeth that, whether intentionally or not, has become a completely de-fanged, neutered film. Wanted is based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones that is gleefully violent and a little bit perverse, about a world where a band of super-villains secretly defeated all the heroes and took over the world back in 1986. The main character is Wesley, who discovers that his father was a major super-villain who has just been assasinated…and the story follows Wesley’s journey to become a super-villain himself. The movie excises all references to super-heroes and super-villains, and makes the story about a group of assassins. I was disappointed in that decision. But even worse is that these assasins are NOT bad-guys, like the villains of the comics. No, these assasins are really GOOD guys, only killing people who are evil and need to be taken out for the greater good. And thus, the central idea of the comic — that its a story all about the BAD GUYS — is totally washed away. How sad. As with the two above flicks, there is plenty of entertainment to be had here, don’t get me wrong. The action sequences are phenomenal (albeit preposterous), and there are a couple of moments when the film manages to capture the anarchic soul of the comic (such as the scene in which Wesley quits his day job). But far too much of the flick is just dumb action-movie silliness.

I sure did have fun watching these big dumb movies, but I would have really loved it had any of them seemed to exhibit a bit more intelligence. I’m not discouraged, though…these May/June flicks are just warming up audiences for the fun ahead of us in July. The next three weeks see the opening of three movies that I am desperately waiting to see: Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Dark Knight, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe. I can’t wait!