L. A.
Times' Kevin Thomas, who's never seen a gay-themed film or sappy
indie that he hasn't loved
Hey whore,
how's the whoring?
In The Princess
Diaries "Andrews and Hathaway are irresistible."
All Over the
Guy is "A
romantic comedy of wit and substance!" - for some bizarre
reason, Thomas reviews all of the "gay" movies, and
he always LOVES them. Hey, guys, how about letting a real critic
at the papoer review a few?
American Outlaws is "An energetic action-adventure!"
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©2001 by
Randy Shandis Enterprises. All rights fucking reserved.
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This week:
Curse of the Jade
Scorpion
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Filthy says:
"Ehhh." |
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Usually I try to crack a few jokes here, tell a few stories
and sucker people into coming back so I can eventually make a
shitload of money advertising tiny spy cameras to install in
bathrooms so you can jerk off while watching unsuspecting people
wash their genitals. But, it's hard for me to joke when as giant
and mediocre a talent as Aaliyah just got burned to a crisp in
a plane crash.
Oh, the fucking humanity. Here was a young woman who, by every
measure, appeared to be well on her way to a blockbuster career
compromising her talent and beliefs for the sake of record sales.
And now, tragically, she's dead and all we'll have to remember
her by is several upcoming slapped-together albums, shitty movies,
and Entertainment Tonight, Entertainment Weekly,
and Entertainment My Ass tributes that get high ratings.
Let me be the first to say that the loss of Aaliyah is devastating.
Where in the world will we ever find another moderately attractive
young woman who is willing to bare her belly, sell herself as
a sex symbol and sing generic R&B? There is no amount of
montages, hype or over-exaggeration of her ability and importance
that will adequately capture her mediocrity. Just watch the media
try.
But, Aaliyah has gone to rock-and-roll heaven, where she will
forever live with the other mediocre plane-crash rock stars:
the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and those rednecks from Lynyrd
Skynyrd. hers was a dim flame that burned out quickly, like one
of Mrs. Filthy's aromatherapy candles from K-Mart.
In the grand scheme of things, is it better to suck for a
short time and flame out, or to burn long and bright, a candle
people can rely on, until you choose to go dim and anyone who
relied on you can go fuck himself? I don't know the answer, but
I do know that Woody Allen has gone dim. Curse of the Jade
Scorpion is his latest half-hearted comedy: it's decent,
mildly amusing, but hard to like because it's such a fucking
half-hearted effort. I still don't understand why anyone given
the chance to make movies wouldn't try very hard. I guess it
happens when people begin to think they're fucking great and
everything they do is incredible. This is why we must continue
to tell our celebrities they are assholes and worthless.
A lot of old people retire from their careers, recognizing
their talent is diminished and they're no longer interested in
what they did for the last forty years. They burn off the end
of their days working at a fast food joint making Whoppers and
shaking their heads at those crazy young people and their rock
and roll music. Woody Allen's an old fucking guy, but rather
than retire, he just keeps plugging along at a diminished rate.
The sad thing is, even at half-speed the old shit is better than
most of the turds this summer.
In Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Allen plays an early-1940s
insurance investigator at odds with the efficiency expert (the
disturbing Helen Hunt) his boss has hired to streamline the company
and screw him like a cockeyed lightbulb. She threatens to farm
his job out to private dicks. Hunt and Allen are at each other's
throats -- and exchange what might have been witty barbs with
a couple more polishes of the script until one night when
they are hypnotized in a nightclub to believe they're madly in
love. The hypnotist keeps them under the trance and later uses
them to burglarize their own wealthy insurance clients. But whenever
they are under the hypnotist's power, they also return to thinking
they're in love.
The movie is long, too long. It's a god damn comedy with no
message, why the fuck does it need to be nearly two hours long?
The first hour is especially padded. Woody, we know you're zhlub
character already so don't spend so fucking long introducing
him. The second hour picks up as the caper kicks in and the plot
gets a little more involved.
And Allen is funny. Maybe you disagree, but I don't really
fucking care because this column is about my opinion. Most of
the jokes here are musty, and stale, the kind that my dad tells
for free, but Allen's timing is perfect. The old little bastard
knows how to surprise you with even what you're expecting. And
once he has some plot to work with, he weaves it well.
But the script is sounds like the first draft written in a
drunken haze. The dialog is sloppy and awkward and the bad gags
go on too long. There was a time when Woody's words sounded natural,
but here he has characters tripping over themselves to get to
awkward punchlines like the Loyal Order of Moose after a fresh
keg. It's a matter of not polishing the script.
It's sort of a clever plot. Not overly, though, because stories
that turn on hypnotism or amnesia are almost always the tacky
and cheap inventions of screenwriters and studios to discover
that these devices get used more than a French tickler in a Tijuana
whorehouse. It's so fucking easy to say "this character
has amnesia (been hypnotized) and now he must remember"
That Allen is an investigator trying to track himself down is
funny, but it's not really the thrust of the story. I would love
to see a comedy about a guy tracking himself down, but instead
we get way too much "romantic" face time with that
vulture-creature Hunt.
Helen Hunt is a predatory bird, all claws, pointy beak and
beady eyes. Caw caw caw! She strikes me as cold and tight, the
kind of woman Dipshit Suzanne admired for being strong when what
she actually is is selfish. They keep giving hunt these romantic
leads, but to me she's about as romantic as the disemboweled
squirrel she probably had for lunch.
I've seen a lot of people make a big deal out of Hunt and
Allen's age difference, but it didn't bother me nearly as much
as my fear that she would mistake his limp, weak body for road
kill and devour him. There's no chemistry, just lame back-and-forth
sniping unsuitable for old episodes of the "Bickersons."
Hunt also has a running gag where she warns Allen in great detail
not to die by accident at the end of each encounter. It's the
sort of shit that sits on the screen like the apple cobbler in
the steam trays at the Country Buffet: untouched and stale.
Charlize Theron once again proves that she's as clueless as
Floyd, my retard cousin Larry's roommate at the Home. Like Floyd,
Theron is always surprised by what comes out of her mouth, and
the inflection is always wrong. I'd be about as willing to let
her deliver a joke as I would give Floyd my car keys. But, here
she is, fucking up a bunch of screens as a potboiler sexpot.
I think she's supposed to be straight from the pages of a Raymond
Chandler novel, but those chicks were fucking hot. Theron's just
annoying. At least she doesn't attempt any lousy accents.
I'm giving Three Fingers to Curse of the Jade Scorpion.
I know that's probably too generous, and I'm rewarding mediocrity,
but that's what kind of guy I am, a fucking saint.
Got 12 minutes? Check out my writing
and acting debut, Presto, P.I. Don't worry, it's free.
Want
to tell Filthy something?
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