|
Dogma |
Filthy says:
"It's pretty
piss-poor!" |
 |
Blah, blah, fuck, blah, fuck, blah. Look at me: I just wrote
a Kevin Smith movie.
Actually, Smith's latest "Dogma" is about two hours
and fifteen minutes longer than that, and it doesn't have the
high production values that my web site has, but you get the
idea.
"Dogma" is the story of second-tier characters of
the Bible and Catholic doctrine subjected to a comic book geek's
love for minutiae. It's a tedious exercise in mental masturbation
by a guy who loves hearing himself talk, made by an industry
with so few new ideas that they're afraid to edit him. The movie
tries real hard to be funny, but unless piles of talking poop
and the same joke ad nauseum is your idea of hilarious, you'll
be sadly disappointed. And, if there is a message, it's completely
lost under the lame jokes, clunky plotting, and non-stop yammering.
Oh, sure, at the beginning there is a brief intro where the
producers explain that they aren't trying to make a point, just
entertain. But that's a copout and a huge crock of shit. It's
a pussy way of trying to get off the hook. That's like me saying,
the next thing I do will mean nothing, and then going and beating
the shit out of those losers at the Ralston Chevron.
Ben "I still can't act" Affuck and Matt "My
friend can't act" Damon are two fallen angels who desperately
want to get back into heaven. God won't ask them back, so they
need to find a loophole in religious doctrine. They find it in
Catholicism, because a church in New Jersey is offering plenary
indulgence, a means for absolving people of all punishment due
them because of their sins. In other words, if Damon and Affuck
enter the church as mortals, they will be absolved of any punishment
like purgatory or hell, and when they die, they'll go traight
into heaven.
If they get back into heaven, that will prove God is fallible,
which means everything is in question and the world, His creation,
will cease to exist. God's creatures want to stop Affuck and
Damon, while a bitter devil (Jason "I'm whiny" Lee)
wants to help them. The Voice of God (Alan Rickman) enlists Linda
Fiorentino to help because she is a descendant of Jesus who was
born about 300 years ago (according to the movie's timeline).
What follows is a slow-motion road movie where everyone is after
the two boys. But, they aren't in any hurry. The story is moved
forward with clunky, improbable plotting and the characters always
have time to talk and talk and talk. Finally, they all reach
New Jersey, there is bloodshed and strife, and at the last minute,
God (Alanis Morissette) steps in because Fiorentino finds her.
"Dogma" looks and sounds like shit. It's like Smith
was so impressed with his ideas that he didn't even bother trying
to make the flick look good The special effects are cheesier
than a sci-fi series on the WB, the editing sucks big hairy moose
tits. The action is static. All anyone does is sit or stand and
talk. Some scenes are so God-damn grainy they look like they
were shot on eight millimeter film. And the soundtrack is really
annoying. One minute it's cliché classical music, next
it's this weepy string music, then it's some really annoying
bubble-gum pop. And it's all cranked up louder than my neighbor's
shitty Queensryche records.
The whole production felt like some lofty film school project
. Some fuck was so impressed with the shit he thought up that
he wrote a script where a bunch of people say it to each other.
But, he was so in love with himself that he paid no attention
to structure, character or setting. He just kept moving people
around while they continue to spout his mental masturbation.
Under Smith's amateur-hour skills, the acting stinks to high
heaven. It's better than the local "special" school
Christmas musical production "Merry Christmas, Grandpa,"
but only because nobody shit his pants like the retards did.
There are only two places where a frat fuck with no personality
like Ben Affuck can succeed. One is the business world, the other
is Hollywood. This dumb chimp reads his lines, but not for one
minute did I believe he was doing anything more than reading
his lines and working his jaw muscles. Putting him beside his
butt-buddy Matt Damon makes his lack of ability obvious. I mean,
Damon is no Laurence Olivier. Fuck, the asshole's no Henry Winkler,
but he acts circles around Affuck.
Chris Rock, who normally can make me laugh so hard that shit
comes out my navel is just annoying. The guy has one speed and
it's angry screeching. It wears thin pretty fucking fast. Jason
Lee proves once again that he should be selling Buicks and not
acting thanks to his lifeless, personality-challenged performance
as a devil with these fake-looking horns on his head. I saw more
realistic horns on kids at Halloween, and how fucking hard would
it have been to get that right? At least his seersucker suit
is nice.
Salma Hayek makes a cameo as a stripper. And that's a fucking
joke because we don't see her tits. She's too big a star to show
us those ripe melons, so why have her play a stripper? Alanis
Morissette makes a cameo as God and she is the second character
who doesn't speak but mimes (Kevin Smith, as Silent Bob, is the
first, and, man, can that guy not act). How many fucking pantomimes
does a movie need? I thought there was a federal regulation about
this. One isn't cute or funny, but two is going back to an already
dry well. Really, what's the fucking point of "Silent Bob?"
Isn't he a gag whose comedic possibilities ran out about eight
minutes into that pile of shit "Mallrats?" Yes.
Only Alan Rickman and Linda Fiorentino come out all right.
Rickman plays the voice of God with the worn-out sarcasm that
I usually only see when English people are trying to talk down
to Americans. It's appropriate, then, that the guy's a Brit.
Fiorentino ain't great, but she gamely does all the stupid shit
that Smith's script asks from her, and she doesn't whine. (I
remember when she was really hot looking, but now she looks like
a beat-up soccer mom slut.)
All these actors are deployed in a plot that's the wet dream
of a geek whose memorized the bible. Smith is not a man who should
be making huge theological statements, and yet the prick is gonna
try. What he wants to say is people shouldn't get so wrapped
up in the details of religion... like he did with this tedious
hairball.
"Dogma" sets its tone in Scene One when Damon feeds
a nun a crock of shit and we as an audience are supposed to say,
"Boy, them Catholic nuns sure are stupid." For Christ's
fuck, Kevin Smith has the balls to assume that he thought of
all this shit before anyone else. I'm sure every nun and priest
asked themselves the same questions a hundred times when they
were jerking off in the seminary or convent.
Besides being a piss-poor director, Smith's like the most
annoying Star Trek freak in the world; he's taken giddy pleasure
that he's found discrepancies that the writers didn't. Jeepers,
who would've thought a 2000 page book written by hundreds of
people would have some consistency problems? And who the fuck
cares? It didn't occur to him to ask his priest of the Vatican
about them and save us all the nerdy gloating.
The church doesn't dwell on this shit anymore. They've moved
beyond it, so why does Smith think he can tweak them by bringing
it up? And how the fuck is he going to make a big statement about
the nature of faith by getting so fucking absorbed by little
details? He doesn't.
Neither does he scandalize the Catholic Church. So, the priests
should get their vespers out of their asses and stop protesting.
If someone really wanted to scandalize the church, they would
make a movie that claims the communal wine is made from the blood
of altar boys the priests fucked to death.
Why should we have to spend two hours while people talk
and talk and talk about all this shit? I mean, as snappy as Smith's
dialog is, and no matter how many "fucks" it has in
it, he's just regurgitating crap from the bible, mixed with comic-book-geek
pop culture references . The movie is based on such archaic nonsense
that Smith has to spend the whole damn movie explaining why we're
supposed to care, or what the fuck people are doing. Talk, talk,
talk. That's why the movie is two hours and 15 minutes long.
Easily 45 minutes too much.
Plus, it's confusing. Okay, I got a small brain that's been
shrunk even further through the avid consumption of beer, but
in the second half of this movie I got completely and totally
lost. Yap, yap, yap, everyone tried to explain what was going
on, but I had no fucking clue why the actors were doing the shit
they were doing. And, the more I got lost, the less I cared.
So, I was left with a shitty-looking, static motion picture.
My final beef is a pretty big one. At the end of "Dogma,"
Morissette as God sees all the destruction and death these angels
have caused in Red Bank, New Jersey. So, Smith has her blink
her eyes and everything is back to normal. Fuck you, Kevin Smith!
Your God gives a shit about hundreds of people in New Jersey
but doesn't reverse the Holocaust or the genocides in Africa?
You fucking presumptuous cocksucker.
Two fingers for "Dogma." Go back to bed,
Kevin Smith, and jerk your little prick, not your mind.
|