Post by James Brotheridge
I appreciate what reviewer Leonard Maltin is going for in his book, 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen. I also have an affinity for movies that aren’t great.
Not just the kind of movies we review here at Absolute Dreck!, the awful often fascinating films that I watch a regular basis, but minor films that don’t aspire to greatness. Something I admire about the career of someone like Roman Polanski is that he makes films so regularly — annually these days — that he can fit in a small film full of quirks like Carnage.
Maltin is doing something slightly different. In compiling this book, he wanted to bring to light good movies that weren’t necessarily masterpieces. I’m partial to the concept.
I watched three of these movies recently, and they run from good to OK to terrible. Let’s start with the best.
Better Than Sex isn’t immune to all the cliches courtship inspires in film — there is an extended riff on how men pee in toilets. At its best, the 2000 Australian film brings out some real honesty. Cin (Susie Porter) and Josh (David Wenham, or Farramir from the Lord of the Rings series) shared a cab then a bed shortly before the movie started. Over the course of a few days, they have a whole lot of sex and feelings start to develop.
It’s not a sweeping film or a romance for the ages, but the technique of having the characters speak in talking-head segments brings some insight into the movie. The couple at the heart of the film are charming and watchable.
The Animal Factory, Steve Buscemi’s second feature film, stars Willem Dafoe as Earl Copen, the man to know inside a prison. Edward Furlong plays Ron Decker, a new, young inmate in on drug charges.
Buscemi’s idea of what this film could be is right-headed; the movie can’t really be seen as one narrative push but as a series of episodes. Plus, Furlong does well playing a snotty dipshit, while Dafoe is commanding as the charismatic, shaved-head leader. Even Tom Arnold, playing the worst kind of creep all too well, is fun to watch. The movie doesn’t gel when it comes to fully conveying prison life by the end.
American Dreamz is one of the worst movies I’ve seen in some time, if we forget about Pledge This! Now, Pledge This! is an unforgettable film and incomparably bad. But, as Pledge This! will forever reset the scales of what is good and bad, let’s forget that for a moment and recognize how bad American Dreamz is.
Formally, it’s a satire of American culture, encompassing the government, attitudes towards terrorism, and reality show culture. Writer/director Paul Weitz — who Maltin helpfully mentions co-directed About a Boy — doesn’t seem to have any familiarity at all with how any of these things work.
Having some understanding of the thing you want to critique is important if you want anything to actually land. If American Idol were anything like the similar show Weitz presents in the movie, well, yeah, it would be an abomination. If the Bush administration were anything like it’s laid out here, than it would be a thousand times worse than anyone actually imagines.
Group that with a script that’s dead to begin with, and performances from the likes of Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore, Willem Dafoe, and Chris Klein that can’t live without anything to support them, and American Dreamz is terrible, a complete and utter humorless mess.
Mr. Brooks