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From: Morph
Category: Films
Date: 06 February 2005
Bad film.
Superb opening 30 seconds - Damien Rice song fits the middle-class middle-browness perfectly, good acting as the two attractive leads walk towards each other.
Only spoilt when the dialogue starts. Truly some of the worst dialogue in movie history (after that scene in Gladiator when he talks about the afterlife. And that scene in Gladiator when he talks about being imprisoned, being free etc. And a few other bids in Gladiator). Possibly the worst scene of many is the one in the strip club. Don't even ask.
Jude Law is quite good in the first segment - actually acting, bit normal, bit nerdy, bit English. Then the first of several jump cuts which go too far and leave too much inexplicable, and suddenly he's - well, jude law.
This is one of those films set in a London where everyone lives in big central appartments next to landmark buildings and stations, where all the cabs are black, arrive the instant you lift your arm, and are all driven by cock-er-neys.
Perhaps its their attractiveness (though the woman off star wars is surprisingly unattractive, perhaps their stilted, affected rendering of bad dialogure, perhaps their rich, amoral, pointless lifestyles (as unbelievable as the characters), but you just don't give a fuck who they fuck. And as a series of unlikely co-incidences completes their merry-go-round of sole-less affairs, everything seems terribly unimportant, roughly to the extent They Are Saying Important And Coolly, Cruelly Ironic Things to each other in Big Fucking Sharp Capitals.
Oh, and you get the Damien Rice again at the end (this will do for him what being sung by Kathy Burke at the end of This Year's Love didn't do for David Gray - though that's a better film to watch if you want the same kind of scenarios just a bit more human) - and a stupid sub-twist that makes you want to throttle the director in the same way the lame ending of Blair Witch did. The point is the same -a twist (or 'surprise' since this doesn't actually qualify) for its own sake just destroys the suspension of disbelief and devalues the entire attempt to generate a reaction, an experience, from or for the audience - its just that Blair Witch did at least manage to manipulate you along the way.
Under-stylised or over-stylised, this could have been better if they made it really unbelievable (perhaps set in the 80s, its spiritual home), or if they made it slightly real - but either way, plot and script would have to change.
Two names to remember - Mike Nichols, Patrick Marker. Avoid at all costs.
The amusing thing is I actually saw the play, and disliked it almost as much for pretty similar reasons. I only watched this because we thought it was a bit much to pay £8 each for Meet the Fokkers, and I got it confused with Sideways - two films with single-word adjective titles, y'see.
Wish I'd walked out - at least that would have had some style.
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