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The critical experience
Apr. 15th, 2010 10:19 amEbert provides proof once again that we need to engage our critics critically. I love you, Roger, but we can't always agree.
He appreciates the new Death at a Funeral, saying it's funnier than the original. This may well be true; I found the original to be lukewarm in any case. He mentions that it's essentially a shot-for-shot remake of a movie made less than five years ago, but he fails to underline what is a central point for me: that I don't want to encourage Hollywood to recycle more. They do this enough already, and given a choice between remaking something and improving it or doing something new, I'd rather the studios did something new.
On the other end of the spectrum, he loathed Kick-Ass on strictly moral grounds. I've seen this in his reviews before; occasionally there is something that bothers him so much in a film that it eclipses any value in the rest of it. In this case, Hit Girl appears to have done the job. I suspect that when I see the film, as I intend to do, that I'm not going to have the same objection. I like my humor black-hole black, and the idea of a fictional character remorselessly killing people and having a good time with it is a familiar and comfortable one to me. I am American, after all. Would I be terrified if someone was doing what Hit Girl does in real life? Absolutely. But saying the movie encourages that behavior is probably like saying that Apocalypse Now encourages people to join the military.
He appreciates the new Death at a Funeral, saying it's funnier than the original. This may well be true; I found the original to be lukewarm in any case. He mentions that it's essentially a shot-for-shot remake of a movie made less than five years ago, but he fails to underline what is a central point for me: that I don't want to encourage Hollywood to recycle more. They do this enough already, and given a choice between remaking something and improving it or doing something new, I'd rather the studios did something new.
On the other end of the spectrum, he loathed Kick-Ass on strictly moral grounds. I've seen this in his reviews before; occasionally there is something that bothers him so much in a film that it eclipses any value in the rest of it. In this case, Hit Girl appears to have done the job. I suspect that when I see the film, as I intend to do, that I'm not going to have the same objection. I like my humor black-hole black, and the idea of a fictional character remorselessly killing people and having a good time with it is a familiar and comfortable one to me. I am American, after all. Would I be terrified if someone was doing what Hit Girl does in real life? Absolutely. But saying the movie encourages that behavior is probably like saying that Apocalypse Now encourages people to join the military.