I watched this today because it’s one of those movies I can watch any time but it was midway that I realised maybe I’d subconsciously chosen it for another reason. It connects to a lot of the movies I’ve watched recently and the feelings I’ve had watching them – from Enchanted to Penelope to Riding in Cars with Boys the other day, I even found similarities to Once here this time around. I’d never watched the introduction on the DVD of this movie before, and in it, Geoff Andrew says some things about the ending that my gut instinct disagreed with a lot, dismissing the romance at the start as meaningless teenage meanderings and such, as if the romance between Guy and Geneviève was never meant to bloom nor could have possibly bloomed, even if he’d returned to her in time. I took as much issue with that idea as I have recently with this idea that innocence lost can never be regained, etc, that I won’t go into yet again.

But as the movie went on, I did find myself looking at it in a different way from before – dare I say it, with some aging mature wisdom on my side. There are a lot of questions I’ve had over this movie in the past, like for example why I continue to love it so much when so many of the characters do things that I would never usually find acceptable. Everybody in the movie is in some way “after something” that they never ask for directly and honestly – both Guy and Geneviève in some way give up waiting for their love, the less said about Geneviève’s mother the better, Madeleine never declares her obvious love for Guy, and Roland Cassard, though perhaps the most admirable character in the movie, is always presented as a bit of a slimeball who looks down on the others – here to the rescue, yes, but through little real effort on his part. I think in the end it’s this full package of flawed characters illustrating perhaps precisely how “people things” tend to transpire whether we like them or not. Even Geneviève’s mother has a lot of pearls of wisdom, though delivered a little harshly (not to mention shrilly lol) at times.

But in the end, any amount of babble like this becomes fairly moot once you’re faced with the movie itself. From the opening title onwards – that rain falling as though from the camera itself on the people of Cherbourg, as though we the audience are already crying on the movie – this movie is simply pure magic that I could bawl through from beginning to end. The music is sublime, the colours are eye-popping, and the characters are, as I hopefully illustrated above, surprisingly complicated given the context. It has the most conflicted but beautiful ending I’ve ever seen, and I still react to it today as I did over 10 years ago when I first saw it: my stomach almost physically churns and tightens, I’m overjoyed but crushed, tears fall down my face over a wretchedly human smile on my lips. This movie isn’t beautiful … it’s beauty. If this review reads like a mess than it’s just an illustration of how the movie affects me, lol, and probably an explanation of why there hasn’t previously been a review of it here despite it being one of my all-time faves.

I’m not about to spoil this movie for you. The tagline for this movie is “What Makes Us Different Makes Us Beautiful”. It’s about Christina Ricci born with a snout instead of a nose. By the end of the movie, she has a normal nose. I really think that’s all I need to say but bear with me ‘cos I feel a rant coming on. Now, maybe with The Hottie and the Nottie going around those cinemas that can afford to show it, my nitpicks over movies like this and Enchanted having fairly depressing implications about society seem beyond nitpicky. But hey, if nobody else is gonna say it then I will; if I didn’t just say what came to mind while watching a movie then I wouldn’t write anything at all.

“I know this face repulses you,” Penelope (Christina Ricci) tells Max (James McAvoy complete with pointless US accent) ”... And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to accept it. But this isn’t me, the real me is inside here somewhere just waiting to get out and you can make that happen and once the curse is broken I’ll be just like anybody else.”

“What if the curse doesn’t get broken? What if the curse can never be broken?” Max replies.

“Then I’ll kill myself. I promise, I promise I will. Marry me, Max. Marry me.”

And there’s the rub. If you happened to like Enchanted, honestly, I couldn’t recommend a better double bill companion than Penelope more whole-heartedly. Personally, my luck amazes me that I resisted seeing both on my birthday in February because either one of them would, to be blunt, have put a damper on my day. Though this movie didn’t upset me quite as much as Enchanted did – duh, it’s Christina Ricci with a snout, frankly that alone is worth my 90 minutes – I spent all those 90 minutes, as I did in Enchanted, dreading how it all would end, hoping the film makers would explain why every man who looked upon The Nose had to jump through glass or cause a scene, why not one of them would even hesitate a moment and consider the rest of her. Is she supposed to look as grotesque as what these guys seem to be reacting to? In which case it’s bad casting and makeup, and I hope that’s the case. Otherwise, it really upsets me that apparently little girls across the land have gone cuckoo for this movie that is telling them this is what they should expect if they don’t look like Reese Witherspoon.

I’m sure I’m not just being my strange and kinky self … seriously, Christina Ricci with a snout is almost even cuter than just plain Christina Ricci. I know it’s a story and the movie would end pretty quick if someone just walked in the room and said, “Hey! Cute nose!” ... what I’m saying isn’t as simple as that at all and you maybe need to see the whole movie to get the full sweep of how badly I feel it’s handled, I don’t know … it just basically sat badly with me. Maybe it’s as dumb as I’ve a feeling my response to everyone so rapidly believing Briony in Atonement was … but when something doesn’t sit with me, it doesn’t sit with me: all I can do is share the response.

I don’t have as many problems with it as I do with Enchanted – that movie had its wonderful moments and this one has even more on top of the simple fact of the Ricciness who can really do little wrong in my book. Joby Talbot’s music is gorgeous, one of those scores that, if I still bought soundtrack CDs, I’d snap up in a flash. Peter Dinklage is always worth the watch – he has one of the more interesting lines in the movie, perhaps moreso coming from him, when he says, “She’s out there on her own. Declaring her independence.” It even makes me happy enough that Christina Ricci even chose to do a project like this, it’s the kind of thing that made me go psychocrazy over her all those years ago. It’s quirky, it’s silly, it’s particularly indie-spirited even while being particularly appealing to the mainstream by its sheer freakshow nature.

But I’m loathe to sound too enthusiastic about the whole thing, because the overall message of it really makes my tummy squirm – from Grease to She’s All That I’ve always been sick of movies that basically tell people, especially girls and women, “Hey! You don’t have to be beautiful on the outside! But it helps ...” and again, even though it comes from character and is a perfectly logical part of the movie, I have to say, the moment at the end here where Catherine O’Hara (being even more loathsome than she was in For Your Consideration) starts suggesting even more “work” on Penelope’s nose even when it’s back to human form, it actually almost made me feel physically sick. Given I’ll take any opportunity to tell people my own insane dreams of magical transformation, I know how this sentiment probably makes me a big hypocrit. I don’t know what to say to that. Maybe we’re all a little hypocritical sometimes, but with me these days honesty overrides everything, and like I said, this just did not sit with me.

As I’ve said on many an occasion: any movie that can get me in such a twist as this has gotta be worth the time somehow … it just depresses me if this is what it takes nowadays. It depresses me almost profoundly. Gimme Elphaba proudly getting in people’s faces with her green skin any day over this kind of thing. She had the good sense to leave the world entirely when it turned its back on her. Nobody should have to change to fit in. That Penelope’s transformation here comes right after and as a result of her own admission that she’s “happy the way she is” just adds insult to injury in my opinion.

I can’t not give this movie less than 5 hearts anymore – perhaps particularly since I changed my ratings from stars to hearts lol. Even the corny jokes (not to mention gag Bono) worked more on me third time around here and the good here is so good you just can’t help but surrender. It owes a terrific debt to one of my all-time faves, Pink Floyd: The Wall, not just in “Strawberry Fields” as mentioned below but also the whole “I Want You” scene is pretty much “Another Brick in the Wall”; and though Julie Taymor can’t (yet) hope to entirely compete with Alan Parker, it’s certainly a worthy comparison.

It’s all about the freedom the movie has – leaping from a Bono cameo to Eddie Izzard pretty much sums it up (incidentally, as I commented while watching it this time with my sister, it’s not so much the mere appearance and singing from Bono that wows here; it’s when he speaks following the song when you truly realise how it’s perhaps the most selfless thing he’s ever done); from a gorgeously scored climax intercutting Vietnam and Colombia University to the completely random but equally beautiful women in the sea over the eponymous song sequence. It’s a movie that’s undeniably “all over the place” and yet you can’t quite fathom how it could be any other way. I’ve watched it more now than any other film of the past year, and that stat will only increase as time goes on, so the watchability factor definitely comes into play in the rating too. And if I haven’t said enough about how incredible Evan Rachel Wood is, then mark my words I’ll have plenty more to add in the future, she blows my mind, nevermind every movie or scene I see her in, every frame.

January 10th, 2008:

I really need to start half stars here, I think, lol. That I couldn’t resist watching this again so soon should speak well of the movie in itself. When it’s good, like in “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “Strawberry Fields” as mentioned below, or the exploding newspaper over the instrumental climax to “Day in the Life” – not to mention just about every second Evan Rachel Wood occupies the screen – it’s great. When it’s bad, though – and I’d be amazed if even the most ardent of fans don’t feel this during at least some portion of the movie, though I’d personally cut half an hour or more – it’s even worse than I thought on the first viewing. I still really don’t know what to make of the rollercoaster of love and hate this movie takes me on. I’m often tempted to use the phrase “flawed masterpiece” but more often than not I ultimately fall down on one side or the other … but here … I really don’t think that phrase has ever applied more to a movie. I think I’ll be coming back to this many more times.

7th January, 2008:

Ah Julie Taymor First, this movie tackles the whole High School Musical thing into the dirt in just one 2-3 minute scene (“I Wanna Hold Your Hand”). There follow a plethora of standalone interpretations of Beatles songs set loosely to a little love story (rather than the other way around as some plot summaries will tell you :P) but I’m not sure it ever comes together in quite the way it should and for a Julie Taymor movie, no matter what anyone tells you, it’s really not that startlingly visual. Okay, no, it comes close to Pink Floyd’s The Wall during “Strawberry Fields” but that’s all I’ll give it; let’s face it, for the title track alone she had the Rufus Wainwright/Dakota Fanning and Fiona Apple/Paul Thomas Anderson music videos to contend with.

It’s just so about the Beatles songs; even the ones that aren’t sung come in in lines like, “She came in through the bathroom window!” and “when I’m sixty-four …” ... by the time a character called Dr. Robert walks in, you’ve practically cringed yourself inside out so it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m quite the pushover sometimes, so by the time it came to the two girls singing “love, love, love” to a couple of police officers on a rooftop as the hero (Jude) sings out for his Lucy (yeh), I can’t deny I was emotionally armless and I for one will be returning to this again one day, just to see if I was just another sucker or if there’s actually something here.

Watch if you can’t get enough of Beatles covers, pretty people and good lipsync; but don’t expect a whole lot more. For the visuals, I’d personally sooner watch Julie Taymor’s Titus again; for the music, I’ll keep praying Cirque du Soleil will tour their “Love” show or at least produce a DVD, in the meantime I recommend I Am Sam. Though it has its moments, this movie is in places so cheesy and simplistic in the worst way. I think it could’ve been much much more.

“Oui! Oui! Bean! Sabine! Russ! Cannes!”

LOL

I don’t think there’s much to add to the first review of this but to say that the whole spectrum between the bad and the good parts of this widened exponentially for me on a second viewing. When it’s unfunny, it’s really pretty excruciating – the restaurant scene at the start, the “amuse the boy” scene on the train shortly thereafter, and the “falling asleep at the wheel” scene towards the end being amongst the most painful; but when it soars, like pretty much from the scene where Bean wakes in the middle of the movie set, the yellow mini approaching, and thereon to the end with him walking down to the beach – yes, even the sing-a-long – I found it even more joyful and beautiful than I did before.

I think the one disappointment most people will have over the movie is that, like the first movie in fact, it’s not just straight-up laughs like the TV show, and because of how bold they’ve been in doing it the same way (it only just struck me this time how many subtitles there are given this was a total Easter holidays movie last year for kids), there are unavoidably moments where it feels awkward (there are even moments like this in Mel Smith’s only slightly better first movie). If you come to it just wanting to smile at France, though, you really can’t go wrong. The boy’s tooo cute when he dresses as a girl too (sorry but I have to say these things sometimes – ok, all the time – lol)

May 16th, 2007:

I was sort of desperate to like this not only because I loved, really loved, Mel Smith’s Bean, but also ‘cos I’ve been informed my favourite cousin Fiona laughed her way all the way through this new installment over the Easter holidays. The reviews weren’t too promising, though …

The movie couldn’t begin better, it’s almost like it’s trying to win me over – Bean stops over and gets led astray in Paris and we get quite a nice video tour of the place – but after an excruciating restaurant scene (in which at least two old gags from the TV series threaten to resurface, and some business with mussels ends up just being plain unpleasant), I honestly thought I was going to go the way of Mark Kermode and wind up really being let down by the rest. But then Bean meets the boy, and there’s a scene on a train platform where he starts to mimic Bean, and what can I say, it just won me over in about 30 seconds.

Sure, you can look at the set-up and in this horrible world we live etc and say, ooh, creepy. Alternatively, you can see a simple-minded, foolish but harmless man and a young boy who ultimately thinks the world of him running around France getting in hijinks. I think there’s something really almost classical here, and if it doesn’t fit in with your dark view of the world, it’s a real shame I think. Rowan Atkinson and the kid work beyond adorably together, Howard Goodall’s music and Steve Bendelack’s direction really lift the whole thing and you can’t help coming out in the end feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Keep watching after the credits, too, btw, there’s a little bit of added cuteness.

Yes, the humour tires towards the end, but as with Bean, there is really more to this than the laughs. There’s this real sense of the camera trying to find the humanity in Bean, and when it finds it, it’s always kind of startling how easy it was. He’s a beautiful character when dealt with correctly, and this movie really didn’t let me down like I thought it would. The more I think about it, the more I want to see it again.

“Saaaay … would you like a chocolate covered pretzel? They’re a little melty, but boy are they exquisite.”

Another I thought I’d reviewed more recently than ‘04 The main thing I’d forgotten about this movie is Claire Forlani and Shannon Doherty. Throw in the short Joey Lauren Adams appearance and I think you’ve got at least the sexiest Kevin Smith movie if not the funniest. I didn’t exactly bring the house down on this viewing like the one below but there are tons of moments that still make me laugh out loud more than a lot of Smith’s output, which more often than not I like more for the emotional content than the humour. This one on the contrary is pretty much all about the funny – the ending is stirring in that cheesy Eighties way that it’s going for, but it’s not the deeper territory that Smith has, I don’t care what anyone else says, touched in his other movies. I still haven’t seen Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back since the review below – I seem to be avoiding it – I really don’t think it’s as consistently on the nose as this one, though. The Jay and Bob storyline here alone is worth seeing the movie for, Kevin Smith doing the cartoon acting, playing to the camera completely, arguably better than he’s done anywhere else. It’s often spoken of as a somehow lesser work of Smith’s but I think it might just be the most essential companion to any given one of the others.

June 10th, 2004:

I must’ve been numb the last time I saw this movie which is why I’m filing this under “Virgin Viewing,” because I damn near died laughing the night I watched it this time.

I’ll probably eat these words the next time I see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back because I’ll likely love that one on a second viewing just as much – but Mallrats is as funny as J&SB should have been.

Does it have a point, a story even? I could hardly tell you. But you have Silent Bob continuously busting in on Joey Lauren Adams trying to change, the poor fat guy trying to see the stereo image, “Oooh, a sailboat!” (“There is no Easter bunny!!”), Jay and Silent Bob beating up the Easter bunny, and plenty more.

Put it this way – if movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Exorcist can be described as, “an assault of horrors,” then Mallrats is an assault of comedy.

“Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time …”

Spoiler Warning I guess – not that you could possibly spoil this one.

Y’know, call me dumb just one more time but even at the Oscars after seeing the movie 3 times, I didn’t fully listen to that lyric until now. As the last couple of reviews might’ve shown, I’m still bobbing up and down a little off the ripples left by the wave of depression Enchanted left me with, and I couldn’t help but notice that this movie ends quite the same way as that one with the “lovers” at the outset not ending up together; but, I don’t know, here I bought it with tears in my eyes, perhaps because I believed they made the right choice … perhaps because I believed they knew there was still some work ahead … perhaps because in the end, it’s a matter of consistency, and this movie is 100% so.

While so many things now tell you, “if it’s f*cked, move on or replace it,” this movie presents us with a character who brings a lowly hoover for a busker to fix rather than simply buy a new one because all she can even afford to give him for his songs is 10 cents. It simply asks people to make an effort, all the while telling the inspiring story of someone far too old by society’s standards to be still living with his pa finally taking the steps to making a name for himself as a singer-songwriter in tandem with fixing an old and clearly dear relationship.

Again I find myself commenting on the thing I should find annoying about this movie that proves the movie’s brilliance by the sheer fact that it doesn’t annoy me. There’s a whole sequence that basically shows how everyone is trying to be a musician; from the trying to get the loan and the bank guy breaking into song, cutting to the street and a random busker drumming, to the party where it’s a requirement that you sing. I hate this kind of thing normally not because it’s false – on the contrary, it’s the truest and mostly most beautiful thing there is – but it’s very demoralising to anyone (in which case I guess, lol, everyone) wanting to get their songs heard. But like I say, it’s amazing that this really never gets to me like I’d think it would in this one.

Then there are the peripheral characters. The man in the clothes shop telling Guy, “You’re gorgeous,” the aforementioned bank guy, and my god, the studio guy – that in itself is the series of shots I’d personally say define this movie, him going from “these bunch of f*ckin …” to the total childlike enthusiasm at the mixing desk when he realises how good they are … it’s just an astonishing few pieces of film.

I’m just amazed by how much more I got out of this movie this viewing after seeing it at least 3 times already … you get this initial feeling like it’s that typical variety of indie movie where they just point the camera at two people and improvise or something, in this case perhaps buoyed by the quality of the songs … but, simply that whole thing about the hoover, I’d just never realised the significance of it as it compares to the big picture, the whole idea of fixing something that, in general, in today’s world, is more often just slung out for a new model, it just really shows how beautifully written and considered it is. It’s such an important message for the world right now.

December 3rd, 2007:

I’m slightly annoyed I didn’t get to see this a lot earlier than I ultimately have, because as soon as it began I realised that no matter what it did, it would be a miracle if it lived up to the expectations I’ve built up for it over the months and months of hype and general gushing of those who had seen it. It sounded perfect – in a nutshell, as a more recent review I read put it, it’s the Irish, musical, Before Sunset. The songs are beautiful even if, like me, you’ve heard them dozens of times before the movie begins.

For almost the whole first 85 minutes, I had that feeling. It’s not living up to what I psyched myself into expecting, etc, all the while cursing the destructive power of hype. “It’s good,” I thought – the music’s great of course, the story well-paced, the performances perfect – “but it’s not overwhelming me.”

But it’s all in the ending. When it all comes together, in at most 3 little shots. And it was literally like one second I was dry and the next my face was streaked with tears, and they didn’t stop till the last credit rolled off the screen. This movie is just too beautiful for words.

Reading the premise of this movie, whenever that was last year, I couldn’t by any stretch see how it could possibly make anything approaching a good movie. But when it got the Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, then I heard someone comparing it to Harold and Maude ... what can I say, but I was pretty excited to find out just how it would turn me around.

In the end, I think I like more the fact that this film exists than the film itself. It says – sort of – weird is fine as long as nobody gets hurt, which is like practically my mantra; and as quite the weirdo myself, well, I’d be lying if I said it’s a complete waste of time. Though its ultimate goal is that final healing line, “You wanna take a walk?” which tells us Lars is “back to normal” ... on the way there are certainly hints – like the big one in Lars’ office of a male colleague’s obsession with action men and a female admirer’s teddy bear which he later, in a beautiful scene, “resuscitates” for her after said male colleague hangs it (she hid his action men; fairdos lol) – that we’re basically all pretty weird in our own way.

I’m not sure it entirely succeeds – I hate the fact that for a lot of people it will only confirm their assumption that all quiet loner types have such a similar homelife, talking to inanimate objects or even thin air etc. Very early in the movie, Lars’ sister-in-law has a great line about Lars’ aversion to social contact. Ryan Gosling’s performance is reminiscent of Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love ... in fact, the score sounds a lot like Jon Brion too. I have no idea where the Harold and Maude comparison came from, except in that it’s a “quirky love story” which kind of shows exactly the simpleminded thought process I fear taking the movie the completely wrong way.

The main thing that must be said about the movie is … it’s not funny. There are giggles in places here, but do not be misled into thinking it’s a comedy or you’ll only be disappointed. I think to get the most out of this one you really need to go in with an open mind for a quirky but meaningful psychological discussion about life, loneliness, social interaction and love. It’s extraordinary how touching it gets in the end when you consider the premise; how you actually find yourself almost slapping yourself out of thinking of Bianca like a real character, especially during one beautifully lit kiss towards the end; and considering that, I’m more than slightly awed by it to be honest.

No, no, no, old review below! You bad old review, you!

lol. I’m even annoyed that I used The Quote in that otherwise damning review, ‘cos I was gonna start with it this time around. Oh well, I’m gonna do it anyway.

“Would you ever say, ‘Stop. If you loved me, you’d stop’?”
“Not in a thousand years.”
“Not in a thousand years … that’s my girl …”

Quite honestly, I could end the review right there. That single scene alone goes through me like electricity every time I see it. I’m sure everyone at some time or other has read a book or seen a movie or watched a TV show and wanted the story to go some way it never … not in a thousand years … would conceivably go, right? Well that scene for me, every time I see it, is just one of those inconceivable deliveries for me.

It’s the scene that always comes to mind when I tell people that this is one of the most romantic movies ever; what I always even forget myself is how romantic the rest of the movie is too. Sure, people are dying and those deaths are being investigated … but it’s always Florence or Sardinia etc … Lecter’s hand brushing Clarice’s hair on a carousel … it’s just got such a romantic approach to everything it touches. Even Hans Zimmer’s score knows it. I just love it.

1st September, 2005:

I still love the ending of this movie (“Tell me, Clarice, would you ever say, stop, if you love me you’d stop?” “Not in a thousand years.” “Not in thousand years…. that’s my girl … this is gonna hurt …”), I just get such a kick out of the fact they took the whole love story thing to its weird but perfect conclusion (my favourite moment in Silence of the Lambs is when Lector’s finger brushes Clarice’s) but the rest of the movie is pretty dull. It’s all interestingly designed and slickly produced and the acting is all round stunning, but for some reason it still drags.

One thing I do love about the movie is its dream-like quality – there’s almost no other way the movie could’ve worked, so literally insane is the direction the novel takes. Almost the entire movie here feels to me like Clarice’s flashbacks in Silence, and that makes so many of the movie’s flaws (eg. no matter how good Julianne Moore is as Clarice, she’s no Jodie) somehow palatable. However, even viewed this way, after a while it just feels a little pointless.