Grr. The recording of this cut off just a little before the end but I think I got the idea … I’m not too great at finding things to say about films like this anyway. What I do know, what matters, is that I kinda liked it and would certainly (especially since I missed the end lol) watch it again. Michel Legrand’s music is really gorgeous.

The best way of summing up this is simply to say … they do make ‘em like they used to afterall. Having refreshed myself with the first three movies this week, I (along with I’m sure dozens others in the audience) got a nostalgic thrill simply from the familiar opening credits style to John Williams’ imminent strings (the Paramount logo, I won’t go into; nor the catalog of other spoilers I could let slip – normally I don’t care about such things, but this is one that would be too cruel to spoil … I won’t even add certain tags to this post until a few months time). We’re taken to a familiar location – familiar to us, but not to Jones, who appears in those iconic fragments you’ve seen in the trailer. This opening sequence ultimately leads to a classic Indy escape involving, of all things, a refridgerator. Oh, and a gopher.

Sure, the plot at times beggars belief: even when you’ve suspended your disbelief sufficiently as to enjoy these movies (watching the original trilogy in preparation is definitely recommended). In fact, I found it quite strange that even Jones – having witnessed the wrath of God, a man’s heart removed by supernatural means, and the Holy Grail in previous installments – is found saying such things as, “That’s just a legend!” in skeptical tones … maybe it’s an age thing.

But for all of its flaws – and there are plenty – as a sequel, this has everything even demanding moi hoped/expected. There are creepy crawlies (an eye-watering, itch-fit-inducing amount, beware!), waterfalls (count ‘em), car chases, quicksand, vineswinging, snakes (of course), skeletons, cobwebbed caves, and more. There’s a little old-age lamenting, Last Crusade themes slipping into John Williams’ score, which is admittedly the least original of the whole series, and the ending owes something to that unforgettable face-melting finale to Raiders (I must admit, I wish this had been a bit more graphic). You even get a little peak of something in that familiar location at the start (I’ve probably said too much now – oh well). I’m not sure if that shot was slight overkill. I’m not sure if a lot of it was overkill, lol.

All told, however, I couldn’t take the inner child grin off my wide-eyed face for the duration. The visual effects are at once nostalgic in their rear-projected glory, but startling in their modern sensibility. There’s a moment with Shia LaBeouf astride two speeding vehicles that literally took my breath away. Janusz Kaminski apparently studied the work of the earlier movies’ cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, and it paid off, from those wonderful opening credits on it really looks like an Indy movie, but again, there’s the modern touch, Kaminski’s visceral jittercam slipping in where it’s needed. It’s like everything else about the movie – it’s all the best parts of all that came before and then something extra. It’s bound to please fans and newcomers, in the fans’ case no matter what their favourite installment has been to date, but I don’t think it will displace that fave in most cases. Likewise, as expected, it’s the best film I’ve seen so far this year; though I would hope it doesn’t stay that way. All in all, it’s a helluva ride if you’re prepared to go with it.

“I’ve got something to tell you -”
“Don’t get sentimental now, dad -”
“The floor’s on fire. And the chair!”

The opening of this one is a clunky, cheesy, bitter disappointment after Temple and even after that it takes a while to get going, but I think once I got a severe case of the giggles over the old man/rubber stamp scene I found myself back in the mood that these movies require (it was definitely a good idea to re-acquaint myself with them before seeing the fourth tonight: I’m sure it’ll be awesome but you certainly need to be in the right frame of mind to get the most out of this franchise). Once Sean Connery shows up, of course, the movie enters a league all its own.

It’s a little clinical and clunky in production quality for me in the end, with as many duff notes as there are sweet ones. It feels a lot more like an Indy movie once they get inside the Holy Grail place at the end, and that “Let it go,” line from Connery really caught me offguard, I hope there’s something “deep” like that in the new movie (as well as the insanity of the end of Raiders and the whole of Temple). I’d really take the more iconic original or the joyous second over this any day, but in the end it’s still all good.

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.