I have to ashamedly admit I tried watching this last year and I fell asleep – and I hardly ever fall asleep just ‘cos I’m tired. But I still gave it the benefit of the doubt and figured since I plan to make Hannibal the centrepiece of my Valentine’s Day this year as has long been my intention, I may as well do the whole series beforehand, and fit a virgin viewing in to boot

“You’re not following the human order, Hannibal. You’ve got to stop hurting the bullies.”

With a line like that and a cinematic legacy like Hannibal Lecter, this movie should really be so much better than it is. I was wary about a movie that looked so much like it was going to extend the “waahhhh boohoo I’m a victim of the 20th century” excuse for Hannibal Lecter even further than Hannibal went. Like I’ve said before, I think Hannibal is one of the most romantic movies ever … more on that maybe on Thursday … but there’s a point where the 20th century excuse can be applied so broadly as to demand a line to be drawn. So if you think I’m weird for thinking what I think about Hannibal, lol, then you might wanna think twice before venturing here.

In all, this is ever so slightly better than I feared (having fallen asleep the last time, how could it not be? lol) ... but it’s ever too involved and procedural to the point of distraction. I was inclined at first to blame this on the adaptation process but as I followed that thought through I realised that actually, though the screenplay clearly tries to keep a lot of events in that could easily be cut for the screen, those events actually wouldn’t even be relevant even in the longer novel form. As the end credits rolled I realised Thomas Harris himself was responsible for the adaptation, so I guess either way the blame falls to him. There’s a good story here, but it needs to be so much clearer, if only to match the simplicity of what came before in the Lecter story onscreen, even going back to Manhunter.

It’s basically very up and down – for every moment worthy of the title, there’s something like the, “The little boy died years ago – his heart died with Mischa,” line that makes the psychobabble at the end of Hitchcock’s Psycho seem positively legit lol; for all the good that Rhys Ifans and Dominic West put in by being so totally different from anything else they’ve appeared in, there’s things like the mask thing … yes, it has more sense to it than my initial kneejerk reaction of “WTF, why would he willingly put that mask on back in the 1950s!??!?” lol … but again, it’s just not made clear enough what it is nor what it signifies; basically as if it’s purely been shot for the trailer.

But for all that up and down that preceeds it, the main “transformation” scene where Hannibal gets his first taste of flesh is actually quite beautifully done – Gong Li walking away, “what is left in you to love?” with his creepily familiar tilting of the head at her followed by the animal dive to bite at a cheek … I can’t deny it left me with something almost approaching what Hannibal left me with … albeit it far less romantic … it’s by no means a failure, and I’ll no doubt watch it again to see if there’s anything else to it.

I don’t know if it’s much of a secret but I really neither wanted nor expected to like this much. Though I liked Enduring Love, another Ian McEwan adaptation, and I love James McAvoy, my hatred of the kind of praise this movie has received – not to mention Ikea Knightley – completely outweighed the positives.

Within minutes, however, I was fairly hooked – those typewriter clicks on the score, the pace of the whole thing. On the technical side, this is certainly watchable stuff, even if the pace of its opening isn’t quite kept up after the first 10 minutes. But though I was impressed by how much it exceeded my expectations, it all comes down to one thing for me, something I’m sure must be conveyed better in the novel unless all of its readers are just the types that are easy to please – and that’s that I just don’t believe for a second that a child in the 30s (especially one we’ve seen using a typewriter which even explains the letter) would be given so much credence over such a delicate, even today almost unspeakable matter. I mean, if ever there was a time when children were meant to be seen and not heard it was then. And by extension, I don’t really see the need for the period setting except to have some lovely war and costume scenes for Oscar (before you say it, I know it’s adapted from a novel … but still …)

Though I realise it would screw up the time passed thing of the ending, were it set today, I’d buy it easier. Even if the “c” word has lost its power to shock today, and I don’t believe it has at all (just try saying it to 10 strangers, I dare you) – if a child points their finger at a young man today and accuses them of anything, that man is basically f**ked, not to put too fine a point on it.

But I digress … it doesn’t matter because the next thing we know, McAvoy is in France in a soldier’s uniform talking French, and the movie gets better from there on out.

Any film that contains The Tracking Shot (yes, it’s impossible to write about this movie without mentioning it) earns itself an immediate 4 stars in my book. It is that good that it’s worth watching 2 hours for 10 minutes, even if the rest of the movie doesn’t come even close to the beauty and skill on display in those minutes. Overall it kept me wanting to know where exactly it was going in the end, and though that ending is too jarring to be as effective as it wants to be, I’m pleased to say this was much better than expected, so much so that I really won’t mind how many nominations it gets next month for the Oscars … yes, that includes Keira, for whom maybe another apology may be required (but not today).

I’ll admit I was slightly bored by the American Girl series by the time I got around to this one, but while Samantha remains my fave (till Kit Kittredge next year, at least), this is probably technically the best of them to date. Maya Ritter, who plays Molly, is 10 times as natural as AnnaSophia Robb was in the first (I didn’t update my review there, but the one thing I would’ve added is how incredible it is how Robb’s acting has improved since that debut – she’s pretty bad there, though no less cute), and even Molly Ringwald is good as her mother. More interesting to me was the Emily Bennett character – I found her even more interesting than Molly. I was about to ask there, where’s the movie, doll and book about her? But of course Google has the answer, and the last two of those do at least exist I just found the whole “Christmas Carol” thing too sweet. Like, I knew it was coming at the end but it still totally overwhelmed me. Tory Green is great as Emily, anyway – she’s Australian, apparently which would explain her slightly OTT British accent … but if OTT British accents are okay anywhere it’s surely here. These are definitely gonna be an annual Christmas thing for me, I think … I hadn’t actually realised till today that all of them take the same round-the-seasons structure (though I’m assuming that Kit being released in June won’t be the same?). Very cute