icarusancalion

Finally saw Lincoln.

My dad panned it.

I planned to like it, just because he didn't.

Alas, I have not managed to like this movie.

Here's what I wrote to dad:

( Re: Lincoln. Sir, I think I dislike this movie even more than you do. This is not a good movie. This is a bad movie dignified by great performances. )

Time wasted in exposition prevented any real character development of the people who fought for and against the 13th Amendment, reducing them to caricature. Unfortunately, the arm-twisting and their strange mixed motives comprised the actual story line. At the end, I didn't know these people, or care who voted yea or nay, and, as I did kinda know how the vote would go, there was nothing to care about. I started playing Castleville.

And then came the galloping shambles of the, yes, dad, you're right, endings (plural) of the story. But at the time I was building a cathedral in Castleville, the game required me to put a river where I didn't want one to go, and I needed five more planks to rebuild grandma's house. No doubt one or another of those endings was riveting.

I bet the book's great.

I finally saw A Dog's Breakfast.

Anybody wanna buy a DVD? Only partially used?

Yes, that's right. About halfway through the movie wildernessguru started complaining, "This is really bad."

I said, "Wait. Hang on. People have said it's funny."

Ten minutes later... "This is really bad."

"I'm bored," I admitted. And cringed, trying to explain. "I find have no sympathy for these characters."

He said, generously, "Every actor is in a bad movie from time to time. He [David Hewlett] was really good in serious movies. Like that one where he was in a tree."

"Treed Murray."

"Yeah. That was great." (He doesn't know ADB was written and directed by DH.)

I said, not as generously given DH wrote this, "The writing was better in that one. Here, the characters have been written deliberately weird, and I find I don't care about any of them."

We got as far as the scene where the DH's character was in the basement, chastising the dog. Then we clicked it off.

I thought the camera work was self-conscious but good (my favorite shot was how it kept returning to that ugly brown house -- I don't know why that cracked me up). Definitely this movie is a director's "toy."

The acting was okay, not brilliant, definitely a bunch of people throwing something together on their weekend and not trying hard. DH oversells his role. Paul McGillion was okay, I couldn't see much difference between his role here and Doctor Beckett. Kate I really liked, she played it lightly but there was a richness to her delivery that was just a little bit serious, like she was weary of her brother's antics. But then the script was just mean to DH's character, cutting away any empathy I'd have for any of them.

The score was professional, well-timed, not overbearing, fit the subject well -- the sound mixing expert.

The problem is the script. It's very common to make one of three mistakes in ones first original character "creations":

1) A Mary Sue, self-insert.
2) A bland Everyman.
3) A character overloaded with quirks (usually done to avoid the first two).

David went through door number three.

The pacing in the beginning was slow, wallowing in the main character's OCD. Without a spoiler or two you didn't get a feeling for where the story was headed until late. There wasn't a good hook. The dialogue had snap and all the actors had good comic timing. But it kept coming back to, wow, I don't care about these people. I keep feeling like we needed some explanation of what was going on with DH's character, or we needed to start somewhere we could empathize -- like with Kate, chivvying her fiance out the door, trying to explain her brother and not being able to.

Then, the plot, well. I'll finish the movie sometime before I make a final statement about the plot. But as far as I got, I kept thinking, "I've seen this before. This is a live action version of a Road Runner cartoon and DH's character is Wile E. Coyote -- with less arrogance and more mental disorders."

wildernessguru's summation is simpler. "It was stupid. DH was constantly sweating and running around like a chicken with its head cut off, taking everything seriously. It's been done to death. A joint and being half-drunk wouldn't make it funny."