sailorhathor | Movie Review Rant

So, I was looking for something Chill Factor-related, and I stumbled on a few "reviews" of the movie, and it sparked this rant. The net has made it possible for anyone to become a movie critic. This is not always a good thing. I've found that on the net, it's really easy for people to write off the creative efforts of others with some of the most extreme statements and not even really consider what they're saying. I rarely see professional movie critics be quite this black and white with their opinions. Not that people on the net need to be professional all the time; I mean, an amateur review can be fun for its informal style, but, I'm just sick of people taking a movie like Chill Factor and writing it off as worthless and horrible because it follows a formula. So do many, many movies that people love in mass.

The point people made the most was that the movie was cliche. How did they express this? BY USING NOTHING BUT CLICHES IN THEIR REVIEWS. Ahhhhhhhrrrrgh! ::yanks out hair:: "bad script," "stilted dialogue," "a 7-year-old could have come up with a better script," and "worst movie ever." Well let's take a look at these complaints. How was the script bad? If you can't give me some examples, you shouldn't write movie reviews. How was the dialogue stilted? There was one line that felt unnatural; the rest was fine. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of that was ad-libbed, because the banter between Cuba and Skeet flowed so naturally, they either had that script down or they were winging it. Yes, there are some lines that make you roll your eyes, but it's a BUDDY COMEDY/ACTION film. They're ALL like that. That's not the point! You're not supposed to come out of a film like this crying from how deep and meaningful the dialogue was. You're supposed to come out laughing and feeling good. Then there's the declaration that a child could have written a better script. That's just stupid. I know it's all popular to insult movies that way, but very few movies are really *that* bad. I mean, seriously, go back in my journal entries and read that story I wrote when I was seven. Would that really be preferrable to any action movie? I'd be pretty damn bored if they filmed "Mr. Cold Germ: The Movie" as is. And many, many seven year old kids cannot even write that much. If you're going to write movie reviews, you should at least take the time to come up with some new, clever insults, especially if you're going to slam the movie for being cliche. So many review cliches have become meaningless in their overuse.

As for the "worst movie ever" title, hardly. I wonder how many movies these people have actually seen, because... they definitely aren't Home Gamers. I have riffed some of the worst, most boring, most painful movies you would never want to see through the aol movie-riffing games that I am a part of. When someone says, "Chill Factor was the worst movie I ever saw," my jaw drops open and I reply, "Are you serious? Have you ever seen The Apple? How about The Scorpion King, which despite all its action, was quite dull and hard to finish? What about Hard Ticket to Hawaii? That movie in which Linda Carter shows her goodies? Bobbie Joe and the Outlaw, I think it was called. Panic Room was pretty boring. I could go on." Oh could I ever go on!

I'm just sick of people spitting out the usual cliche crap, thinking they're so clever and funny when they're NOT. "Ooh, Skeet Ulrich looks like Johnny Depp!" We know that. "All he ever does is do his Johnny Depp impersonation." Bullshit. The two actors are nothing alike in acting style. "Um... but... he looks like Johnny Depp!" Somewhat, yeah. You said that already. "Err... okay, Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar, and then he goes on to do THIS? That's awful!" Uh huh, yeah, that happens to many, MANY Oscar winners. It's all part of being an actor. You have to take some roles that are not really "Oscar-worthy." Kim Basinger did Bless the Child; not an Oscar-worthy movie (though I did like it, but it's in a genre I usually like). Helen Hunt did Twister, another action movie that was widely slammed (although I liked this movie too; another one that had good detail and likable characters, so that the silly aspects didn't detract from my enjoyment of it). Even so, Cuba played a very likable guy, all without knowing a great deal about the character. That's not so bad. "Ummm... the story was unlikely and not very believable." Eh. It's an action comedy. The story always has holes in it. It's not perfect, no. But I've seen much worse. The holes in the plot did not detract from my enjoyment of it; I still got several really good laughs, and left the movie feeling good and wanting to watch it again. Compare that to a movie like Speed, which was riddled with plot holes and just plain stupid plot twists, and had the painful-to-watch "acting" of Keanu Reeves. Yet, Speed was a big hit, probably because Sandra Bullock is so damn likable. Plot holes do not necessarily sink a movie, especially if there's a likable actor in it.

"Everybody in the movie was a stereotype!" Sort of true, sort of not. First off, stereotypes exist. Many people fit them, while also possessing many qualities that make them individual. I would put the characters in the movie in this category. Stereotypes, but also very individual. In fact, Skeet played the first drifter that I can remember who was that nice and connected to other people. Most drifter types in movies distance themselves from everyone around them in a macho sort of way. The vulnerability and buddy-buddy caring that was shown between Skeet and Cuba's characters pretty much cancelled out the stereotypical qualities of the people they played for me, because it made them more individual. That's the problem with stereotypes--if you're going to use them, you have to show how these characters are special too, or few will care about them. I personally do not understand how someone could watch this movie and just take away from these characters that they were plain stereotypes, because the actors put some noticeable effort into making them special.

Argh, I'm not done, but I need to go make dinner. So I'll edit this entry later and finish my rant.

I'm baaaack! Time to talk to Disembodied Chill Factor Hater some more.

"Oh come on Laurel, you just liked the movie so much because Skeet Ulrich was in it, and you think he's hot!" That probably had a little effect on things, but not totally, because I don't have any particular attraction to Cuba Gooding Jr. and I loved his character. Also, Skeet was also in Boys, and I hated that movie. Really, it was the buddy chemistry between Skeet and Cuba that really sold the movie for me. Their delivery made even the most overused material a riot.

"But, wasn't it too much of a coincidence that Mason just happened to need a way to keep the chemical weapon cold, and here comes Arlo in his ice cream truck? Puh-lease!" Action movies are full of happy coincidences. Heck, LIFE is full of them. We wouldn't have car accidents or people falling in love if there weren't coincidences. I didn't find that coincidence too unbelievable; I've had some incidences in my life that seemed to happen according to a "too good to be true" pattern. It's just one of those movie things you get used to. Sure, if the rest of the movie had been bad, then that coincidence would have bothered me, but that wasn't the case. "But why couldn't Mason have just grabbed a cooler and some ice? Why did he HAVE to have that truck?" First of all, there wasn't time. The terrorists were hot on the trail of Elvis; like Mason had time to run over to some place where he could get a cooler. The ice cream truck was right in front of the diner, so why not? Plus, ice in a cooler melts. He couldn't be assured that the ice would last all the way to where he needed to go. I certainly would trust a refridgerated truck a lot more than I would trust a cooler full of ice. You've got your cold and your transportation all in one package. Would you be willing to leave such a thing up to chance if you knew that once this stuff reaches 50 degrees, an entire state could be wiped out in the explosion?

"The villain was a total stereotype of men in the military!" Eh, in some ways. In others, I could understand why he was doing what he did, and I found him fun to watch. Instead of the usual "I'm going to destroy the world to get revenge," we get, "I'm going to sell this weapon to the very enemies you created it to destroy to get revenge." Nice touch! I like that. Plus it was really cute when they discovered the crashed ice cream truck and no Elvis, and the villain says something about finding them, then you see that he's eating an ice cream sandwich. LOL! Even bad guys love ice cream, numnum! XD It's the little touches that made this movie so enjoyable.

"What about the fact that the military dude took the fall for the big fiasco at the beginning of the movie? He didn't even do anything wrong!" So? The blameless guy took the fall so the higher-ups and more important bigwigs could get off scott free. ::sarcastic tone:: That never happens in real life. :P

"Okay, this is my last try. Some of the lines fell flat." Yeah, that happens in lots of movies. I'm sure the writer of X-Men thought that line about what happens to toads when they are struck by lightning was really clever, but it wasn't. Doesn't mean the whole movie sucked. "But-um-er... Skeet Ulrich looks like Johnny Depp!" ::sigh::

I guess my point is that I don't expect everyone to like the same things I like, BUT, if they are going to review it, they should at least put some quality into their writing. I don't understand why anyone would just slap a review together and put it up there where millions of people all over the world have access to it, and especially when the purpose of the entire site is to review movies. I read about 3 or 4 reviews, and only one of them had any thought put into it. What is the point of reviewing a movie if you're not trying to convince people why they should or should not watch it? I don't know about you, but if I'm interested in a movie for some particular reason, someone telling me it "just sucked" isn't enough to deter me from seeing it. I'm sure many of the movies I love, some people would say "just sucked." Hell, I thought Lord of the Rings "just sucked;" do you agree with me on that? With many of you, that's doubtful. You'd like me to justify that opinion, wouldn't you? Movie reviews should be written so that everyone can get a sense of why the movie was great, or why it sucked--and telling people, "it was just bad" isn't quite good enough. If you can't put your finger on why "it was just bad," you shouldn't be writing movie reviews, because that is the whole point! Detail!

Now I know that some people write movie reviews to showcase how clever and funny they (think they) are, how hilariously they can rip a movie apart, but I've found that more often than not, movie reviews written for this purpose are only funny to the person who wrote them. They rarely operate in the realm of reality; events in the movie are twisted to suit the jokes the writer wants to make, and even obvious things are ignored for the sake of mediocre jokes. Call me crazy, but I prefer that reviews written for this purpose actually deliver on the laughs. I find that they are much funnier when the writer makes fun of the truth, instead of trying to warp what really happens for the sake of their "clever" wit. :P

Personally, I think the fact that bad movie reviews exist is just as bad as the fact that bad movies exist. That is the point of this rant, and so I'm done.

Except now I must reenact a favorite scene from "Chill Factor":

(All dramatic music comes to a complete halt.)
Mason: Put your hand in my pants.
Arlo: O_O?
Mason: ::scooch scooch::

Me: XD

My dad ate an entire block of cheese in two days. >:( I wanted some of that.

Whoever made the mood icon for this set for "hyper" had the wrong idea. "Hyper" face should be hopping all over the place.