Friday, March 06, 2009

Amen


Part of an occasional series in which try to soften the sting of particularly harsh reviews by appending the phrase: "Garnish with Fluffernutter." Why? Because we can. Today's entry comes from the review of Watchmen in The New York Times:
Speaking of acts of congress, "Watchmen" features this year's hands-down winner of the bad movie sex award, superhero division: a moment of bliss that takes place on board Nite Owl's nifty little airship, accompanied by Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." (By the way, can we please have a moratorium on the use of this song in movies? Yes, I too have heard there was a secret chord that David played, and blah blah blah, but I don't want to hear it again. Do you?) Garnish with Fluffernutter.

I blame Shrek for this, BTW. The song has been around a long time, but Shrek was the first big Hollywood movie to use it in an emotional scene (actually, the John Cale cover, not the Leonard Cohen original). Since then, it's been used over and over and over and over. I don't think subtlety is at the top of the to-do list for Watchmen's makers. To indicate the passing of time during a montage they use ... wait for it! ... "The Times They Are a-Changin'."

4 comments:

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

Caught Watchemen last night. I would say that I was left feeling... whelmed. Neither under, nor over-whelmed. Just plain whelmed.

My complaints with the film -- the "acting" of two of the players... Ozymandias and Laurie Jupiter. They were pretty affected and wooden. I really liked Rorschach. Dreiberg was okay.

Overall, I'm glad I saw it in the theater rather than on DVD since I am so familiar with the source material, but I wonder what people not familiar with the graphic novel will make of it.

Jim Donahue said...

I remember liking, but not loving, the graphic novel. I started rereading it over the weekend and am, so far, whelmed.

Posol'stvo the Medved said...

It is incredibly dated. I heard that Darren Aronofsky was slated to direct the movie and he wanted to update it, and so was (obviously) fired.

I think that would have been a much better film.

Oh, and I can't think of a single movie in recent memory that did nearly as bad a job of song selection as this. None of the choices matched the visual mood.

said...

AMEN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7iQRFP_e90