I was extremely disappointed by The Darwin Awards.
With a stellar A list cast and great ideas behind it I had expected The Darwin Awards to be a romping comedy but every scene left me feeling more confused. Nothing meshes together and all the stories are disjointed and have little heart thrown behind them. The actors go through their lines with very little conviction. The whole production has a cheap made in my basement feel about it as if Finn Taylor had hired a bunch of school boys to do the editing and special effects.
The Darwin Awards books and website has a very large collection of stories. Finn has chosen to show a few of them but hasn't woven a good story around the accidents that take place. Fiennes and Ryder play a pair of detectives investigating the accidents and a serial criminal. This is an excuse to sell a romantic comedy angle that doesn't work because there is no chemistry between the leads. Fiennes has never been a good comedian and Ryder, well she has good timing but is too quirky and irksome to play a full blown woman's role yet. She still hasn't shed her childlike impish nature. The cameo actors perform much better than the leads. I can't help imagine how much better this movie would have been with a better production team and if the casting was shuffled around and David Arquette played lead.
The Darwin Awards might also offend audiences who will ask themselves why should they laugh at someone's death. We just about all have lost family members through accidents and never laughed about it so why should we laugh at the deaths of unrelated people? If some people like to get off on that fine but I can't see the majority laughing. I am not surprised that the vote for this movie is being manipulated. It is so bad only desperate measures can save it. If it wasn't for these fake votes (average score of 9.4 from 10 IMDb readers outside the US before Sundance and where it hasn't been released?) I would have given it a higher rating. Even worse than this movie is the number of Winona Ryder fans who have tried to get rid of this review for one line of criticism. The rest of the review reflects the same opinions as the other reviews. Freedom of speech, honest opinions and quality motion pictures appear to be lower on their list of concerns than shoplifting.
With a stellar A list cast and great ideas behind it I had expected The Darwin Awards to be a romping comedy but every scene left me feeling more confused. Nothing meshes together and all the stories are disjointed and have little heart thrown behind them. The actors go through their lines with very little conviction. The whole production has a cheap made in my basement feel about it as if Finn Taylor had hired a bunch of school boys to do the editing and special effects.
The Darwin Awards books and website has a very large collection of stories. Finn has chosen to show a few of them but hasn't woven a good story around the accidents that take place. Fiennes and Ryder play a pair of detectives investigating the accidents and a serial criminal. This is an excuse to sell a romantic comedy angle that doesn't work because there is no chemistry between the leads. Fiennes has never been a good comedian and Ryder, well she has good timing but is too quirky and irksome to play a full blown woman's role yet. She still hasn't shed her childlike impish nature. The cameo actors perform much better than the leads. I can't help imagine how much better this movie would have been with a better production team and if the casting was shuffled around and David Arquette played lead.
The Darwin Awards might also offend audiences who will ask themselves why should they laugh at someone's death. We just about all have lost family members through accidents and never laughed about it so why should we laugh at the deaths of unrelated people? If some people like to get off on that fine but I can't see the majority laughing. I am not surprised that the vote for this movie is being manipulated. It is so bad only desperate measures can save it. If it wasn't for these fake votes (average score of 9.4 from 10 IMDb readers outside the US before Sundance and where it hasn't been released?) I would have given it a higher rating. Even worse than this movie is the number of Winona Ryder fans who have tried to get rid of this review for one line of criticism. The rest of the review reflects the same opinions as the other reviews. Freedom of speech, honest opinions and quality motion pictures appear to be lower on their list of concerns than shoplifting.