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tarma-73068
Reviews
Men at Work (1990)
Forgettable at best, don't waste your time on this one
Low effort humor that fails over and over to be funny, ridiculously overused character stereotypes (crazed veteran, slacker heroes, establishment represented by clean cut jerk cops, 'feisty' woman who's not quite feisty enough to tell her stalker to get lost, or to not get kidnapped and be the motivation for the slacker hero to hero it up), hack written 'romance' that blossoms from the usual creepy beginnings of that type, such as stalking and breaking into her apartment and lying about who he is when he's caught, and a plot that aspires to paper thin. Why didn't the politician go straight to the police? Why didn't the killers kill him right away? Why didn't they leave the body on the ground once they discovered it had been strangled, therefore leaving them out of it? Why didn't the love interest call the cops a thousand times between finding a stranger in her house and being locked into a can to be murdered? It's a lazy movie in every sense of the word, and I turned it off after just short of an hour - which is about half an hour after I stopped watching and started wandering around the house getting things done. Yes, even as background noise this thing is too stupid to tolerate.
Cinderella (2015)
Where "brave" means accepting that an abusive life is your fate, and "kind" means "letting people hurt and use you as much as they want"
Disclaimer: the animated version has never been high on my list of "great movies". I actively sought out "fighting" heroines. I saw Cinderella, but it holds no nostalgia for me. I will also begin by mentioning another recent remake: Maleficent. I appreciate what they tried to do, but I don't think it really succeeded. BUT AT LEAST THEY TRIED.
Remake-Cinderella is not just AS bland as animated-Cinderella. She's BLANDER. There's nothing to grab on to. The worst part was that the small bits they tried to change made it so much worse. E.G., "Be kind and have courage". I saw a lot of "lie down like a doormat", but that is NOT the same thing as being "kind". If it were, "nice guy" wouldn't be a (justifiably) derisive term. Letting other people walk over you is not an admirable trait. Worse, it leaves you in great danger of being the victim of an abuser. Case in point, Cinderella HERSELF, so I am really angry that they tried to romanticize that character trait. If ANYTHING that should have been expanded on: that you can be kind and still fight for your own happiness. But it's not. The idea that "be nice" means "do what others tell you to" keeps getting pushed through the whole movie, along with the equally repugnant second half of the moral, "and eventually you get rewarded". Case in point, Kit falls for Cindy because she's hot OH we mean because she told him to stop hunting. So, that quick 30 second 'reason' apparently glossed over the whole "falling in love at first sight is a BAD idea" message that they JUST FINISHED giving us in Frozen (a MUCH better film for children, with enough entertainment for adults as well, and a fantastic message about how to be nice AND still say "no" to people treating you badly). BIG step back there, but okay, fine, moving on.
The change that bothered me most was the movie's excuse for Cindy staying. In the original, there wasn't really a reason. Unspoken was "she has nowhere else to go". That's something one can discuss with kids. "In Cinderella's day there were no shelters, no police or lawyers or legal aid, no advocates to defend victims of this sort of abuse." GREAT opening for "what would you do if someone tried to hurt or bully you?" But in this movie they had a friend ask her why she didn't leave. And did she say "because I'm afraid to", which would have made sense for a victim of abuse? No. Did she say "because I have nowhere to go", which, same time frame as cartoon, so same ability to discuss? NO. No, their solution to "why can't Cindy leave" is "my parents would want me to stay in this abusive situation." Why? BECAUSE OF THE HOUSE. WHYYYYY, Disney? I nearly had a fit at that line. The intro portrays Cindy's parents as loving! Doting! Wanting the best for her! Maybe Cindy's mom encouraging Cindy to keep fantasizing as a way to ignore harsh reality should have been a warning sign. But I mean, I'm nearly 40 and I still fantasize, but if somebody tried to sign me up for indentured servitude, I'd walk. If somebody tore my dress off, I'd call the cops. And if somebody locked me up an attic, I'd climb down the walls or scream my head off the first time someone came near, not prance around the attic telling myself "well at least I had ONE happy day that one time I dared defy my captors that I can fantasize about forever and ever and ever or at least until I work myself into an early unmarked grave", without ever getting the loud screaming hint of SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY DEFYING AGAIN coming from my subconscious. But Cindy is portrayed with a modern attitude of "I'm a liberated confident woman" and yet unable AND unwilling to fight OR flee, and the romanticizing of her staying is what I HATE.
Yes, the movie was gorgeous. Colorful and well dressed (both costumes and sets), it was a pleasure to see. But the story was NOT. The one exception (I have noted that even those who disliked the movie liked) is Cate Blanchett. I don't know if she's stupendous, or if there was so little competition that she HAD to stand out. But I really enjoyed her part, both for her costumes and her acting. Beautiful.
Unfortunately, that's all I got out of the movie. The rest was watching Cinderella get pushed around by the world at large. Her mother and her father and her stepmother and her stepsisters and her prince tell her what to do, and she does. Eventually pure luck sends her falling into the arms of a prince she's spoken to for MAYBE a couple hours before deciding to marry, and we're back where we started – a movie filmed in 2015 that tells little girls "accept physical, emotional, verbal and mental abuse, and if you're GOOD ENOUGH, you get a prince." Um, wow.
Side note: I sought out negative reviews to see what other people thought. There were very few of them at the time, in contrast to the positives. AND YET on every single negative review that allowed comments, I saw people who loved the movie leave awful comments. The worst ones are those that insult and then argue Cindy is "a good role model". Really? Cause "be nice" was her BIG THING. Two words. And according to those comments, 'a simple lesson for children'. And yet I couldn't seem to find ANY dissenting comments which managed it. More, they seemed to take the tone of the ugly stepsisters. Which IMO just goes to prove that this movie has no lesson for anyone.
Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005)
Sweet, but a cheaply sentimental ending loses it some stars
I marked this review for spoilers, but I'd like to reiterate that I do spoil a major character ending further on in this review. Don't read after the next paragraph if you want to avoid.
Watching Bob Hoskins and Judi Dench on screen together was, I admit, extremely satisfying. Their characters are fun and funny and they manage to make two characters with quite prickly exteriors very likable. Oh, and let me not forget the scenes with Dench and Christopher Guest, which range from cute to hysterical. As for the film itself, the music is good, the sets pretty, but I was in the end not very satisfied with it. Having said that, and before I go onto that rather large spoiler, I must note that I still rewatch it on occasion specifically because the flaw of the movie doesn't overpower my love of watching Dench, Hoskins and Guest, or the pleasure of the musical numbers, which are very nicely done, and from what I understand accurately reflect the sort of themes the real Van Damm created.
Dench and Hoskins' storyline is good, but the side story of Maureen - and how it's worked into Dench's storyline - was just such too mawkish for my tastes. I dislike it when they kill off a character just to drag sentiment into a story - it just feels cheap and tends to dampen my enjoyment of a film when that happens. This was a pretty good example of that. There was no real reason for her storyline - her character was sweet, her scenes very pretty, but then she gets offed at the end just so Dench's character can make a pretty little speech that keeps the Windmill from closing down. That, for me, is what takes it from a movie I rate highly and recommend to friends to a movie that I watch for the good parts, but generally don't bother bringing up in recommendation discussions.