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Misbehaviour (2008)
Ain't Misbehaving
Exploitation films have always been a little dodgy, relying on lurid content and a double-consciousness that allows viewers to disclaim the titillating elements that drive them to watch the movie in the first place. In many cases (one thinks of directors like Russ Meyer, Michael Findlay, and Andy Milligan), the "morality tale" or "social" element of the film is a barely perceptible "justification" for its questionable content. Directors like Tarantino and Rodriguez have been able to tap into the content while maintaining audience engagement through higher production values, but for the most part directors who have explored the possibilities of exploitation make up for their lower-budget productions with creativity, with, and transgressive content.
Alas, the same cannot be said for MISBEHAVIOR, which delves into the realm of S&M at a school for girls to produce what its writer-director calls "a truly strong psychological drama with numerous twists and turns" that "will have you on the edge of your seat." Whether this description of the film is an honest statement of the film-maker's intent or a merely disingenuous marketing gesture, the film offers neither strong psychology nor surprising thrills. Instead, what we have is a muddle of abysmal acting (to call it lackluster would only dignify it), incompetent filming, and sophomoric writing.
So why even give it 3 stars?
I give this film 3 stars for the movie that COULD HAVE BEEN. The idea, despite its generic "naughty girls in boarding school" basis, is a good one. A plucky teacher attempts to save girls who are being abused by a deviant teacher and soon finds herself drawn into a wider criminal scheme that involves personal obsessions, administrative blindness, and what we might call "corporate interests" that go far beyond the school.
Unfortunately, writer-director Michel Zgarka is not up to the task of his own material. The plotting of the film is entirely disjointed, the characters one-dimensional, and the cinematography and editing flawed at best. The film is not helped by a half-finished score (also by Zgarka) that seems at different times to be channeling OCEANS ELEVEN, American PIE, and DEAD POETS SOCIETY.
In keeping with the schizophrenic score, the film doesn't ever seem to know what it wants to be--sexploitation, caper film, family drama, and a number of other unfulfilled aspirations. Add to that the uninspired acting, poor timing and enervating dialogue (even the fights are dull), and rotten cinematography. Just for the sake of an example, in one scene two girls walk down a hallway gossiping about their sexy biology teacher. Their conversation is lugubrious and awkward, as if they were trying to remember their lines; meanwhile, the camera tracks in front of them--but they stroll along as if in slow motion, and in many places come to a complete stop.
These elements, and not the overall story, take the life out of the film. Scenes of "abuse" carry little visual interest; if they weren't between teacher and student, you'd wonder what all the fuss was about. Certainly enough to create a scandal, but not even a fraction enough to make a movie.
In terms of the acting, it would be hard to decide who deserves the distinction of the worst performance. I'd be tempted to give the honors to Kim Prangley, whose fake screaming, crying, and drinking jags as the dysfunctional mother set a new low in telegraphing. A close second would be Julie Katherine Turcotte, except that her absurd performance is helped by the fact that her character, the Nanny-With-the-Heart-of-Gold, is more or less completely extraneous anyway.
The worst that can be said of this movie is that it isn't even good enough to make fun of. One imagines the robots of MST3K sitting in awed silence at the screening. But perhaps I should watch it again with friends to make a final determination.
Still, I watched it all the way through, because I was seduced by the possibility that the story MIGHT JUST get better. It never does, and it may be uncharitable of me to point that out. But I surrendered about an hour and 37 minutes of my life to this clunker, and I will have my day.
On the other hand, it could have been worse. Think of the time spent by the poor slobs on the production!
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
The only desolation here is in the source material
The six stars that I give this film are all attributable to strength of whatever original material that survives. Peter Jackson and his co- writers have slid down the slippery slope of the Mountain of Adaptation and landed somewhere in the Slough of Fan Fiction. If it were good fiction, I wouldn't have so much of an issue. But it's not. And it's there at the cost of original material left undeveloped.
I would be surprised, for instance, to learn that the company spent more than 10 minutes screen time in Beorn's house. Jackson doesn't dare leave it out, but he has no idea what to do with it. Likewise with the spider sequence--much of Bilbo's cleverness and resolve in rescuing the dwarfs from the arachnids is eliminated and he's reduced to the plucky hobbit-cum-action hero who for some unspecified reason is the only member of the company able to wield his weapon effectively in the webs.
Even more disturbing, Bilbo's singular encounter with Smaug, a high point of the book, is cheapened by a full frontal assault by ten of the dwarfs (three of them have been left behind tending the sick Kili whose pretty little elf-nurse is rushing to his bedside after slicing through a commando squadron of orc SEALS). The sequence culminates in Thorin Oakenshield racing in a wheelbarrow along a river of molten gold to stop the dragon before he takes his revenge on the dwarfs by ravaging the irrelevant and dwarf-less Lake Town.
Why Smaug can't simply kill all ten of the dwarfs when he's destroyed an entire kingdom full of seasoned warriors only 60 years previously is left to the decimated imagination of an audience overfed on CGI.
Of course, Tolkien gives a very good reason for Bilbo's escape: Smaug doesn't know what he is and gets distracted by Bilbo's flattery while Bilbo, partially shielded by his invisibility ring, grabs some treasure and runs for his life. But in mega-production newspeak, that sort of thing isn't cinematic.
I beg to differ. It's mythic, and that makes it cinematic. In Tolkien, the scene is pure Beowulf. A thief steals a few items from the dragon's treasure hoard, and the dragon wakes and wreaks havoc on every living creature in the surrounding countryside. It's practically archetypal. But Jackson and his ilk are superior to archetypes.
Jackson's contempt for his source material is only slightly greater than his contempt for his actors. He has an enviable cast, who are all reduced to doing little more than realize the visual concepts of John Howe and Alan Lee. This, I suppose, at least ensures that the movie has a great look--and, like the first one and the LOTR trilogy, it does. But there's little else. When Martin Freeman is actually asked to act, as he is in the sequences where Bilbo meets Gollum and Smaug, he's quite good, as is Andy Serkis. But there's precious little acting that goes on otherwise. Richard Armitage as Thorin glowers and sneers his way through his scenes, mostly because he's been misdirected (or possibly, more charitably considered, uncorrected) by Jackson. Orlando Bloom shows up as Legolas (no worries, as elves age backwards--or was that Merlin?) and seems even more intent on his image as the cool bad-ass elf hottie than he was in the trilogy (although one wonders how much more he has to work to get laid these days). Even Ian McKellan spends most of the time trying to look either wise and grandfatherly or like a cranky old man, only occasionally sharing a Shakespearean bellow as he rebukes evil in, presumably, elvish or Betazoid or Norwegian or something.
As long as they have the look, Jackson doesn't seem to care about what they say or emote. Instead, he gleefully uses the camera to simulate a computer game--and boy howdy, just wait until it comes out. Now, I don't want to seem like a crank. As a game, this one will probably be pretty fun. But crikey, stop pretending it's a movie. Because it ain't. And it ain't the Hobbit anymore, either.
Except, like I said, for the parts that remain. The desolation. One can hope that the future will hold a technology that allows users of digital movies to easily cut the film apart and put it back together, perhaps in some semblance of what a REAL version of the Hobbit might actually look like.
But until then, we have this. The film reeks of Jackson, Jackson, and more Jackson. Evidently, he wasn't humbled at all by his epic failure to remake King Kong, an endeavor for which he still stands in the shadow of the great Merian C. Cooper like an anemic little boy wearing his soldier-daddy's clothes.
Living with that sort of failure must breed bitterness. Too bad he's chosen to take it out on Tolkien, another giant whom he admires but is too arrogant to embrace. Instead, he's taken a great children's classic and marked it like a junkyard dog.
The sad thing is that I'll probably go see the third, and buy them all as well. Namarie.