Change Your Image
antoine-desgagnes
Reviews
We Blew It (2017)
Disguising a fanboy exercise: Not bad, but definitely goes nowhere.
How did the United States change from Easy Rider to Donald Trump? The case is solved before the 12th minute. The second interviewee shown in this movie was a conservative biker in 1969, he has been suffering impoverishment and voted for Trump in 2016.
That film starts with Michael Mann talking both about the 60-70s era and about the 2016 political situation. It ends with posthumous Tobe Hooper bitter postmortem on his generation. Hooper's words did provide a title to Thoret. Mann's words gave him the occasion to disguise his fanboy exercise into a film talking about the transition between Easy Rider and Donald Trump.
Thoret is an obvious fan of old-school "cinéma de genre américain" (American genre cinema) and travelled to the United States to interview some of his favourite artists before their approaching death. In the end, we don't hear most of them talking about what was the 2016 political situation.
Most of the interviews in this film are interesting in themselves, especially those with ordinary people. This is then not unpleasing to watch but is paradoxically frustrating. Having more footage of Mann in the last 15 minutes is salvatory because he's the most transcending of all those interviewed filmmakers.
Swim (2021)
Another soulless unambitious product from The Asylum
Yes, 1 on 10 is harsh considering there's some entertainment value in the last 30 minutes where there's genuine tension. But even there, you have to forget the CGI water and the fact it's one of those The Asylum movies.
Let's be clear this is not the funny type of CGI water. This movie wasn't crippled by the lack of funding. This is the output of a project that has always rejected artistic and technical ambitions.
The only possible choice under constraint I can see is the casting of a healthy half-50's actor to play the elderly ill grandfather. They probably neede someone with enough energy to support a crunched shooting schedule. No double, higher insurance fees or special safety concerns.
You can find this movie very funny if you don't know the Asylum and Sharknado. This is reverse Sharnkado. Only one shark, only a small group of people endangered by the shark. Swim was written by the man who directed the Sharknado saga. The nuclear family depicted in Swim is virtually the same than in Sharknado.
Back then, I saw some satyirical intents in Sharknado and other shark movies from The Asylum. I though casting Tara Reid as mother of adult children was to mock Hollywood. Almost ten years later, they casted 39-year-old actress Jennifer Field to play the mother of a teenage son and a young adult daughter. That can't be satyrical anymore. It's like some very bland trolling.
This movie isn't funny. There are a very few punchlines and gags and they don't land. They aren't failed attempts, but mechanical insertions. This movie doesn't try anything. So it can't even be accidentally funny.
It could be charming if there was something a bit organical. When you know The Asylum's signature, you can't find anything organical in Swim.
Swim isn't an uninhibited B-movie, a satyre or, so-bad-that-it-is-good or a decent generic horror action flix. This is a standardized product. The Asylum's standards aren't there to ensure quality, but efficiency.