After a particularly difficult day at work, I decided to empty my brain of any substance whatsoever and go see "American Dreamz."
It was bad. Very, very bad. Bad in ways that made me cringe.
For example, I blinked repeatedly when we saw the terrorist training camp on the Afghan-Pakistani border where everyone spoke English with a generic Middle-Eastern accent.** Sure, sure, it was a comedy, so it's all for fun anyway. But I didn't find that aspect particularly fun, especially since the whole master plot involved a poor young Afghan who just wanted to sing Broadway show tunes, but was asked to strap a bomb onto himself instead. Again - I'm taking comedy too seriously. But in order for me not to do so, the actual shtick has to be funny on SOME level, and this just wasn't.***
Hugh Grant, meanwhile, is sitting dangerously on the fence seperating the young and attractive from the old and creepy. I know he's not actually all that old (46?), but I do think he's too old to be putting the moves on Mandy Moore. They didn't even bother covering up his wrinkles. I normally find his wrinkles sort of cute, but something has shifted in his face and I just don't think he can pull of the The Typical Hugh Grant Character anymore.
And as for the whole presidential side-story: meh. First off, if they're going to make such a fuss over the presidential aspect to this whole gig, they should follow through and make him have a reasonable role at the end of the film. For all of the bruhaha they made over his "enlightenment," he could have had some glorious moment of coolness/intelligence at the end. I won't give away the ending (EVERYBODY DIES!!! Aha hah ah ahah. Ok, just kidding) but I wasn't impressed with the president's realization that he doesn't have to be Dick Cheney's - er I mean, the Chief of Staff's - mignon.
Overall: not a good film. It's summer now, and I still have my unlimited movie pass. I have a bunch of movies I haven't discussed here, and I'm thinking about doing a sub-site (like with the books) that I update once in a blue moon. If I get around to it, I'll update them there.
Do any readers in France know if An Inconvenient Truth or The Heart of the Game will have a public release in France? Both are documentaries that premiered in Cannes, and have been released in the US.
** For a course I recently took on Islam, the professor asked us to think of Hollywood portrayal of Arabs (granted, muslims and Arabs are not the same thing, but he needed a jumping off point, which was, in fact "What is the difference between Arabs and muslims?"). It was rather shocking - something I had considered before but found far more disturbing once I added the collective input of 30+ other people. I saw a movie-montage once (if anybody knows what I'm talking about and could find it, that would be awesome) of all of the Arab villains over the years. It was rather startling. And of course, I realize that Afghanistan is not actually part of the Arab world, but whatever... that doesn't matter to Hollywood. I guess not even to most Americans, as the stereotype is the same throughout the Middle East, and I'd be willing to bet most Americans think that Afghanistan is Arab anyway.
*** I think for this sort of humor to work, it has to be a Leslie Nielson film. Maybe the problem with "American Dreamz" was that it just wasn't campy enough. Or it was extremely campy, but only sporadically. With "The Naked Gun" and its cousins, you never dare take the film seriously, if even for a minute. "American Dreamz" didn't pull this off, just almost, and the combo makes for a bit of a mess.
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