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- First reviewJuly 18, 2010
- Last reviewJuly 18, 2010
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Seagoddess's Reviews
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Dizzy, not dazzled
PostedJuly 18, 2010
Seagoddess
from Westchester, NY
We reimagined "Inception," my husband and I, as we exited the theater one and a quarter hours into the movie. We thought: perhaps different casting, such as Russell Crowe or Harrison Ford in the lead, perhaps a screenplay written by someone like the late Michael Crichton... Amidst all the rapidly evolving visuals, we disliked the writer who, like a deus ex machina, dispensed with suspense,etc.and dictated the plot to the audience with one contrivance after another. The quest plot and standard mythological plot points were brought to cinema by writers drinking deep from the Joseph Campbell spring, and the spring has been drunk dry. Movies relying on it are self-referential now to other Campbell-inspired movies. Our minds feel starved for some "real frogs" in their "imaginary ponds." The ostensible challenge, if one could believe the critics, was for the audience member to stay with the story of dreams and mazes. Like "Memento," apparently this can be very entertaining tp some moviegoers. My husband and I walked out of "Memento" too. Still, it crossed my mind that I would have found Page much more interesting playing the Mal role and Mal (Cotillard) playing Page's role. Cast this way, Page would have been more believably Mal, and the dream architect less boringly wonky, an especially important change, since the latter occupies so much screen time. As protagonist, Leonardo di Caprio's is too lightweight for this dark,complex character. In his effort to play the "baritone" rather than his natural range of "tenor," he seems to work overmuch to compensate for miscasting. He makes acting look like hard work. He does not look right or sound right for the "hero" or person on a quest. Baby face and light voice are just the beginning of the challenges he works so hard to overcome. But he never arrives at the nuanced behavior of the man of paradoxes he is supposed to embody. Watching an overwrought movie with overwrought central performance and CGI on speed -- in the hot summertime, in a stuffy movie theater (White Plains Cinema De Lux, NY), two tired people left the movie theater and began to realize that the something is becoming as extinct as the dodo bird, filmmaking with a good "book." The movie is drunk on its own pyrotechnics through which the actors move like puppets. Presumably that was the intention of the brilliant minds that created it. So, in doing a dazzling job of presenting rats in a maze, the movie can be recommended for a gadget-savvy, popular-culture-consuming demographic we would deplore, if our children were not so much part of it.
No, I do not recommend this movie.
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