Brian's World

Movie Review

Hello. Over break I had the pleasure of enjoying 3 films: Juno, Superbad, and Sweeney Todd. Superbad was on DVD, the rest were in theaters, though I have seen Superbad in theaters. I payed 100% attention during these films, so you cannot attribute these reviews to me falling asleep or doing other things I happen to hate that some people do while watching movies. I am there so I am watching the movie. Oh yes, as a disclaimer.. I reserve the right to completely mess up the spelling of Sweeney Todd, even using McTodd or something like that. It just flows better for me.

I’ve actually taken notes to collect my thoughts, and while I was doing this, I found surprising similarities between Juno and Superbad, which one would expect. Both movies focus on teenage life, through the eyes of a teenager. Both movies has sex as a major component of the story line, however this component exists in two different states… Juno as a triggering event and Superbad as a desired event. I found both movies to be very singular, the stories were told from one point of view and that was that, but going beyond that, the characters in that point of view seemed to have little regard for everyone else. Superbad was clearly about Seth and Evan, Juno was about Juno. To be honest I left both theaters knowing who the characters were, but I couldn’t put a name to their faces.

Superbad took the stereotypical guy view and pushed it off the edge for me. Typically a ‘guy’ point of view involves ‘getting’ the girl. ‘Getting’ is generally left undefined, but I like to define it as establishing a relationship with that person. I know, this may be antiquated and outdate.. but I’m old like that. In Superbad, the ‘guy’ point of view was to participate in one thing and one thing only with that female. Sure, sometimes ‘getting’ the girl might imply that, but I believe it implies the potential for that, not a direct link like Superbad skipped right too. I have strong feelings against the mindset that was presented where these two boys, Seth moreso than Evan, were hoping to ‘establish’ these ‘relationships’ (if you would call them that) for the sole purpose of having someone to do things with for 2 months before they went off to college. Thats just dumb if you ask me. Back to the movie, and off Brian’s moral objections to it. The entire adult party scene that begins when Seth gets ran over is junk. It fits nowhere into the movie. It seems as if the writers had point A and C planned out, and the best they could think up for B was getting hit by a car by a wierd guy. Seriously. And another thing, the dynamic between Foggell and the two police officers was pushed way beyond funny, into desperately stupid, after the first encounter at the bar. Again an instance of A and C, lacking good content to fill in for B. Yes, everyone laughs at it… people laugh at funny stuff, not a nicely flowing storyline, which this movie lacks. I’ve heard people define Superbad as the movie of the modern generation, maybe like American Pie or Animal House might have been defining earlier generations. If this is the case our generation has been defined very poorly, by three modern say stooges who are only able to get away with their jokes through modern day references and colloquialisms.

Juno. Juno, Juno, Juno. Where to begin. First off I was optimistic about Juno. The movie had decent commercials, Michael Cera led me to believe he would be doing a good job, but then bam, another messup. I do like how Juno presents teenage pregnancy in an uplifting tone without being overly positive. While I the movie certainly won’t motivate everyone to go get pregnant, it does offer some hope if thats the positions you happen to be in. To be honest I didn’t mind the beginning of the movie, but I disliked the shift in focus of the movie. Sure, Juno enjoyed spending time at the adoptive parents place hanging out with that guy, but I wanted to see something besides that. I think it would have been more valuable to actually have the main focus of the plot be about Juno, not this guy and his wife’s martial woes. To me it feels as if the writers or whoever led this thing knew what they wanted to talk about it, but failed to jump deep enough, and when they got stuck they resorted to this backup plot about the adoptive parents. The movie failed to explain a lot of everything, while we saw several flashback scenes that were quite tasteful compared to Superbad, these flashbacks lacked words or valuable narrations. Yes I could figure out what was going on but no, I could not figure out what this meant in respect to the big picture. I enjoyed the family dynamics the movie captured, but I felt as if Juno’s friend dynamics were lacking. Clearly she had some interaction with that girl she was friends with and Bleeker (I used IMDB to find that name), but we weren’t exposed to them at all. Close, but no cigar.

Sweeney Todd is a horse of a different color.. specifically red. I don’t think I’ve seen such a bloody, gory movie, that has a plot and singing. I expected some blood and gore, but I didn’t expect it to be every single time someone sat down in his chair. And then when he cut them there wasn’t just a little blood, there was so much blood I was surprised it didn’t stain the camera lenses. At least Sweeney McTodd had a plot, which I guess was a little better than the first two movies. I felt as if they were trying to steer me away from watching the movie, making me fear the opening of any scene may start with someones neck getting slit and blood squirts everywhere.

On a positive note, I am excited for ‘Untraceable’ because its about the internet. Who doesn’t like movies about the internet?

Feel free to offer your opinions on the movies, I’m sure they would balance out mine.