Change Your Image
christian.mckiernan
Reviews
Andy Richter Controls the Universe (2002)
The Emperor's New Mumu
Television is at an all time low, everyone is starved for even the essence of entertainment, and calling this charisma-free star and laugh-free sit-com anything approaching "brilliant" is a testament to that desperation. Bland banal pap that, for some reason, is dubbed "original" and "edgy."
Moonlight Mile (2002)
grief, Hollywood style!!
**THIS REVIEW MAY MAKE NO SENSE IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE** I'll tell you, if you're going to lose a daughter, it's best to do it on screen, where you can stay quirky and feisty throughout the grieving process, and then realize that all it takes to "get your groove back" is a poorly written, overly-sentimental outburst during an only-in-Hollywood courtroom scene that makes you realize that, in fact, you can HANDLE THE TRUTH! The duration of grief seems to be about a month, and you're allowed to sleep with other women in the days that follow the death of your ex-fiance as long as you have a constant look of saucer-eyed befuddlement on your face and are socially awkward in every situation (because if you can't actually complete a sentence, what girl can resist you?) I think this movie is getting treated with kid gloves because of the real life tragedy that writer/director Brad Siberling went through, but it doesn't seem that a moment of tangible, relatable, or realistic sorrow has made the transition from his experience to the screen (except for Sarandon's breakdown, which was the single moment approaching realism).
And it's stuffed full of that dressing-up-a-pig Wes Anderson trick of piping in quirky tunes throughout to mask an ultimately shrug worthy movie. Strip away all the ornaments, and it has the (lack of?) soul of your typical Hollywood flick: everything can be tied up neatly and overcome in no time flat, even the senseless death of your daughter. Yuck.
Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Father of the Bride goes Indian
I saw this movie at the Paris Theatre in NYC, a real art house mecca, and the crowd was resigned to love this flick well before the houselights darkened. You know when you're at a movie and you can hear a crowd straining to laugh, to prove that they "get it?" You'll hear plenty of that at Monsoon Wedding. Not that there aren't some genuinely funny moments, but while no one in attendance at Monsoon Wedding would dare admit it, my face broke into a smile once or twice during "Dude, Where's My Car?" as well, but no one would call that movie "a joyous snapshot of adolescence, misonthropy be damned!" (okay, so I sometime have a problem with the art house crowd.) Anyway, this is the Indian version of Father of the Bride, plain and simple, with soap opera subplots thrown in, and a goofball comic relief character that would have been right at home in a Farelly brothers freakfest. This movie is passable entertainment that is being exhalted to brilliant because it has a foreign pedigree. If you disagree, take every subplot and apply it to an American family, and you'll see just how unspectacular this flick is (and sometimes kind of reprehensible, 'cause all they do to the pedophile is kick him out of the wedding party). So in closing, rent "Dude, Where's My Car."