By: Christopher James
No one loves their cliches more than the biopic genre. However, no music biopic has blown through every cliche with such quick and reckless abandon as Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. That’s not necessarily an insult.
Few pop culture icons loom as large as Whitney Houston, “The Voice,” who holds the record for seven consecutive number one singles atop the Billboard Top 100. By virtue of also being a modern celebrity, most people have some concept of Houston. Thus, the biopic spends less time educating people on who Whitney Houston is. In fact, it’s a crash course through her Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it misses out on her soul and motivation - what drove Whitney Houston from the biggest star in the world to death at 48?...
No one loves their cliches more than the biopic genre. However, no music biopic has blown through every cliche with such quick and reckless abandon as Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. That’s not necessarily an insult.
Few pop culture icons loom as large as Whitney Houston, “The Voice,” who holds the record for seven consecutive number one singles atop the Billboard Top 100. By virtue of also being a modern celebrity, most people have some concept of Houston. Thus, the biopic spends less time educating people on who Whitney Houston is. In fact, it’s a crash course through her Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it misses out on her soul and motivation - what drove Whitney Houston from the biggest star in the world to death at 48?...
- 12/31/2022
- by Christopher James
- FilmExperience
By Christopher James
The practice of remaking international films for an English language audience is a lazy process. Though we sometimes get a stray hit like Scorsese’s The Departed, too often we see a film’s teeth and charm whittled down to nothing. A Man Called Otto isn't an abject artistic failure like some of those, but it doesn't bring anything new to its Swedish counterpart, A Man Called Ove. It doesn't feel quite like a Google translate job (most of the American-ized changes work), but definitely only exists because it feels US audiences are unlikely to seek out the Swedish original.
You may think you’ve seen a curmudgeon before, but you haven’t met Otto (Tom Hanks). Every morning he makes his rounds, which includes cleaning up his small neighborhood development, closing the gate on his street and sneering at every smiling “idiot” he comes into contact with.
The practice of remaking international films for an English language audience is a lazy process. Though we sometimes get a stray hit like Scorsese’s The Departed, too often we see a film’s teeth and charm whittled down to nothing. A Man Called Otto isn't an abject artistic failure like some of those, but it doesn't bring anything new to its Swedish counterpart, A Man Called Ove. It doesn't feel quite like a Google translate job (most of the American-ized changes work), but definitely only exists because it feels US audiences are unlikely to seek out the Swedish original.
You may think you’ve seen a curmudgeon before, but you haven’t met Otto (Tom Hanks). Every morning he makes his rounds, which includes cleaning up his small neighborhood development, closing the gate on his street and sneering at every smiling “idiot” he comes into contact with.
- 12/28/2022
- by Christopher James
- FilmExperience
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