Change Your Image
traptc
Reviews
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Remake that rips the heart and soul out of the original
Suppose, one day, a group of film makers decided to make a remake of "Die Hard." Only, instead of having John McClain save the day by shooting Hans, they have him save the day by buying Hans flowers and serenading him with love songs. Afterwards, John and Hans embrace passionately and go paintballing together.
Well, then you'd have a good idea of what I thought of "10 Things," a remake of "Taming of the Shrew" where they try to make the "shrew" too sympathetic to be shrewish, and there isn't any actual "taming" involved. True, I doubt that the studios would have allowed Pat to tame Kat by starving her out until she learned to say "Thank you," but the LEAST he could have done in this movie was play hard to get.
The original story had potential. For instance, it could have been a story about how nice guys will be viewed as doormats. Instead, the filmmakers go the exact opposite route and turn this into a cliche ridden feature with no real sense of truth. Instead of trying to "tame" Katrina, Pat wins her over by trying to be all sweet and mushy. Any edge that the story might have had is lost, and the film is reduced to being yet another teen movie for 14 year old girls.
If you liked it, I wouldn't be surprised, plenty of people did. But as for me, I'd have to rate it a zero. A remake that misses the main idea of the original is a pretty poorly done remake.
Bobby Loves Mangos (1998)
Utter Nonsense, the harder you think, the madder you get.
The problem with this movie is that it doesn't ring true on either an emotional scale or a rational one.
The key to a good twist ending is that the ending allows everything to make sense. For instance, you can watch the end of "The Sixth Sense," and suddenly you realize why everyone behaves the way they do. Unfortunately, instead of allowing the story to make more sense hindsight, the "twist" ending in BLM refuses to stand up to any sort of scrutiny whatsoever.
But the greatest flaw in "Bobby Loves Mangos" is the fact that all reasonability seems to be sacrificed for the sake of a catchy title.
Spoilers:
The ending revelation that the title refers to is the fact that Bobby isn't allergic to mangos, even though the tape says that he is. Now, this sound like a relatively HUGE flaw in his father's plan, now doesn't this? I mean, assuming that they behave as normal and give Bobby a mango, his whole scam is blown wide open, and they send cops searching for him and the alternate route.
But wait. The plan works, because the idiotic secretary decides to conveniently buy out all the mangos, thus preventing them from ever proving the tape to be the fraud that it is. She does this because she doesn't want Bobby to get sick, like the tape says that he will. Even though, according to that same tape, Bobby getting sick is the only thing that'll save his life. And even though her plan doesn't even make sense, because in all seriousness, there shouldn't be only one fruit vendor in a given city.
Given how the story laid out, there was NO reason for the father to go out of his way to fabricate a story about mango allergies. The ONLY thing that such a fabrication could have done was prove him a fraud. If he needed an excuse of why Bobby was the sole survivor, he could have just insisted he fell off his bicycle or something.
Given how the story is laid out, there was NO reason to reveal that Bobby wasn't actually allergic. What did this actually add? The fact that we now know that the tape is a fake? Nope, Bobby has been kidnapped at that point, so we already know that. The fact that the Principal was a moron for falling for it? No, buying into time travel was what made him a moron, the mango allergy had nothing to do with it.
Seriously, you could take out all the mango references, and the father's plan would have worked just as well. The only thing lost would be the catchy title.
And therein lies the rub. Imagine if "The Shawshank Redemption" decided that "Killer Klowns from The Sahara Desert" would be a more catchy title, and they adjusted the storyline to include a subplot where Andy and Red fight Killer Klowns from the Sahara Desert in order to support the title. It'd suck, right?
Well, so does this "Bobby Loves Mangos."
2 out of 10. It'll keep you guessing til the end, but after that, you got nothing. Worse, you get negative points due to the "twist" ending."
Helen of Troy (2003)
There's a difference between myth and literature
As a big fan of mythology and the Iliad, I'm pretty surprised by how nitpicky people are being on the details. Having taken a "Mythology in Film" course, I can safely state the following:
1) It's not supposed to be "The Iliad," it's "Helen of Troy." 2) It's a film. Made 3,000 years later. Targeted at an entirely different audience. 3) Greek mythology tends to be greatly inconsistent anyway, depending on your source. 4) Patroklus is never mentioned to justify Achilles's rage against Hector. So what? If Achilles hadn't withdrawn from war, he would've killed Hector anyways. And having him withdrawing and re-entering into the war would only have distracted from the main story (Helen) without really adding anything.
There's a difference between myths and literature. One can stray from the literature of a story while staying true to the mythology of it. The Iliad itself was constantly being reinvented by generations of oral poets who changed the story every time they performed it. Back in ancient times, a person who merely recited the story verbatim would be considered an inferior, because he'd merely be a copycat rather than a storyteller.
When it comes to the spirit and tradition, "Helen" shines. For instance, in the Iliad, Achilles compares Agamemnon taking Brisius to Paris taking Helen. In the film, the comparison is made literal. Brilliant. Then you have themes and scenes taken from the Orestia. Three or four different ideas are brought together in the span of one.
"Helen" may be a bit loose with the details, but it shows a good understanding why those details took place, and stays true to capturing their motivations. Just because they don't follow the material exactly doesn't mean they don't know it really, really well. The same is true for a lot of other film productions, from "Desire Under the Elms" to "O Brother Where Art Thou" to "Medea" and even "Clash of the Titans."
All and all, a good flick, I was pleasantly surprised. My only real complaints was the casting of Achilles (I assume they were combining his character with Ajax/Diomedes) and the fact that Hector never gets to actually beat anyone in combat (That was disappointing, to say the least).