Saturday, February 16, 2008
Oscar Reviews Part 4: Atonement
Picture this scene: An old woman is walking a dog down a foggy street in London. She enters a phone booth... but it isn't a phone booth, it's Tardis and the old woman is really Doctor Who in disguise. Doctor Who exits the booth and finds himself in the middle of a vast alien spacecraft. He unravels his scarf and whips it out, turning it into a light saber. Only now he's no longer Doctor Who but Batman. Batman with a light saber? He discovers an oval portal guarded by a shimmering red force field. He bashes at the force field again and again, struggling to enter the oval portal....
This isn't a scene from Atonement. This is a scene from a dream I had after I fell asleep watching what is quite possibly the most boring movie ever made.
Even the characters appear to be fighting sleep.Director Joe Wright has succeeded in combining the most tiresome aspects of Upstairs Downstairs with the most emasculating aspects of The Notebook and, for good measure, a twist ending more cliched than M.Night Shyamalan on his worst day.
The sad thing is that, due to the PSWEA* factor I identified last year, this movie is in serious danger of winning Oscars for acting.
The only thing that might save us from such a travesty is that the characters rarely, if ever, shout. Instead, they use that upper class Edwardian style of speech in which people seem to SPEAK IN CAPITAL LETTERS while making their eyes go wide but never actually increasing the decibels of their voices.
Save your money. Dead boring.
* PSWEA - People Shouting With English Accents, the gold standard of Great Acting in Hollywood
posted by Mentok @ 11:14 p.m.,
2 Comments:
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At 3:22 p.m.,
Rick said...
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The bad thing about earbuds is that I tend to laugh outloud and give away the fact that I am wasting time.
Sounds like Atonement for you was like Bridges of Madison County for me - one of the few movies I've ever been so bored by that I actually got up and left. I believe I'll take a pass... -
At 9:51 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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To the best of my recollection, I have never walked out of a movie, but I was sorely tempted with this one. Half an hour into it, I already knew I'd had enough of what they were selling.
