A Tale of Two Movies
Last night the wife and I decided to celebrate Friday night and the end of a long week and spend some quality time together by sitting on our butts and staring at a flickering screen. This is what we beheld:
The Other Sister We did something I don't think I've ever done before: we turned a movie off after only 15 minutes. I will usually watch any movie, no matter how bad, until completion, just so I can be sure it really was as bad as the first 15 minutes. Last night was different.
The primary reason we stopped watching was because the wife has a great deal of experience working with people like Carla Tate (played by Juliette Lewis) and could not find her performance believable at all. My experienced wife believed there was no way Carla could have been as functional as she was portrayed in the movie.
A secondary reason why we stopped watching it was because I thought the Tate family wealth was displayed with the sympathetic subtlety of Bill Maher. Maybe I'm too class conscious, or maybe I'm sinfully jealous, but it seemed that the Tate family wealth was unnecessarily prominent for the given story (for "necessarily and tastefully prominent", see Sabrina). Any potential sympathy or identification with Carla's family was visually drowned out by another gratuitous shot of their huge house, Mercedes, or ornate dining room.
I supposed that if I had sat through the duration of the film, the overt wealth and strange performance would have been resolved in a nice, clean fashion and the movie would have redeemed itself. A friend told me this morning that Giovanni Ribisi's performance was quite good. And many commentators on imdb's comment board raved about the emotional depth and impact of the movie.
Ultimately, though, the reason why we were watching the movie in the first place was to enjoy a laid-back evening snuggling on the couch in front of a generally edifying movie. The Other Sister failed in that setting. So we watched
Rudy, which did an excellent job at providing that service. Lord of the Rings' Samwise Gamgee did a good job at portraying the person everyone knows who happens to be just a little "off" and overly intense, but nevertheless a great guy to be around. Furthermore, the movie, at least according to the documentary of the real Rudy's life, was admirably faithful to the true story, as opposed to another movie that will remain nameless.
My only significant complaint is that, at times, the melodrama was a little heavy handed. But it was still within the bounds of a good drama film. Admittedly, I have a very low "cheesiness threshold."
Nevertheless, if you are not moved by the story of a guy who worked his way out of a life in a foundry to play football for Notre Dame, (more importantly) get an education from Notre Dame, and ultimately have his own web site, then you truly are a cold-hearted jerk and there is no hope for you.
Final Rating: 7.5 of 10
Note to self: Must check into imdb's affiliate program to see about becoming a paid sponsor
September 13, 2003 01:10 PM