The Last Song (I Hope) // May 18, 2010

On one fateful day in May, I was all set to watch an obviously non-cerebral, funny-ha-ha Filipino film called Here Comes the Bride. While I wasn’t buzzing with excitement and anticipation, I was, on some base level, looking forward to it. I mean, I guess. I wasn’t prepared to arrive at the cinema and… be faced with Miley’s big mug.

But, alas, the world has its ways of turning a night filled with the potential of senseless humor into one filled with a lot of confusion and questions (i.e. “Why?” times infinity, and “How did you get made, movie?”).

As a movie person (not a buff, just someone who enjoys watching movies in general), I’ve come to the realization that I shouldn’t really expect much from Nicholas Sparks adaptations, especially those that he’s written to maturate Hannah Montana’s “squeaky-clean image.”

There are several things that are “wrong” with the movie, and very little “redemptive” elements. The characters were, in fan-fictional terms, “Mary Sues”¹ with certain character quirks meant to wow the audience, but resulted in turning me and Raymond into a groan-y and eye-roll-y mess. Oh, she loves sea turtles and reads Tolstoy on the beach, oh, he loves sea turtles and quotes Tolstoy in its original, untranslated text. Give me a frakking break.

The movie was so unremarkable that I needed to Wikipedia the main characters’ names just to be sure that I remember them. (It turns out that I do.) Ronnie, played by Miley Cyrus, is this rebel-IDGAF-but I’m talented on the inside classical pianist with a penchant for the environment, lost causes and shoplifting. She meets Will (Liam Whatshisface) when he is playing beach volleyball and crashes into her and her milkshake. Cue painfully unfunny banter.

She got into Juilliard School², but doesn’t want to go because of Daddy Issues with Greg Kinnear (who was awesome, obviously). He got into Columbia, but is being pressured by mommy and daddy to go to Vanderbilt instead, as it is their family tradition. Oh, my sorrowful life. What a frakking tragedy.

The movie stretches to great lengths, focusing on an on-again-off-again, I-love-you-no-I-don’t love affair, complete with random, hormonal outbursts care of Miley. The supporting characters were also cookie-cutter and annoying, serving no other purpose than furthering the “plot” and filling in the non-kissy gaps. See, there was a fire in a church, a dead brother, an ungrateful friend that needed to be saved from Bad News Boyfriend, a “precocious” (but actually annoying) kid, hot ex-girlfriends, and a barely-there mother played by a high-profile-ish actress.

I get the intention of “off-beat” characters, I really do. But the movie does nothing to make any of these work. Out-of-place quirkiness is what I’d probably call it, because the film spews so many details that has no place in the story. I mean, so what if she’s vegan?

Nicholas Sparks is an author who has been so commercially known and globally lauded, and whose movies have been box-office hits and mushy favorites over and over. The trouble with this sort of fame! is that people become way too oriented with the stuff he churns out. After Tweeting about coming home from the Miley Movie From Hell, Kit @-replies me with, “Let me guess, it’s a Nicholas Sparks movie so SOMEONE DIES.”

Such tired clichés that have been inserted so the movie has some semblance of substance is what ruins it, ultimately. The problem with Nicholas Sparks films is that he uses the same elements over and over again, and because of the frequency of his film releases, people begin to see the patterns form into their heads. Sparks movies capitalize on sap, and (usually) attractive lovers overcoming the “odds.” In other words, they are unabashedly formulaic.

The film could have worked if there was some sort of connectedness of all the tiny little details that could have been wonderful. What could have worked as a totally different, lovable film (because I honestly believe that it could have been one) did not. The Last Song was inauthentic and lacked a lot of heart. My favorite parts were the baby sea turtles and the raccoon that was trying to eat them. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I think that that’s an indication of a movie failing to deliver.

In the end, after much snickering and wisecracking, we still didn’t know what we were watching, and we weren’t sure if we wanted to find out.

If this review and low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB don’t convince you to avoid wasting your money, just make sure you bring somebody with you to snicker with, or a vial of enough fuel to write a whiny review after you’re done seeing it.

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¹ A Mary Sue is, “a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader.” (Wikipedia. It’s a credible source, shut up.)

² Despite its average 7.58% acceptance rate in real life, Juilliard School in the Fictional Realm has accepted Ronnie Miller (Cyrus in The Last Song) and Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance). It has also given scholarships to Ryan Evans and Kelsi Nielsen (Ryan Grabeel and Oleysa Rulin in High School Musical 3: Senior Year).

 

New Moon: Something Like a Review. // November 30, 2009

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight franchise is arguably the most popular young adult series in the market today. Anyone who argues this statement is an idiot. If you watch television, spend a considerable amount of time online, or go outdoors and talk to people, then you will have heard of Edward Cullen, a “vampire,” and his unmatched love story with Bella Swan — holy crap! — a mortal. Lots of stuff happens in between but that is the main idea and Meyer hammers that into her audience’s head time and time again.

I have not been a very big fan of Twilight. On the contrary, I’ve spent many a-time online devoted to its mockery. A week and a half after New Moon, the much-awaited Twilight sequel’s adaptation to film, opened here and I still had not been able to see it. Until 10:00 P.M. tonight, when the lure to mock the series intelligently was too great for me to ignore for another week.

And so, I watched it alone.

In case you were interested, New Moon in a nutshell: loads of heavy breathing (not due to sexual activity), fast cars, glittery people with weird colored eyes, Jacob Black!, wolves!, sage advice completely ignored by Bella, and “intense” close-ups and slow-motion sequences chosen to convey several emotions… I’m just never sure what kind.

New Moon in an even smaller nutshell: Facepalm (but sounds good, man!)

In case you are still interested, The Unabridged Version of My Aversion To Twilight will be under the cut. To be fair, I do have some nice things to say about the movie. But, a word of warning, there’s not really a lot of nice things I can say about this movie. So, leave if you think you might be a little sentimental or protective of the characters in Meyer’s universe.

Continue reading New Moon: Something Like a Review….

 

(500) Days of Summer: A Review, or Something Like That. // October 23, 2009

I am probably one of the few people who waited to watch the new feature, (500) Days of Summer, until it came out locally in theatres on October 21st. Because I am the sort of person who frequents the Internet, I have been bombarded by mysterious quotes from the films, lacking in context, and photo collages intended to convey a certain mood or message from the movie, for the last month and a half. So, I knew, essentially, how it would end.

But because I am a curious cat, I decided to see it, to find out how things would unravel. And also because I find Joseph Gordon-Levitt attractive. And also Zooey Deschanel.

I was admittedly wary of seeing the film because a) I am a completely judgmental person and I own up to it. For the last few weeks, this film was shoved into my face by people whose tastes I did not trust. I know that’s pretty shallow of me, to judge something based on what kind of person likes said thing. But I’m just telling you what I felt and why a little part of me did not want to see it.

b) I could not reconcile reality with a world where someone knowing who The Smiths are is unique. I thought, “Well, honestly, who doesn’t know The Smiths?” But my brother has assured me that this is indeed a rarity among girls.

c) Mostly everything the author of this post pointed out, pretty much turned me off of the film.

However, my reaction to (500) Days of Summer wasn’t nearly as antagonistic towards it. Just to clear things up, I did enjoy the film. I liked the leads, the soundtrack, the visuals, the editing, the supporting characters. I liked that scene in Ikea, which I am taking as a Pavement reference. I liked the build-up, the transitions, the clothes. I liked the rabid shouting of “Penis!” in the park.

My favorite part, probably, is the treatment and editing of the film. I enjoyed how it cuts the “500 days” into segments and rearranges them into a chronology that lets you understand their whole dynamic and the duration of their relationship better. Where it shows a scene of them in Ikea at one point, then returns to this a little later, bearing the existing context, explaining why that place is so important to the both of them. I think this is also a reference to how the mind works, when we remember things. How we break everything into moments that matter, and then look into the unimportant parts, where we begin to realize that what we failed to see at that particular time, there are traces of what would go wrong.

I remember where JGL’s character, Tom, talks about how he runs through all his moments with Summer, trying to figure out where it all started to go downhill. And it was all in the little subtleties that he finds what he was looking for, like when he waves that Ringo Starr LP and she was obviously fighting against rolling her eyes. It’s funny how when someone stops finding you funny is when you know, absolutely, that things probably aren’t going to work out between the two of you.

I like how it made me feel like one of the main reasons why you grow attached to a person, despite them being such a big douche to you, is because of all the nice things you’ve shared with each other.

Everything, probably, up until that last scene, I liked. Some parts were a bit too indie-hipster-quirky, but as a whole, I thought it was a very good film. I think the reason why I’d also been a bit averse to seeing it is because, really, of how hyped it became and how all these people who I didn’t share these sorts of things with were starting to close into the little part of the Universe I considered to belong to me (and kindred souls).

Something Summer said (about the sunglasses and little purses with dogs in them) actually made me realize that it’s really stupid to think that what other people like is stupid and complain about it. People like what they like, most of the time without good reason.

So, I like this movie, because I like it. There are many good reasons for me to state (which, technically, I already have), explaining the reason behind this attraction to the film, but I don’t need to have any to be able to say that I do.

And because some people are interested in these kinds of things, this was what I wore:

 

 

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