laraemeadows Blog

Dull-plicity

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Duplicity (2009)

Duplicity distills corporate espionage, super secret agents, and romance down to something as exciting as a discussion of the differences between lotion and crème through the cunning use of bad acting, tedious dialogue and sleepy visuals.

Ray Koval (Clive Owen) and Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) were spies for the British and American governments, respectively. They abandon their government spy games for the seedy world of corporate surveillance. They take the chance of a lifetime by taking dueling CEO’s Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti) for a financial ride. A strong but supporting role, Champagne has a mountainous amount of screen time playing itself.

There is a serious case of “actor playing self” in Duplicity. Champagne appears, bubbly and expensive, at every opportunity to celebrate or lamentation. Clive Owen plays the handsome and rugged, but not well put together tough-guy. Tom Wilkinson, the stiff upper lipped British guy. Paul Giamatti plays a loud mouthed, over egoed, windbag. Julia Roberts plays the beautiful, intelligent woman in love with the rugged and handsome, but not well put together tough-guy. The actors in Duplicity had as much problem finding their character as genius would have with a four piece puzzle.

Julia Roberts can’t even act herself well. Just because you have red hair does not mean you are a carrot, nor does it mean you are in anyway related to a rabbit but she does her best to channel the Cadbury Bunny in Duplicity. It is most kindly described as an extended facial seizure. Her face twitches so often, a well placed drink would make James Bond a martini, just the way he likes it. The only blessing of this unrelenting cheek and lip shivering is that distracts from everything else on screen or in the ear.

There is nothing interesting or repulsive about the way Duplicity is shot. It is remarkable only in its mediocrity. Scenes rich with opportunities for heart-pounding excitement instead employ copy machines, blue prints, and printers. Let’s not forget how often Champagne is on screen. It seems we cannot go more than five minutes without seeing yet another bottle of champagne, two glasses and another tedious reason not to drink it.

The fact that bubbly booze is a main character is a testament to the dime store quality writing in Duplicity. The dialogue is difficult to listen to at all stages of the film. The ending is totally foreseeable to anyone above age 15 with half a brain. The characters trip over their stupidity but have been able to function in high level jobs, requiring higher cognitive function than the average burger-flipper. There was no shortage of lines that made me want to commit suicide by eating my own shoe; lines I will not share with my readers because I can’t bear to transmit these bastardizations of language; these memes of brain cell death.

Duplicity is a perfect example what happens when a writer and director are the same person and substandard at both, left with no oversight. Tony Gilroy, the writer and director of Duplicity, was left to his vices and smeared his addiction to his laziness all over the audience. It would be reasonable to expect even minimal quality from actors of the caliber employed in Duplicity but instead, poor writing and direction encouraged an overall decline in quality of all aspects of this movie.

Duplicity should be renamed Dull-plicity. Tony Gilroy, I demand a refund of my time.

Posted Monday, March 23, 2009 10:48 PM by laraemeadows | with 0 comments

Cinema Constipated

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Watchmen (2009)

Watchmen is the cinematic interruption of Alan Moore’s influential graphic novel of the same name. Constipated visuals, dialogue and plot, coupled with atrocious acting dooms Watchmen and the audience.

Set in an alternate timeline where Richard Nixon is elected to a fifth term and the United States and USSR are on the brink of nuclear war, the morally-tainted superhero The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a member of the original Watchmen, is murdered in his home. His death stirs the uncompromising Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley), another member of The Watchmen, to investigate his death. He contacts all the current and former Watchmen including the glowing blue radiological reasonist Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the beautiful badass Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), the ultra smart and fastest man in the world Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) and the reasonably average Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson). Together they try to uncover the plot and prevent the extermination of the human race.

Most of Watchmen’s visuals have a gritty and ominous style. Much of the movie feels like someone put a pair of scratched up sunglasses over the camera while they were shooting. It gives the movie a slightly off kilter feeling while still amongst the familiar.

Amidst the beautiful cinematography, director Zack Snyder made terrible decisions that are perplexing and infuriating. There are nonsensical signs that the director forces our attention to linger upon. There are moments when computer based effects harken us back to the 1980’s. Dr. Manhattan, one of the characters with the most film time, suffers from inconsistent animation. Rorschach’s mask distracts from the dialogue. Silk Spectre II’s shoes go from high heeled to flat to high heeled again with no explanation. All of the costumes are cheesy enough to make me run for crackers.

No attention is paid to the tempo of the film. The amateurish editing smothers any gasps of excitement. One of the most frustrating things about Watchmen is the endless number of unexpected pauses. Right in the middle of a sex scene, the characters would contort into an awkward and unnatural position and then hold it for an extended period of time. During a fight scene, there are pauses for no apparent reason. There is no shortage of scenes where a character kicks down a door and stands backlit, all tough like.

Then, out of nowhere, the grit is set aside when the characters travel to Mars. While on Mars, the film looks like a cheap, gaudy fantasy poster. Randomly placed stars dot the background as the glowing blue character glitters off the red background like a kindergarten child’s drawing.

I know the writers, David Hayter and Alex Tse, were attempting to leave the audience with some deep and resonating warning about what happens when the rules don’t apply to everyone. Instead, there is blathering narration that nearly bored me into a coma, incomplete ideas, unnatural behaviors and Phantom of the Opera-like turns of events.

Compounding the writing and visual problems is the utter bowl-swirler offered up by the actors. Twitches and melodrama abound, but no real emotion is shared with the audience. There is a scene between Silk Spectre II and Dr. Manhattan that should create some sense of grief, anger or sadness but just made me want to slap Malin Akerman just to see some sincere emotion.

Watchmen is nearly three hours long and offers me no reason to risk an embarrassing strain of my bladder. A more promising hope of enlightenment might come from studying history or reading the graphic novel on which the film is based. I value the sanity of my fellow human beings to recommend Watchmen to anyone.

Posted Thursday, March 05, 2009 6:38 PM by laraemeadows | with 0 comments