osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2014-01-14 09:18 am
osprey_archer) wrote2014-01-14 09:18 am
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More Movie Reviewlets
I often find new movies to watch by trawling through Yuletide letters. I loved this letter so much that I have been checking Netflix for Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adele Blanc-Sec for the past three years, and at last! At last my patience has paid off! Netflix has the movie, and I can enjoy the pterodactyl and the booby-trapped tomb and Adele’s ridiculous hats! (Seriously, you should go over to that entry just to enjoy the photos of Adele’s ridiculous hats.
Sadly, the movie is not quite good enough to love up to three years of hope and expectation. But then, not many things can, and it is a good entry in the genre of “goofy action movies about archaeology.” (Is that a genre? I don’t think Indiana Jones movies are meant to be goofy…)
The letter is surprisingly appropriate for this entry: it also includes a review of The Philadelphia Story. I recently watched the 1950s, remake, High Society. If I had realized it was a remake, that fact would have struck me as a danger sign. Trying to remake The Philadelphia Story, one of the more perfect movies in existence? And adding songs, forsooth!
I like songs as much as the next person, but these don’t really add anything to the movie. And they certainly don’t make up for the fact that the remakers clearly felt that The Philadelphia Story was way too understated and ambiguous about things. All the things that might be romantic must be clearly stated to be romantic! When Tracy and Macauley go for a drunken swim, is swimming all that happens? Or is there...something more? SOMETHING MORE, according to High Society. They totally made out and exchanged sweet nothings by the pool!
(However, High Society cut the scene where Tracy offered to let Macauley live in her extra house so he could write his novel instead churning out terrible newspaper stories. Why did they cut that? It was the best. Possibly they realized that if they made Tracy and Macauley’s budding friendship explicitly romantic, having Tracy stick him in her extra house sounds kind of like he’s going to be her kept man.)
I am at a loss why, having decided that there is something between Tracy & Macauley, the makers of High Society decided that Macauley’s relationship with his photographer partner Liz Imbrie also ought to be romantic. The very morning after Macauley made out with Tracy by the pool, he’s plighting his troth to Liz!
Having made all these changes, they nonetheless kept the most irritating subplot in The Philadelphia Story: Tracy’s father is cheating on her mother, and he tells Tracy that it’s all Tracy’s fault, because if Tracy wasn’t so judgmental and appreciated him more, then clearly he wouldn’t need to find other young women to appreciate him!
Doesn’t that seem creepy and incestuous to anyone else? And also like a total abrogation of his own responsibility for his own actions? If I were going to remake The Philadelphia Story, I would chuck that subplot so fast that it would make a sonic boom as it went.
***
The letter also reviews New Waterford Girl, which I watched and reviewed in a more timely fashion than Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adele Blanc-Sec. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to give it another mention, because it’s pretty awesome.
Sadly, the movie is not quite good enough to love up to three years of hope and expectation. But then, not many things can, and it is a good entry in the genre of “goofy action movies about archaeology.” (Is that a genre? I don’t think Indiana Jones movies are meant to be goofy…)
The letter is surprisingly appropriate for this entry: it also includes a review of The Philadelphia Story. I recently watched the 1950s, remake, High Society. If I had realized it was a remake, that fact would have struck me as a danger sign. Trying to remake The Philadelphia Story, one of the more perfect movies in existence? And adding songs, forsooth!
I like songs as much as the next person, but these don’t really add anything to the movie. And they certainly don’t make up for the fact that the remakers clearly felt that The Philadelphia Story was way too understated and ambiguous about things. All the things that might be romantic must be clearly stated to be romantic! When Tracy and Macauley go for a drunken swim, is swimming all that happens? Or is there...something more? SOMETHING MORE, according to High Society. They totally made out and exchanged sweet nothings by the pool!
(However, High Society cut the scene where Tracy offered to let Macauley live in her extra house so he could write his novel instead churning out terrible newspaper stories. Why did they cut that? It was the best. Possibly they realized that if they made Tracy and Macauley’s budding friendship explicitly romantic, having Tracy stick him in her extra house sounds kind of like he’s going to be her kept man.)
I am at a loss why, having decided that there is something between Tracy & Macauley, the makers of High Society decided that Macauley’s relationship with his photographer partner Liz Imbrie also ought to be romantic. The very morning after Macauley made out with Tracy by the pool, he’s plighting his troth to Liz!
Having made all these changes, they nonetheless kept the most irritating subplot in The Philadelphia Story: Tracy’s father is cheating on her mother, and he tells Tracy that it’s all Tracy’s fault, because if Tracy wasn’t so judgmental and appreciated him more, then clearly he wouldn’t need to find other young women to appreciate him!
Doesn’t that seem creepy and incestuous to anyone else? And also like a total abrogation of his own responsibility for his own actions? If I were going to remake The Philadelphia Story, I would chuck that subplot so fast that it would make a sonic boom as it went.
***
The letter also reviews New Waterford Girl, which I watched and reviewed in a more timely fashion than Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adele Blanc-Sec. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to give it another mention, because it’s pretty awesome.
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