I have mixed feelings about Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited" but it seems New York Observer critic Rex Reed caught this film on a bad day:
"With more style than substance, the story is so thin it evaporates like a puff from a hookah."
"Like Mr. Anderson’s previous duds, 'The Royal Tenenbaums' and 'Rushmore', it wants to be a comedy, shaking its butt at every historic concept that word implies and trying to make you care about its off-the-wall characters at the same time. Nothing wrong with that ambition, except that it is never remotely funny and the characters are as transparent as Saran Wrap. Mr. Anderson’s approach to filmmaking is from the same brain-dead school inhabited by Charlie Kaufman screenplays and the head-scratching direction of Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Jonze and David O. Russell: Throw incoherent ingredients in the air, talk all of your Hollywood friends into joining the frolic and let the pieces fall all over the place with the camera turning."
"High time Mr. Anderson, 38, grew out of this childish phase and used his word processor to achieve some kind of script indicative of what you might call a maturity of vision."
Ouch. For more hatred click here.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
harsh times
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3 comments:
and this guy exactly proves my point in my entry i posted last week. you can't hate someone for ambition, especially when it's organic. and the fact that he ripped charlie kaufman, PTA (you love it) and spike jonze in the same paragraph goes to show that this asshole isn't into films that makes him think, but instead, fake films that trick you into believing it's ambitious and profound even though it's actually the opposite by being contrived and formulaic, like little miss sunshine. and, surprise, surprise, he gave it a positive review.
critics need to realize that masterpieces aren't going to be re-created. once it's out there, all you can do is keep being consistent. all this bullshit with comparing 'darjeeling' with 'rushmore' and 'royal tenenbaums' is silly, not to mention unfair. i thought 'darjeeling' makes it safe enough to say anderson still has his ambitious vision and is consistent.
Every day is a bad day for Rex Reed! Don't even do him the service of reading. For the best tonic to uneasy confused feelings about Darjeeling peek at the Film Comment article, nothing revelatory, but what I found to be a perfect compliment to the film. The guy didn't like the short either, so he's coming from the same place as us.
i'm still kind of meh about this movie. loved the soundtrack and the cinematography--kind of hated all the characters.
douchey rich white american dudes making asses of themselves in foreign countries is not exactly my kind of entertainment.
and is it just me, or did natalie look like a praying mantis in that highly-overrated nude scene?
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