|
May 04, 2007 - 5:49 PM Medium Hot Fuzz Hot Fuzz. Not as good as I was hoping it would be, but I still think you should go see it. I was expecting something a little different, more blatant in its parodying of cop/action movies, perhaps a successor to the Naked Gun films. Instead, what I got was more of a nudge-nudge, wink-wink homage to the action genre, where the film-makers weren't poking fun of cops-and-robbers films, but showing their appreciation of them and all their silly glories. It's strange how expectations, wrong expectations, can color your viewing experience. If I'd gone in with a clean-slated mind, I think I would right now be hooting and hollering about how great this movie was. And really, as a follow-up to Shaun of the Dead, I should have had my mind in the right frame...of...um...mind. Both films work hard to emulate the look and feel of the genres that they are putting a spotlight on. They accomplish this perfectly, leaving the viewer comfortably in the proper setting which allows the creators to play their jokes off the cliches. Shaun of the Dead was a bit different in that it didn't go full-bore into the Zombie-horror territory until midway through; the early part of the movie was actually playing like a romantic comedy that just happened to find itself in a horror film. Fuzz fully commits to being a cop film first and foremost before going haywire. The comedy comes from mis-placing the hard-boiled cop in a quiet town in the countryside instead of the tough city. There are plenty of scenes where I laughed out loud when the fish-out-of-water juxtapositions really worked. But the movie did seem to drag on a bit (it's over 2 hours long) and the climactic reveal and battle scenes, while hilarious, were not entirely fulfilling. There sure was a lot of shooting, and not a lot of hitting of targets, which goes against the established fact that the main character is supposed to be an expert marksman. ********* ********* Next week might be busy for me, outside of work for a change. There's the Simpsons 400th episode party on Tuesday or Vienna Teng and Jenny Owen Youngs at the Hotel Cafe; Adrianne and Kyler at the Hotel on Thursday; LDBL's birthday on Saturday at Dodger Stadium; and Priscilla Ahn and my friend Wendy's band the Sweet Hurt at the Hotel on Sunday. We'll see how much we can make it to. Now Listening To : Holly Palmer- Tender Hooks Random Thought : 1st, 5th, and 10th places, a month into the season. For those who care. What I Just Wrote Before - What I'm About to Write |
The Five Most Recent Entries March 28, 2008 Has it Really Been a Month? June 11, 2007 Ella Jane (Meejin) Kim May 11, 2007 Recipe for Nightmares May 09, 2007 Medium Hot Fuzz May 04, 2007 Here's a hand-picked playlist of 40-plus songs for you to listen to:
|