Ah, Los Angeles “Watchmen”
You rush out to see “Watchmen.” You ignore the reviewers. The New Yorker says things about the film that seem cruel. That gives you hope because so often you disagree with New Yorker reviews.
It starts off just like a good movie. There’s a big kung fu fight in the Comedian’s apartment ending with the Comedian plunging to his death. Violence, mayhem, blood. All right, you think to yourself, this is going places. It does go places. All of them bad.
For writers, “Watchmen” is a primer in how not to write a script. The characters talk rather than do. The dialogue is so on the nose that the audience sniffs in discomfort. There are flashbacks, flashforwards and flashsideways. There are voice overs and voice unders. You understand that all those rules for screenplay writing are for a reason. Sooner or later, you start to lose consciousness.
The theater management clearly expects this might be a problem and lowers the thermostat down to about 60 degrees to keep the audience awake. You jerk awake and blow on your fingers, stamp your feet and pray for blood to return to your extremities. Visions of a brazier and a bottle of whiskey float by.
At the two hour mark, people start to leave. Thirty minutes later, you are one of the stalwarts who feel that the end must be near. Unfortunately for the film, the writers choose this moment for Ms. Jupiter to say something like, “some things never end.”
On the positive side, it is the best movie about a giant blue ghost around.
Tags: Los Angeles
March 12th, 2009 at 9:18 am
oh noes! Bruce will be very disappointed. People either love it, or hate it.