The Men Who Stare at Dolts

Not too much to say about this tiny, ultimately flat Overture feature. Chalk it up as another casualty of the we need a star! mentality that gets Jim Carrey a cool thirty mil just for showing up to set to eat craft services – the entire budget of THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS’ was necessarily devoted to its stars (Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor)…and it shows.

For a movie that takes us all the way from small-town Michigan to secret military facilities deep within Iraq, there is shockingly little scope, grandeur, or visual interest. Even though some of the scripting was downright bad (Clooney kicks McGregor in the balls) the better jokes and offbeat moments could have been great if the filmmakers had the dough to widen the madcap universe of the film. So it’s not a script problem (and the source material, so I hear, is pretty great). Instead, director Grant Heslov is probably at fault for a film that never wants to take itself seriously – yet always demands that we do. It’s a ludicrous request, especially considering the plot which -- resembling THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE on a great deal more LSD – “climaxes” with dozens of goats being liberated from an Area 51-esque research facility while the entire military unit “trips balls.” Heslov and Clooney worked together on GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK to infinite more success, partly because the material had actual substance, partially because Clooney, who directed that film, had a surprisingly sharp aesthetic sense and terse visual language. I wish he had helmed GOATS as well and redistributed some of the film’s funds away from his co-stars and towards the film’s design and tech.

It’s all a shame because I love films that are tiny, throwaway, origami swans – pretty and intriguing even if, in the end, they are merely folded paper. BURN AFTER READING, a film GOATS aspires to be but never comes close, is exactly that way. Nothing’s wrong with popcorn movies—even stupid movies where every character we meet is a bit of a dolt and no one is relatable—but they have to be told well. This simply isn’t, and while watching I was really just impatiently waiting my chance to get the fuck out of there. And I wasn’t the only one, the entire audience I saw this film with sort of shuffled about the theatre with a blank goat-like disinterest, chewing their stale popcorn, already forgetting what happened just before. It's probably for the best.

This Year's CRASH...unfortunately

Sweet lord Jesus: NY Press’ Armond White is so on-the-money with his PRECIOUS review (http://www.nypress.com/article-20554-pride-precious.html) that I guess I don’t have all that much to add. Armond White is awesome!


Ok maybe a few things...

I totally agree that PRECIOUS reflects more of an affluent fear of human detritus – riddled with incest and violence and hopelessness – than any sort of urban reality. It runs on only one cylinder – the “shock value” of its premise (fat girl, twice pregnant by her father, escapes abusive mother through…math). Unfortunately for me, the last movie I saw was ANTICHRIST, so it’s gonna take a bit more than incest (even tacitly-condoned incest…the MOM and GRANDMA are just as guilty) to stir me up.

Problem is that beyond the “OH NO HE DIDN’T” of it all, it’s a fairly lame, uneventful, prosaic story. White suffered from seeing the film in the film festival petri dish (he calls it an "ordeal" which I can only imagine...consider the self-congratulation), but I saw it on 42nd street where me and my three friends were the only white people in the maximum-capacity crowd. And while I think the audience reaction-factor helped the film (scenes of domestic retaliation, sassy backtalk, and general abhorrence played as QUITE FUNNY to my discerning crowd), it also exposed one of the movie’s weakest traits. That is, by so carefully outlining who we are supposed to root for--who are the nasty rapists, who are the good little girls with big dreams—subtlety no longer plays the slightest part. Then again: for a film about the most abused, neglected, devalued of humans who goes by the name of PRECIOUS, I guess subtlety was never really in the picture.

And when my (white) friend leaned over to whisper "they're like a parody of themselves" (referring to the audience, with all their HOOTIN' and HOLLERING) I realized that he was simultaneously right and entirely missing the point. But that's actually a good description of the film in general.

I do disagree with White about Mo’Nique, whose performance I do think came close to reflecting “depths” within herself. Only in her final monologue, where she breaks down in front of Mariah Carey’s useless social worker, does the film try (and, yes, fail) to do something interesting – complicate the dynamic by giving us just a tad bit of sympathy for MOTHER. And in telling the story of her boyfriend's pattern of sexual abuse, in weeping out its details, Mo’Nique pulls off a neat trick – we hate her even more for her shameful silence through it all, but we respond to her suffering and misery on a purely human level. We feel bad for her, just for a second, and then remember that she is the villain. Mariah Carrey’s character is not even a fraction as nuanced (and her Fran Drescher accent absurd). Nor is her character really even necessary, as really just another iteration of the good, pure, light-skinned teacher—but I guess our celebrity team of crackpot (maybe crack-pipe is more appropriate here) producers thought we needed one more big name.

PRECIOUS’ worst sin, however, is not its flimsy plot, maudlin diatribes, weird racism (dark = bad) or downright crappy photography. Its biggest problem is that it’s just TOO DAMN MEDIOCRE. In a way, it would have been better if it were worse -- at least we wouldn't have to keep discussing it. I wish it was shocking or outsized or verite, instead it’s a contained, do-ragged fairy tale, simplistic and false, keen to see RACE where PERSON would be so much more complicated. PRECIOUS avoids complications, which makes it easy (for some people) to root for, but it isn’t nearly as brave as Oprah would have us think. And, as we’re sure to forget (we always do) when the next independent film flash-point putters to the Hollywood fore, not nearly as precious.