What the Funk & Wagnall's? "Dredd" Remake Has 76% Positive Rating on Rotten Tomatoes

A commenter just recommended this.

I thought he was just a communist subversive subverting me with his communism, but apparently he's not.

Eh. Maybe I'll see it.

The thing is, after The Avengers, I'm not sure I care about superhero movies anymore. I'd been waiting for that since Iron Man, and now I got it, so, donezo.

The first one, with Stallone, is an interesting disaster. It's interesting in this way: Half the script attempts to be serious and has some fine, quasi-serious lines. I'm a fan of (I'm not kidding) Stallone's soliliquy on "The Law" -- he offers a kind of affecting speech about how Judges are alone, entirely alone, with only "The Law" as a friend. And one day they will be turned out from society to wander the wilderness, with only The Law as a companion.

Then, on the other hand, you have idiotic Funny Action Movie Quips!!! with Stallone and Rob Schneider.

It's just a very schizophrenic attempt to slam two completely different tones together. It just doesn't work. It never does. The light (often stupid) humor undermines the attempt at actual drama and audience investment, and the attempts at drama make the stupid jokes seem even more stupid and out of place.

When the Big Budget Tentpole Action Movie went into its decadent phase (88-95 or so, when they stopped making the almost completely), they did this a lot, constantly undermining their own efforts with distancing irony.

They just kept doing it. It's like when Disney sneaks in adult-ish jokes into cartoons -- they're thinking, "Well, we have to give the adults here something."

Their idea seemed to be, then, "We have to give people who hate Action Movies something. Like jokes spoofing how absurd this all is."

Um. Yeah, they're not in the audience. Don't worry too much about them. There are no broad, trailer-friendly "funny quips" in The Shining to placate those in the audience who hate Steven King ghost stories.

posted by Ace at 04:38 PM

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