[100M] Death at a funeral, 99 francs
58 - Death at a funeral
September 24th, theaters
This film was mostly good. It made me laugh quite a lot, and the actors were fine. I especially liked Alan Tudyk (who I remember from A Knight's Tale) and Kris "Colin God of Sex" Marshall. Matthew McFayden was great too, and confirms here that he sould never have been Mr Darcy. Anyway, those were my favorite storylines.
The story, the one of a funeral during which secrets get revealed, wasn't the most original, and then, you can guess most of the plot points because you already saw a movie like this one. But it's still funny.
I loved the animated opening credits.
The ONE thing I really disliked, in this movie and EVERY SINGLE ONE where it appears is the toilet humor. It's gross and I never find it funny and leaves a bad memory of an otherwise amusing movie in my mind.
* * * (on a scale from 1 to 5)
59 - 99F
September 25th, theaters
Same here about bodily functions humor. Vomit ? Is gross, and not funny. But that was not a big part of the movie, just, while I was talking about it. It's not even important here, it's here for the sake of being trashy, just like all the sex shots (and seriously, it's a movie about advertising and the sex scenes are still there for no reason)
First of all, let's say that I haven't read the book before, and that I have a strong negative feeling about Beigbeder for no real reason (but a strong good feeeling about Jean Dujardin so I figured it would cancel each other)
It's not that it's the only thing I didn't like about this movie. But let's start with what I liked : the use of advertising codes and memories we all have to make the movie work. Some scenes work better because of the music you remember from an ad.
The use of typography was really nice too, although a little too much reminiscent of the IKEA scene in Fight Club. Only not as good.
Visually, I liked the ideas, although my sister complained a lot that it hurt her eyes and head (I didn't mind).
Jean Dujardin was also quite good, altough he had been better before, especially in OSS117.
Unfortunately, that movie is totally empty from content. Yes, the use of advertising in it is interesting but it has no point, no meaning, no message.
Sometimes, it feels like it tried to be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but why ? The movie is not really about drugs, not really about a character in the advertising world, not really about nothing. And it's boring.
In the end, there's two lines about how much is spend on advertising and how half of it could solve the hunger in the world. Except the movie never really critisize this world, so you don't know why it's here. It's supposed to be satirical, but the main character, although being an asshole, is always given excuses and is really miserable in the end, not an asshole. I think he was a projection of the author (obvious with the hair) who really doesn't want you to hate him, it's not his fault you know. So the satire isn't there, because Octave who should convey the uselessness of this world is given a sympathetic treatment in the end.
- discussion about the ending now -
Worse, he never have to assume what he has done. In the first ending, he choses suicide over the consequences of all the movie, and so you never really see what he did to others. And the author then goes back on this ending and gives you another one because he can't kill himself. So you have this terrible second ending that manages to screw up everything in the movie. And it was already bad before (but I would have rated a little higher than I will after THIS). In the last 20 minutes, the character forgets everything about his old life
Anyway, you can chose to interpret the ending as you want, but neither of them have Octave facing the consequences of his life/his world (he could embrace it, fight it, in both endings, he runs away). So the movie is supposed to critisize the advertising world, but most of it is Octave being high, Octave being sad, please don't hate the authOctave, but I have seen exactly two lines of critisizing in the whole movie. At the end.
* (on a scale from 1 to 5)