Jenni uses her Film Degree to do a Review: This Means War
The other day I had to .....lie about what I thought of this movie. I had to fudge the numbers and pretend that I enjoyed it. I was embezzling truths and lying to my boss about the size of the profit we were making. It felt .....weird.
Well, today I'm here to remedy that! Now, where do I start?
Alright, This Means War, boiled down, is a romantic-action-comedy about two best friend spies, played by Tom Hardy and Chris Pine, (as if spies ever really have best friends - you think Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy taught me nothing?!?!) that fall in love with the same girl. Wow, she must be pretty special! She is Reese Witherspoon.
They decide to let her choose who she wants to be with... albeit with a little healthy competition and all the secret government resources they can get their hands on.
Of course, just in case that creepy plot isn't enough, they add in a villain out for revenge after our dashing leads accidentally kill his brother in a CIA operation. But no one seems to really care about this - in fact, they actively ignore this issue of some Russian (?) criminal entering the U.S., hell bent on killing specifically them, so that they can focus on bugging Reese Witherspoon's house and pretending they like dogs. This bad guy thing was clearly there to shoehorn a couple action scenes in there. And they weren't even notable in terms of action... of which I am a connoisseur, naturally.
Take Zombieland, for example, I'm not a big fan of the movie with its snobby writing and awful character decisions (so many bad choices! It just makes me UGH) -- but that movie has some damn fine action scenes. The part on the rollercoaster? Genius.
This Means War makes a lot of silly mistakes like this. There is one great scene where Reese Witherspoon is enjoying a night at home alone while the two spies sneak around her trying to figure out what she likes. It is cleverly shot, clear and perhaps the most stylish part of the movie -- until five minutes later, when the crack spy teams that each boy has assembled tell them the exact same thing, negating the usefulness of the scene preceding it.
"Hey, Chris Pine, remember when you saw that Gustav Klimt poster in Reese Witherspoon's house?"
"Oh yeah! But what does it all mean, Only Black Guy In The Movie????"
"Guess what! She's likes Gustav Klimt. Maybe use that to win her over!"
Son, if you're going to use that hammer to hit people on the head - you make sure you use it hard, and repeatedly.
The production values are pretty high though - it's a slick movie. The actors are clearly professionals, the cinematography is great and it has a good pace. One thing that is outright terrible - the sound design. Oh my god, the music is ridiculous, the audio of the dialogue is choppy and there's a scene where a perfectly healthy looking dog is slobbering and panting and huffing almost as if it was within in my right ear canal. I haven't heard such sloppy sound editing since The Departed.
Now, on another note - there were so many blues eyes in this movie - the recessive gene was having quite the field day. It was actually unsettling, though. And I am a blue-eyed lady, so I should be happy about this.
Speaking of blue-eyed ladies - Chelsea Handler. I don't like her. She is a comedian that has her own late night talk show and I find her to be quite nasty and confrontational. But that doesn't mean I want to see her used as the butt of a chauvinist joke. I don't like to get on my feminist high horse too often, but in This Means War Chelsea Handler's character is referenced to as Reese Witherspoon's mother, and "old man" -- at least. That latter of which is even in the trailer.
Click to viewShe's 36. Reese Witherspoon is 35.
I choose to take offence to that.
My main problem is that I try to be open to films of all persuasions, and sometimes a charming actor can flourish within a vapid story. This movie had actors that I liked, and I'm one of the more lenient people on the director McG (I have a soft spot for the lady ass-kickery of the first Charlie's Angels movie, and I honestly think Terminator: Salvation could have been great if Christian Bale and marketing had not gotten in the way) -- but there's just something not there. It's not excruciatingly bad, but it's not anything. It's a blackhole of film.
And can you guess which one she ends up with? Because it was pretty obvious to me.
This Means War was directed by McG, written by a number of people and stars Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy.