48-Hour Days

We were really excited to see this movie. My son and I loved the first two and he just couldn’t wait to see the third one. So, naturally we had really high hopes. I popped the DVD in yesterday afternoon after their nap.

Here there be spoilers

Before I go any further, I want to let you know there may be some plot spoilers in here. I’m trying not to spell out what happens in the movie, but if you don’t want to know anything about the plot before you see the movie, STOP! Go watch it, then come back.

Back to the review

The credits were really cool. Flashes from the previous two movies are intertwined with web and the “black stuff.” Whether you’ve seen the first two or not, you’re caught up by the time the movie starts. We settled in.

My daughter lost interest after the first hour. I can’t blame her. It took a little bit longer for my son to lose interest, but soon he, too, was running around with Transformers. I almost turned it off myself.

The problem is that they seem to have tried to cram two movies into one. There are three villains and too many storylines going on. You have the love story with MJ, the whole deal with Harry, the black goo, the Sandman, etc. It was just too much. You couldn’t focus on any one plot at a time because just when you were getting into it, they jumped to the next. Some scenes seemed really rushed and there seemed to be several missing scenes. None of the storylines were fully developed and yet the movie was 2 ½ hours long.

Thomas Haden Church is excellent as the Sandman. He does his best with not nearly enough time and was actually able to let the personality of his character shine through. He’s just a poor schmuck who keeps getting himself into the wrong place at the wrong time. I feel for him. Especially because he was really robbed of his story.

The black goo is really cool, but I totally expected it to play a bigger part. Again, the story about Peter Parker and his battle with this alien goo is underdeveloped and only given enough time as it takes for the viewer to understand (barely) what’s going on. There was no big inner struggle, no explanation about what the suit is doing, or why it appears and disappears with irregularity. If I hadn’t read a book my son had about the black suit (about 100 times), I wouldn’t have had any idea what was happening. Peter simply decides its been too much, and loses the suit.

Even the black goo itself is short-changed. There are a few flashes with a professor looking at it under a microscope, but no explanation of what it is, where it came from, how it does what it does, etc. Peter doesn’t seem to fight it so much as toy with it for a while, then ditch it.

And, come on! Is that the best they can do to make Parker look cool? It was a joke! Perhaps it was intended to be, but I think it was the wrong place for it. Just didn’t make sense. If the goo turns him into a parody of Saturday Night Fever’s Tony Manero, then why on Earth wouldn’t he be happy to get rid of it? They needed to make a serious effort there to transform Peter in a way that didn’t make him totally laughable.

Speaking of Peter, since when is he a self-absorbed whiney little bitch? Even before he gets “infected” I’m wondering what the hell happened to him! He spends half the movie crying about this, that, and the other thing; doesn’t have a clue as to what is going on with his girlfriend (to whom he plans to propose?); and doesn’t put much effort into explaining to Harry what happened with his father. Where’s the strong, sensitive (but not too sensitive) Peter Parker from the first two movies? I didn’t buy it.

Venom, too, was gipped. That monster could have been so cool! I was totally looking forward to seeing what kind of havoc he was going to wreak, and so were the kids (my son has had a Venom action figure for about a year now). He was really awesome…in the scenes he had. Topher Grace, like Church, does a great job with what he has, but they just didn’t give him enough time to develop his character. There’s no time for Venom to really show what he can do, which is disappointing.

Poor Harry. This guy gets bounced around like a ping-pong ball: good, bad, good, bad, good… By the end, I really didn’t care much. It made for some good fight scenes, and explained how Spidey could handle all those half-developed villians, but it just didn’t do James Franco’s character justice. His storyline alone could have spanned this movie and another.

Only Kiersten Dunst’s MJ got the same treatment as in the other movies. She cries, flip-flops between the boys, and is generally pretty shallow. I don’t get why they are fighting over her, and I never have. But, whatever.

For the Kids?

I’m pretty liberal in what I let my kids watch, so yeah: I was fine with them seeing this movie. Even though there is lots of fighting, there was no blood and no one really got hurt. Venom is a bit scary, but like I said, we’ve been looking forward to seeing him on TV instead of a plastic figure. He’d probably scare most kids, though. As with any superhero movie, there is a lot of comic-book fighting. If you don’t want your kids to see any violence, don’t let them see this movie.

There was no sex or swearing (well, nothing I can think of), though. Nothing raunchy.

Verdict

Overall, I thought this movie totally felt cobbled together. Like the Raimi brothers took a bunch of, “Oh, wouldn’t it be really cool if…”s and strung them together with a really thin plot thread. The special effects were, as always, very good. It is worth watching again just for the fight sequences. But overall, my rating for this movie is: meh.

Last night, Bridget and I screened Pitch Black. I’d seen Chronicles of Riddick and, to my surprise, I really liked it. So, I was dying to see the first movie.

Not that I was disappointed, but it is a completely different type of movie. About all the two have in common is Riddick, Jack, and the Imam. Pitch Black is more of a horror movie, whereas Chronicles was a sci-fi, drama movie. Chronicles had all kinds of subplots and things going on in the background, Pitch Black was missing that. It was more in the genre of the Alien series.

Spoiler Alert!

Don’t read any further if you don’t want to know what happens!

The basic plot is that a ship with a bunch of people on it goes off course and crash-lands on a deserted planet. They can’t find any of the inhabitants and quickly find carnivorous and appropriately fanged aliens living underground (surprise, surprise). They feel safe, as the planet is in constant daylight and the aliens must stay in the dark. Until the eclipse. With the planet bathed in darkness the nasty creatures have complete freedom.

Riddick is pretty much the same Riddick as he was in Chronicles. He is cool, calm, collected, and quiet in the face of certain death. Of course he performs amazing feats of strength and agility in order to lead the survivors to safety. He gets some great lines. He is a paradox, alternating between cooly watching the aliens tear people apart and braving danger himself to save the others. In a few places his facade does crack, and we see (in Bridget’s words) a fuck-you-gun-in-your-face Riddick. This seemed like a complete departure to me. It was totally out of character. These fits of anger were always directed at the cop chasing him, Johns, so maybe there was something going on there that just pushed Riddick over the edge. Perhaps if that had been explained better, Riddick’s unseemly show of emotion would have sat better with me.

Conclusion (Okay, you can read now)

I liked this movie, though not as much as I liked Chronicles. It’s a great movie when you are craving a good horror flick. It doesn’t have the complexity of Chronicles, though, so don’t expect a whole lot from it. The acting in some parts is kinda forced, but I thought on the whole it was good. These two movies are the only ones I’ve ever seen Vin Diesel in and I think the guy has talent. He’s perfectly suited to this role, in particular.

Overall, I liked this movie. I’m not sure that I would watch it again, only because now I know what happens, so the excitement is gone. However, Riddick’s character itself might be enough to draw me back in.