Monday 26 May 2008

I don't like films in which I dislike the characters ...

I have been watching some pretty second rate films recently (as well as good ones like Bleak House), and what I am realizing is that if I do not like the people in the film I find it painful or boring to watch their lives play out on screen.

The Wedding Crashers was the worst one. I disliked everyone in the movie. I found them crass, opportunistic, power hungry, unkind ... and almost every other negative adjective that could be applied to people.

In Look at Me, many of the characters made me uncomfortable, and the angst and anger in this family controlled by a selfish, unlikeable, angry man was hard to watch.

The Upside of Anger also portrayed a dysfunctional family who were unkind to one another and to themselves, but at least in these last two films, you saw a realistic portrayal of real unhappiness, and justifiable anger.

In the first, a young girl is quite rightly upset by her father's disregard, and in the second, the anger (based on something they all thought had happened) made sense. When they discovered at the end that they had based that anger on an incorrect assumption, they return to being decent human beings with normal warts and flaws.

There was nothing to redeeem The Wedding Crashers, I am afraid. It was an unrealistic movie about nasty people ... a waste of time.

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