Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Not.

[malsperanza]

Feh.

I mean: not just bad; reallyreallyawful. A combination of deadly dull and gross; mostly boring.

Now, I am one who would pay to watch Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Ruben Blades, and/or Mickey Rourke read the phone book. (Antonio Banderas not so much, but he is usually veryverypretty, which will do.) Those are 4 splendid, interesting actors, and I was lured by the promise of seeing all 4 of them in one movie. But they were hardly ever on screen; and all anyone did for 2 solid hours was shoot people with automatic weapons. And when I say that fans of Our Johnny should stay away from this movie I speak as one. There comes a point when you will not want to watch Johnny, I promise you.

On the whole, a dramatic reading of the phone book would have been far preferable.

Comments

[quiridion.livejournal.com]

I don't care about Johnny--I just want Jack Sparrow. Oh, and apparently, Willem Dafoe has the biggest penis in Hollywood (next to Woody Harleson). Yum!

BTW, what movie are you talking about? I live in Scotland: all we have is whiskey and heather so don't get much cinema news. *pouts*

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

*points to subject line*

Don't underestimate the value of whiskey and heather. You also have Roslyn Chapel and damn good seafood.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow--I had a totally different reaction. I'm not big on movies that are about people shooting each other (went with someone who was) but I had a great time. I even shocked myself by wanting to look at Johnny when...well, when you'd think I wouldn't. He somehow managed to make that cool to me!

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

But then, you also like John Ritter *g*. Chaque'un a son gout.

Well, as the NY Times review said today, "In Hollywood in the middle months of 2003, wit and surprise are pretty much synonymous with Johnny Depp." That much is true, and he does his best.

I liked his tee shirts.

But since you invite me, and it's my LJ:

*rant mode on*

What on earth was Rodriguez thinking with all those blind jokes? Bleh. And where was the story? Relationships among characters? Development of relationships? Development of plot, for that matter? I like a good shoot-em-up, myself (am big fan of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah movies), but the whole thing was such a mess that it got tedious. Annymous extras could have pulled those triggers.

I mean, why bother hiring Mickey Rourke if the only think he gets to do is carry that poor dog around and smirk and shoot people, over and over? Why bother with a brilliant actor like Dafoe or Depp if all you're interested in is John Woo action effects?

It was the sort of movie where sometimes people speak in Spanish with subtitles, and sometimes in English with cheesy Spanish accents, and sometimes in English with no accent at all, because the audience is supposedly too dumb to get it otherwise. And working out the details is too much trouble.

One of the things I admired about "Pirates of the Caribbean" was that it was a fun, silly, witty movie without deep pretensions, but it never treated the audience like idiots, and never got careless or cheap, or used grossout violence to jack up the energy level artificially. It relied on the actors to jack up (hee, pun) the energy level, which they did beautifully.

This time I lost interest in what was going on in the story and starting looking for minor continuity errors. E.g.: would a small local restaurant serving homely pork dishes have a cook in chef's whites and a toque, or was that just a convenient shorthand way of letting the audience know that it was the cook?

*rant mode off*

*Wanders off to rent "From Hell" and "Before Night Falls."

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh please do, rant away! I don't even have any defenses for anything you said. I do think some of the continuity things were purposeful, though, like I know they for some reason wanted somebody obviously not Mexican for Willem Defoe's part, presumably to add to the idea that this story had been "embellished" and so was fake all the time. Or something.

It's very hard watching Mickey Rourke nowadays anyway, I find. His face is very disturbing!

I would never put it on the same level of fun silly movie as PotC but I was surprised how much I was able to enjoy it. I had a good audience, which actually may have been part of it. And I do shudder to think what it would have been like without Johnny Depp. Without him I might have had a very different experience at the movie.