A few weeks back, my buddy Skoot (you may remember him - he had one blog post a long, long time ago...) called me on my way to work. He was really disappointed about a movie he saw last night with his mom and wife. It was called Splice. I had heard of it when it was out in the theater a little while back. Basic story that I could derive from the trailer: Sci-fi thriller where a couple of scientists create life and it turns against them. Skoot also had a similar idea of what the film was supposed to be, but he was so disappointed in the movie that he spent the whole conversation (like 40 minutes) giving me a scene by scene break down of how bad the movie was.
After this diatribe, I said "OK dude, I'm totally seeing this. It can't be that bad!" Plus, Ebert loved it, Steven King loved it, and it got like 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. So, I was totally committed to digging this movie just to mock Skoot. Well, I was way off the mark. This movie was *painful.* Just pretty much from the get go things just didn't work. At all. Though I won't get into quite the nasty detail that Skoot gets into, I'll give you a bunch of reasons why splice sucks (warning - spoilers ahead):
- Adrien Brody was cast in the leading role. Sadly, he seems to be going down the Cuba Gooding Jr career path. 1 - Win and Oscar. 2 - Do a string of shitty movies. 3 - Start giving hand jobs for crack money.
- There was a character in the movie that I think was the main character's manager. But I'm not sure. In the first scene I thought that he may have been their agent. Then, he seemed to be their manager. But then towards the end of the movie Sarah Polly tells him to "wait until the real scientists come in." Which implies that he's like a hack scientist. And not a manager. WTF?
- All of the actors tried to be playing characters. However, I wouldn't call them human. It's like they were playing aliens who had a vague understanding of how humans should act. So, right off the bat, there's not really a lot of emotional attachment. (And may I remind you that this is Sara Freaking Polly and Adriene "I got the orchestra to stop playing cuz dammit I wasn't done with my Best Lead Actor Oscar speech yet, Dammit" Brody. So, you'd think that some actual good acting would be there...)
- The tensions that should be there which really aren't. There are like 5 conversations throughout the movie that are resolved with "Come on, dude. Don't be a pussy."
- So, Adrien Peterson's character is supposed to be this buttoned down scientist, right? Well halfway though the movie, he decides (completely out of nowhere) that he wants to bone this creation. This is after about 4 months of chastising Sarah Polly for not keeping her distance. Coupla things wrong here, going from the least repugnant to the most: 1 - He's a scientist - you *really* should keep your emotions out of an experiment. (Where did he hear that before? Oh, that's right - from him!!) 2 - The thing that he plows is bald. I mean, bald chicks are hella weird. 3 - The thing is about 3 weeks old - that's crazy young, even for pedophiles. 4 - He is *married*. And not to the creature. Adultery!! 5 - Sarah Polly has already told him that it's her daughter. So, it's not like it's *his* daugher, but still creepy as hell. 6 - The thing is like 5 different types of critter (and a plant, oddly enough). So, that's gotta count as bestiality.
- This critter has the most amount of Deus Ex Machina ever. It's about to be drowned - Oh, it can breathe under water. It's about to fall off a roof. Hey- guess what. It's got wings. It's horny as hell, but Adrien Brody apparently is bad in the sack. So, it's only other option is to rape Sarah Polly. So, it becomes a boy.
- "I am in you." If you don't know why that is ridiculous to the point of insanity, congratulations - you haven't wasted 99 minutes on this shitty movie.
- By the way, I just wanted to stress that Skoot watched this movie with his mom and wife. Yep, a movie full of rape, bestiality, incest, etc. Yay boy - it's a fun family movie.
- The critter is just a cat. It dies no less than 4 times during the course of the movie. But it just keeps coming.
Now, I will patiently await Ben's smack down on my review of why Splice is the best movie of the year. (As payback for District 9 of course...)
I wanted to see that, and think i definitely have to see it now. You know how we role. No matter how much we're told to avoid something, it just makes us want to see it more. And I love Sarah Polly - I think she really carried the Dawn of the Dead remake. The wife hates her, though, so I'll probably be seeing it by myself. And then there's Adrien Brody, who I think is actually just a so-so actor who happened to have all the planets align to win an oscar.
ReplyDeleteBesides, I already saw this movie when it was called "Species."