God Bless America

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ArchAngel
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I don't know how many of you have seen this movie yet, but I don't really care. I finally got around to watching it and I'ma rant.

This movie was terrible. I'm not talking about pacing of writing, acting, or cinematography. It's all pretty standard fare on that level. No, the core of the movie is so eye-rollingly bad, you would find yourself in seizures, drowning in your own phlegm as your eyeballs race across the floor having freed themselves from the confines of your skull, which would now unfortunately house memories of this movie, and blasting as far away from you as their angular momentum can carry them.
I mean, it's not the worst movie, but it's bad.

I'll sum it up. It's a movie about terrible people from the eyes of even more terrible people.

The premise is pretty clear from even the trailer. The protagonist Frank, a man terminally ill and with nothing left in the world, and his unlikely sidekick, a begrudged teenage girl whose name I forgot, so we're calling her Face, go on a killing spree taking out who they see as the worst of humanity.

Not, like, rapists and murderers, but the more everyday jerk. The girl who complains that the car she got isn't the right one. People who talk in theaters. The double parker. Bill O'Reilly. You know, general ***holery, but nothing that'll get you the chair.

So, they go on their spree, and have their final showdown at an American Idol show. I stuck with the movie and the involuntary vomiting to see if they could stick the landing at the end.

Okay, I'm going to ironically warn you about spoilers right now.

I was waiting for a moment of self-realization for Frank and he offs himself. Full circle. He does have a realization, but it's that people are even worse that he thought and he and Face go out in a blaze of glory. I use glory as loose as possible, mainly because any foul language would be censored.
It's hard to conceive that the movie would be unaware of the irony of bemoaning the lack of civility in between shots of gunning a man down, but it gives no evidence that it gets it. It's almost as if they tried to on purposely ignore the irony.

And that's the thing, it failed a dark comedy. It was neither funny, nor meaningful in anyway. Either of the two would work, but we're treated to terrible people being shot by other terrible people.

And that's the thing, Frank and Face are genuinely terrible people, brimming to the top with unbridled and lazy cynicism. The movie really seems to never go any deeper than a surface level cynicism of society. Does it bother dissecting the psyche of killing spree killers? Or analyzing our society any deeper than complaining about pop culture? No, there is no acknowledgment of anything more profound than the easiest route to pretentiousness.

You know the people constantly complaining about how people are stupid, but you've never really seen much from then that even breaks average? Yeah, this movie is for them.
And that's probably really what gets me, it's just lazy, sociopathic cynicism. If you're going to be cynical or pretentious, put a little effort into it. It completely misses the irony in what I can only imagine is a 2 hour long complaint from Bobcat Goldthwait on society.

Maybe the movie is so meta that it brings you around to hate it and it's message, urging it's viewers to go beyond the simplistic view it presents and consider a more nuanced and multi-faceted view of humanity... but... yeah, I doubt it.
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ScotchRobbins
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I feel nauseous just reading that...
[Insert witty afterthought here]
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ArchAngel
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The movie just left me just generally vexed at people.
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ArcticFox
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It's directed by Bobcat Golthwait so your review doesn't come as a surprise.

To be honest, I'm gonna watch it now because I love to rant about bad movies and you've inspired me :mrgreen:

EDIT: Nevermind. I got 2 minutes into it when the guy was fantasizing about killing a baby with a shotgun, after which we're treated to the sight of the mom covered in the baby's blood. I've thus lost all interest in seeing any more of this.
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ArchAngel
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There's no more baby killing, but it doesn't really get better.
There is literally nothing to like about it.
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JOJ650s
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Yikes, just yikes. o_O
Sounds like the movie was made to be a mockery of well... a bit of everything. o_O

What a waste of a good title too,
George Washington probably facepalmed in his grave over this horrid display. >_>
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blacksinow
I would watch this movie just for the privelage to rant too, but I've tried watching Tom Arnold's 'the Stupids' and I couldn't even finish it. So I won't bother with this mess. But thanks for warning me, you have my thanks.
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