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As part of the Jewish tradition, I was fortunate enough to spend my Christmas day viewing The Spirit, Frank Miller's film adaptation of the classic comic book character. Now, I wasn't sure what to expect walking into this movie -- I'll admit that I never saw 300 or Sin City (although I'm sure they're both great in their own regards). Still, what I saw was definitely unexpected.
The Spirit is...unique. Yes, the visual effects are impressive, breathtaking even at some points, but cheesy and cartoonish at others (and not in a good way). A lot of the sequences really do look great, but some of the scenes are so CGI'd that you can't even pretend that there's a real world just off-screen -- just a green screen and a sound stage. But the effects aren't the only thing that's over the top.
I know that Samuel L. Jackson is a great actor. The same goes for Scarlett Johansson; hell, even Gabriel Macht is alright. I don't think the acting problem in this movie was as much on the actors' side as it was on the director's. To say that the characters were cardboard would be giving it too much credit. Not only was the dialogue trite and full of annoying mannerisms, but certain characters had such awkward ways of speaking that made them entirely unbelievable. Not to mention that blatant product placement (Nokia anyone?) seems fairly out of place in the film noir setting.
One of the major problems with this movie has to be the rating. All you can help but think is that this is a PG-13 movie trying to be R. There's no gore and blood where there should be, no heavy curses where it would seem natural, and very little sexual content. Now, of course a movie doesn't need these things to be good, but when they're left out of this kind of film, it just seems forced and artificial.
By this point in time, no one is surprised by a bad comic book movie (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Catwoman, The Hulk, Ghost Rider, the list goes on). What's really sad here is that you have Frank Miller, a talented director AND comic book author, a great comic series, a half-decent cast, and the end result is a complete flop. The plot just doesn't exist -- there's no climax, no twist, no reveal or any sort of rising and falling action. Things just seem to roll along with the conflict between The Spirit and The Octopus as the only real focus. I won't say that the movie was so bad that it was painful to sit through. Just the opposite actually -- it had a somewhat numbing effect. The visuals were entertaining and I even laughed a bit at parts from the sheer ridiculousness of the lines (usually Sam Jackson's, ie "Come on! Toilets are always funny!"). However, from a critic's standpoint, there was no substance, and nothing that would define it as a "good" movie.
Acting: 5/10 Plotline: 2/10 Soundtrack: 7/10 Entertainment: 7/10 Overall: 5/10
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