Thursday, March 12, 2009

A Movie You Can Skip: "The Watchmen"

Last weekend I my best friend, Justin, his brother-in-law, Lane, and I caught a late showing of The Watchmen. We'd all been greatly anticipating the movie, which is based on a graphic novel (glorified comic book) that is hailed as the greatest of all time. Apparently it's full of hidden messages and meaningful political discussion that isn't easily seen beneath the syrupy layers of gore, sex, and darkness.

The movie is supposedly spot on with it's papery counterpart. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm going to lean towards agreeing with that statement. The movie was confusing, bizarrely gory, overtly sexual, and downright strange, but underneath that one could sense that greater themes were at play. The problem, for me anyway, was that all of the rich, subcutaneous stuff was too blurred by the blatant disregard for decency so prevalent throughout the film. And, COME ON! Do we really need to see Dr. Manhattan's oversized neon blue wang hanging out throughout the ENTIRE film? No. Or at least, I don't. Yeah, I get that he's above us mortal humans. I get that he is male. I don't need a full-frontal nude body shot of the guy to remind me every three minutes.

The one saving grace in the movie is the main character, "Rorschak" - a masked vigilante who refuses to retire like most of the other superheroes. He continues to fight all that is evil, and persists to the end to be true and honest to the people he has worked so long to keep safe.

In closing, save your money and skip The Watchmen. It'll only leave you with a bad taste and a thought bubble over your head reading "What the heck just happened?" For those of you who are entirely intent on seeing this movie, wait till it comes out on DVD and redbox it for a buck. Maybe by then they'll have digitally remastered Dr. Manhattan, complete with something to cover his blue-man junk.

-Barry

5 comments:

  1. lolol...his blue man junk...LOLOL

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  2. I kept thinking that the guy who played the Comedian was Javier Bardem (I found out later that it's actually Jeffrey Dean Morgan), but the two actors definitely look alike

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  3. Coffee, I love your blog! Unfortunately, I couldn't post this there because as of yet, I've not found a way to comment and/or contact you.

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  4. Sounds like you're trying to discourage people from seeing The Watchmen, but somehow you've just encouraged single women everywhere to go see it. Strange how that backfired.

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