Monday, August 29, 2005
Guess Who: Ten Point Review
- Ashton Kutcher, for possibly the first time in his career, plays against type. And it works. I actually liked him when the calculated stupidity is turned down.
- Bernie Mac, playing precisely to type, is still funny as hell.
- Mac does blustery but charming extremely well.
- Still, the movie is predictable.
- And typical.
- And one of the plot points just doesn’t seem worth all the furor which chips away at the movie’s tiny store of credibility.
- The scene where Kutcher’s character is goaded into telling racial jokes is actually done very well.
- One of the great thins about comedies is that they can deliver a message with the kind of gentle grace that self-conscious dramas can rarely achieve. They can do their best to demonstrate truths without having to hit us over the head with their messages. But here’s the problem: is interracial dating really that big of a deal any more? Is it really that unusual or remarkable? Perhaps it is, but it just isn’t one of those things that rouses much interest in me.
- Luckily, there are a few scenes that are laugh out loud funny to compensate for the flat parts--just a few, though.
- This movie just barely does better than tread water. It isn’t great, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. In essence, by exceeding my exceptionally low expectations, I found myself enjoying the small charms that it had to offer.
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Comments & Trackbacks
I actually thought he was pretty good in Butterfly Effect.
Actually it was one of those remakes where the original was better. This has been the year of remakes.
You know, I never saw the original, so I don’t have an opinion. Are you saying it would be worth seeing?
Yeah, this was the year of remakes--and that might be one of the reasons that I didn’t get out to see too many movies this summer.