July 15, 2003

The Wallendas would flip in their graves…

I’m not going to be reviewing Bad Boys II today.  You’ll have to wait for Friday for that.  But there is an interesting issue presented by the film that I think is worth discussing now. 

Bad Boys II is the first “Hard R” movie from the majors all summer.   The previous major Rs (Matrix Reloaded and T3) were both violent, but neither had even a moment that turned my head with the young teens in tow.  Joel Silver actually argued that Relaoded deserved to be PG-13.  And except for a cyborg arm through a man’s chest, I’m not sure that there was anything much to scream about in T3 except, as with Reloaded, for the cumulative effect of the violence. 

We’re a long way from Total Recall.  Not just 13 years, but a certain desensitizing to violence, especially for children.  I do not believe in censorship.  I believe in parental responsibility.  That said, we have become remarkably permissive, especially when it comes to violent images.  The images from Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom that caused the creation of the PG-13 would now make it onto “family hour” TV without a blink.

But like I said, I only occasionally feel awkward about bringing the 14 and 12 year olds along for an R rated movie.  For me, the difference between 2 Fast 2 Furious or The Hulk and previously mentioned R-rated summer titles is negligible. 

So we sit down and watch Bad Boys II.  In the first 10 minutes, it seems like the use of every conceivable form of the work “fuck” is used… re-fucking-peatedly.  Okay.  You hear it once, you’ve heard it a million times.  In this case, literally.  I can live with that.  The film was relentlessly loud and that was disturbing my niece, but she held her fingers in her ears and soldiered through.

And then in the second act, something I don’t think I have ever seen… something I don’t recall ever even hearing about in a movie.  Bay & Co. used dead bodies for comic effect and as speed bumps as they fell out of the back of an uber-hearse.  Being the thorough filmmakers that they are, the bodies seemed quite real.  With deference to those worried about spoilers, the topper in this sequence is a body whose head flies off the corpse and rolls away.

But our body count wasn’t quite ended.  A few minutes later, a scene in a morgue also uses corpses for comic effect.  And here, they have discernable faces and even some degree of character.   In the context of a movie like Alien, I guess this would not have been surprising.  But in Bad Boys II?

I am not quite sure what I feel about this.  I do not have a moral repulsion to this disturbing choice made by the filmmakers.  It shows a complete lack of taste or compassion.  But I can live in that moral universe.  On the other hand, I don’t think that I would object to Patrick Goldstein or Michael Medved or even Bill O’Reilly railing against this choice.

The irony is that this choice, as with the choices made by T3 and Reloaded, hit the MPAA, which isn’t shy about making filmmakers cut entire sequences, right where they like to be hit.  All violence.  No sex. 

On the flip side, my somewhat moralistic objections to Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle - which I at first felt were completely about the abuse of filmmaking technique -  on reflection were, in part, due to the disconnected sexuality of the film.  Like Schwarzenegger’s endless body count in Total Recall where the bloodlessness of the many murders was what was disturbing.  No consequences.  Likewise in Full Throttle.  In the first film, the romantic relationships had some weight to them, however light.  In this year’s sequel, the sexual imagery was intensified, but the notion of any of these characters actually having sex was a non-issue.  Somehow, I am more comfortable with a moral universe wherein sticking your ass in someone’s face leads to something more than a dollar bill in the box office g-string.

So here we are, over the summer hump, and here is something new to write about.  And write they will.  They will write about kids sneaking into R rated movies after buying tickets for the PG-13 films.  They will write about the moral disconnect between an indie hit, like 28 Days Later, and a big studio film like Bad Boys II.  They will make a martyr out of The Cooler, a movie so inconsequential that the ridiculous order of the MPAA to remove an oral sex scene doesn’t matter enough overall to grab much ink.  And someone, at sometime, will write about the lack of humanity in  the choice to disrespect death in this way.  Someone else will write about the horror of anyone suggesting that self-censorship be encouraged in any way.  And, of course, someone will write about this movie and be so desensitized that they are incredibly concerned that Gabrielle Union never takes off her top and won’t notice the flying corpses at all. 

The big question is whether it will affect the box office prospects for this film above and beyond issues of audience interest -  which will be massive - and audience reaction, which will be massive amongst young men.  I suspect that the answer is “yes.”  This is a movie that will gross well over $100 million.  But I think it is extreme enough to put off some of the potential audiences and the children they send to the movies.  Or perhaps, far worse, it will not. 

READER OF THE DAY:  THE FISH EATER writes: “I haven't seen CA: FT or LXG, and I don't know if you've seen Sinbad. It most assuredly doesn't suck. I was pleasantly surprised by the voice acting, with Joseph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Brad Pitt all delivering good performances, whilst some of the animation--especially the background work--was stunning. The story, though admittedly not very original, was fine. Ebert loved it--he gave it three and a half out of four stars--and I think its  fate is simply the result of poor marketing. Hopefully the film will generate some interest on DVD. It's no Iron Giant, but it deserves a better fate.”

NOT WITCHBLADE writes: “How can you be so viscerally interested in box office?  You spend column after column discussing how much money this made, or how the perception that THAT movie failed is a misconception.  And yet you dropped 'Hulk' for discussion like a hot potato after it failed to make ENOUGH huge money.  You gave it 3.5 stars, didn't you?  Is it not worthy of further discussion?  You didn't even mention it in today's edition.

It's the best, most memorable, most interesting movie of this summer... and the most substantial blockbuster ever made.  THAT'S what matters this summer, not how much Movie X did or didn't make.  Where's the soul in that?”

And this from BK LOUNGE:  “We are, now that we've had three consecutive big pictures "disappoint" in their opening frames, getting the inevitable "What Happened?" stories...You know...how we had five consecutive 50 million openers when it was a bit gray or rainy in May and early June and, gosh darn it, we're all just a bit too stupid to find our way to the multiplex in all this sun!!  Here's another theory to float by you...ALMOST EVERY ONE OF THE MOVIES RELEASED SINCE MAY 30TH HAS HAD A REALLY WEAK SCRIPT!!   It will NEVER sink into whatever the studio personnel use for brains that the most CRUCIAL part of a film's success are the words the actors say and the logic behind the plot they are acting out.  X2 had a good solid script as did The Italian Job and even the much-maligned Matrix Reloaded (Hey, it was slow at times but never bored me, even in the scenes in Zion).  Even Bruce Almighty delivered a good solid twenty jokes without boring or insulting the audience in the interim (something the less-successful Anger Management could not do).  And, of course, Finding Nemo had simply one of the best animated screenplays ever, witty and sweet and really funny.  Since May 30th, however, we've suffered through the unwatchable 2 Stupid 2 Believe (Jeez, this thing actually made me nostalgic for Vin Diesel!!), the two turds from Friday the 13th (Harrison Ford, do you even READ your scripts anymore before cashing your paycheck??!) not to mention the Worst Animated screenplay in years from the soon-to-go-the-way-of-Pokemon Rugrats, and the schizophrenic Hulk mishmash was easily the chief culprit in that film's demise (The special effects actually aren't that bad--the damn thing just doesn't make sense and the dialogue is often utterly ridiculous).  The theory goes a bit off the rails with Charlie's Bimbos, since the film doesn't actually HAVE a script (Nice gig for John August! Big Paychecks-No Brains required!).  And, now, sadly, Terminator 3, which offers absolutely no proof that it had any reason to exist!--I would actually have to rank T3 behind even Alien: Ressurection in quality when considering strength of script.   And the weirdest thing is, NONE of these movies even tried to hide this weakness...Every one showcased its script's faults FRONT AND CENTER in its respective trailer.    Collectively, Hollywood has wasted far more than half-a-billion dollars on the output from the last four weeks...would it have killed them to spend a few million more tightening up the scripts a bit??  Silly summer entertainment DOES NOT HAVE TO BE mindless, because Hollywood is discovering that, big shock, most of us like to USE OUR MINDS”

E ME:  What fight isn’t being fought hard enough for your tastes?

 

 

The Matrix Reloaded. Reloaded.
Read Part One
Read Part Two