After experiencing first-hand its undoubted existence late this evening, I can in fact state with certainty that The Wolfman does, in fact, inhabit some kind of locus in our space time continuum. As a film, we cannot deny that it is.
No other description can be offered. Even to refer to it as "mediocre" would be to assign to it an adjective, an honour which Johnston's effort cannot claim to have earned. Simply put, this movie is in the middle. More than that; it is middle. It is the raw stuff with which middles are made.
If every film that was or is or ever shall be thanks to the efforts of man, alien, or the sentient cockroaches that will replace us as rulers of the globe were ranked in order of artistic worth, one would discover this film resting in the very centre of the list. If God Himself decided to reorder His DVD collection in ascending degree of viewing pleasure then The Wolfman would be found hovering at the Lagrange point of the gravitational fields of purest excellence and manifest wretchedness. If it transpired that such a median position is impossible, due to the sum total of all cinematic offerings proving to be an integer of the kind men label "even", then there would inexplicably be two copies of The Wolfman present, so as to prevent an implicit judgement that the film is considered closer to one extreme than the other.
In short, the film is a reality breaking paradox. The utility of making the effort to see a film should increase as each obstacle between you and that film is removed. Not so here. At any point, no matter how close or far one is to the cinema, or the screen itself, or how many cinema snacks have been purchased and expectations massaged, it is not possible to say that seeing the film is any more or less sensible than not seeing it. As every moment gobbles up another set of Planck constants between you and that first tepid frame of something-that-is-there, the advantages of staying the course are no greater nor lesser than turning around. And so it continues, as you are forced a billion times in each second of the 102 minutes you will neither enjoy nor waste to choose between watching and not watching. And always there is no reason whatsoever to choose one over the other, no metric applicable that will provide an answer, as though one were the eponymous nag in the donkey paradox, unable to choose between two bales of hay, or perhaps presented with food so unpalatable as for it to have no inherent advantage over starvation.
On the other hand, topless chick! The legacy of Hammer is in good hands...
7 comments:
I've the strangest feeling I've read this somewhere else before....:-)
Looking back at it, I can see certain stylistic similarities. But nuts to it.
Or do you mean the double posting?
I really like this, but it doesn't help me decide to see it. Or to not see it. So, ironically, your review is less useful to me than the toss of a coin.
That isn't ironic, it's the express intent.
Well, it's ironic in that one of the primary purposes of most film reviews is to inform one way or another your decision on whether you should spend your money on seeing the film in question. So your review, though possibly describing the film with pinpoint accuracy (another primary purpose of most film reviews), is nevertheless the complete antithesis of the first purpose; it slides off the surface of your opinion leaving nary a dent.
I'm wondering at this point which is more paradoxical, the film or your review of it.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Who can unravel the mysteries of cinematic paradox, I say. Well, maybe David Lynch, but he'd probably just hire a dwarf to film the inside of a monkey's mouth instead.
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