Everyone’s a critic these days. After 5 years of churning
out reviews I got my first written complaint last week.
Turns out not everyone likes the new Batman movie, although
Mr. Rolo Tomasi’s comments about the ‘jumpy, unwarranted’ editing and the
‘Technology vs. Story’ argument seem unfounded to me. And lets not forget that
I am a trained professional while Rolo Tomasi (who is calling for me to be
fired) is just a made-up name stolen from the movie L.A Confidential. But I’ve
already wasted enough column space on that idiot so lets move on to The Mummy:
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which opens Friday at the Village 8.
Arguably the worst movie of the summer, The Mummy re-stars
Brendan Fraser as Rick, an archeologist who this time must team his wife, son,
and dimwit brother-in-law with a Chinese sorceress and her daughter to fight an
evil emperor seeking to bust out of his tomb, climb a hill to Shangri-la to
take a dip in the pool and achieve immortality.
Grand master of Kung-Fu awesomness Jet Li plays the mummy
and Michelle Yeoh steps in as the sorceress. Other than a single decent fight
sequence up the mountain, however, both actors are underused and, compounded
with weak or derivative story elements (the father/son archeological thing
worked a lot better in Indiana Jones 4) the film ends up as a mashed and
confusing jumble of action set pieces. Fast and the Furious director Rob Cohen
has never really been all that great and it looks like he’s the guy who’ll kill
the $800 million-worldwide Mummy franchise with this sub-par family/actioner
crapfest.
Down south, our American neighbours are in an election year
so at least Swing Vote, also opening Friday, has timing going for it.
Irresponsible and hard-drinking father Bud (Kevin Costner) gets drunk and fails
to vote so his overly smart 12-year-old daughter does it for him (not as
improbable as it sounds these days). Costner/Bud later learns that the race was
so tight his fraudulent vote is the only one that matters and, since he’s
allowed to re-vote in 10 days, he becomes the centre of media and political
attention nationwide.
Kinda reminiscent of the 2000 botch-up in Florida, Swing
Vote doesn’t preach any particular political ideology but focuses more on the
importance of informed voting and responsible citizenship. Sound boring? For
sure, but the flick does paint a somewhat grim portrait of America – from
deadbeat parents to cannibalistic media to flip-floppy politicians. Usually a
political movie relies on satire for its humour but Swing Vote doesn’t really
deliver in that arena, or any. Costner pulls off the ‘dumbass dad’ role well
enough but for a family comedy that’s low on laughs or feel-good moments this
flick shouldn’t expect much in the way of critical or financial returns.
Killing it at the box office however, The Dark Knight has
now made over $313 million bucks and had the biggest domestic opening weekend
of all time. Heath Ledger, (whose chaos-loving, psychotic rendition of the
Joker is one reason the film is doing so well) is slammed by Rolo Tomasi in
last week’s letter. Easy to pick on the dead guys isn’t it Rolo? And it’s easy
to call for me to be fired when you hide behind a fake name, eh?
Do me a favour ‘Rolo Tomasi’ – take the first letter
of every sentence in the body of this review and write them in order on a piece
of paper, then read it and then do it and don’t bother wasting our time with
your “I hate Feet Banks because I’m not Feet Banks,” pissy, moan-y, wannabe
letters anymore.