Red State

[wilson]

I didn't see a post about Red State, but I felt it deserved its own thread...just because it is so terrible. I think it's great that Kevin Smith is trying something different, but at the same time I think that maybe he needs to go back to doing fart jokes. In more capable hands, this may have been interesting, but he's just turned it into a mess.

Shaky cam, bad acting from actors that typically aren't that bad, awkward dialogue, characters doing weird things at inappropriate times...it just feels like something that some kids fresh out of film school made. It's even made with the Red Camera, which doesn't help with that film student feeling. The ending is just dumb. It felt like he watched "No Country for Old Men" and decided he liked how everything ended abruptly with Tommy Lee Jones just talking and decided to do the same.

Just a couple of nights ago, I was listening to his podcast and he went on this long rant about how pot isn't destroying his career and Red State is the greatest movie he's ever made and that it is better than anything else, etc. It was kind of sad, so I thought I would give it a chance. Nope. His movies are still poorly made.

I like the guy and wish he could pick himself up, but he just keeps making garbage. I outgrew his movies back in my early 20's...he sadly has never been able to move beyond Clerks. Mallrats and Chasing Amy were fun...not good, but fun. Everything beyond that (including Dogma) was just bad.

Anyone else sit through this mess?

[Gilberto]

Yeah, I think I mentioned it in another post but I was so disgusted after watching it that I didn't have the heart to write about it.

I'll defend Mallrats, but Chasing Amy didn't hold up past the 90's.

Kevin Smith's problem is that he constantly thinks he's savvier than other filmmakers and filmgoers, but this is constantly being proven untrue. That's why he doesn't retain the same audience - as a lot of directors do - as he gets older; he just retains the same age range audience. Red State was more technically capable than his other films, but it's like American Horror Story, just a confused mash-up of cliche's trying to convince you there's a high-brow message hidden under all the nonsense. If you think it's dumb then you're just not getting it.

I think it most strongly resembles Dogma because it's a preachy indictment of religious wackos, but his dialogue and story devices are just as dogmatic in pitch and tone as the people he's talking about. At first the story is an insufferable play on cliche with a typical "weirdoes in the woods have lured us to a tortury death" scenario. After that there's a Tarantinoesque creepy speech expertly executed by Michael Parks, which is compelling because of the performance but eats a lot of screen time.

Smith has always had a knack for picking good actors even though he's not always so good at directing them. Some actors, like Michael Parks, don't need direction to do what they do, but you wish someone would give them something to sink their teeth into once in a while.

And just when I was about the turn it off John Goodman shows up in this movie! What the hell? Then I'm interested again. Then it becomes this Ruby Ridge style standoff and I had just finished reading the story of Ruby Ridge and found the topic interesting, so I watched until the next disappointing turn.

At this point in the movie Smith changed the point and tone every time he thought people might get bored, it seemed. Characters who appeared to be basically good would immediately become psychopaths only to resume the mantle of the moral voice when that was more convenient to the thesis Smith seemed to think he was proving. People are layered and capable of good and bad, that's true, but very few people can casually flip flop on the fairly simple concept of killing kids. Read about the real Ruby Ridge incident for a more interesting examination of how that kind of thing really happens, but Kevin Smith's script is hammer-handed and erratic in its effort to shock us with how dark the human soul can become.

The "twist" ending (if that's what it's supposed to be) is really dumb and seems designed to keep you watching the rest of the idiotic conclusion in anticipation of an explanation that is also disappointing.

And then John Goodman gets to be the voice of moral reason again and gives a speech that, while poetic, is not only out of place in the movie, but it doesn't support the thesis statement it builds up to. Like a lot of Kevin Smith's writing, it's a good line, but it doesn't work in the context of the story. It doesn't even work in the context of the scene.

I think neglected to write about this before because I don't want to say anything bad about the guy. I loved his movies in the 90's and he really is a nice guy. He's doing what he wants and he's happy with the result, so I wish him all the best. It's just not for me anymore.

[wilson]

Remember that time you looked like him? That was awesome.

[Gilberto]

I was trying to be him for a while. He was like a nerd superhero.

[broox]

Dec 6, 2011 9:21:11 GMT -5 wilson said:

Remember that time you looked like him? That was awesome.

At least he never hung out with a long haired stoner sidekick... oh... wait...

[Gilberto]