The tone of this was WILD to experience. I had never seen this movie before now, but I had seen a few comments saying this was a typical "gay movie made for a straight audiences" and now having seen it I 100% agree. I think coming out later in life might be a more common experience for lesbians (comp het is a hell of a thing, speaking from personal experience lol) and while I'm sure there are plenty of gay men who come out as adults, it doesn't appear to me to be quite as common. Howard isn't just suppressing his sexuality, he seems to be entirely unaware of it. I'm sorry, this movie wants us to believe that this man spent his teens and young adulthood in the 80s and 90s, forced his friends to sit through marathons of Barbara Streisand movies, dressed in bow ties, and had a three year relationship with a woman which never got physical, and not a single person, including himself, questioned his sexuality? I have a hard time buying that.
It wasn't as outright offensive as some queer movies, but it leaves a lot to be desired. I guess for 1997 it could have been worse.
I was really underwhelmed by both the songs and the way Timmy sang them. It was hard to tell if he just isn't a good singer, or if the songs just weren't good, but when he finally was allowed to open his voice a bit in this film's rendition of Pure Imagination, he sounded great! I thought maybe the songs were written to be easy to sing because Tim couldn't pull it off, but Pure Imagination sounded wonderful, and of course once we finally got to hear A. a good song, that was B. sung well, the movie ended. That was frustrating. The story itself was kind of silly, which was to be expected and not an inherent detriment, but I found myself losing focus toward the end (until Pure Imagination pulled me back in). Calah Lane was a good actor, but her singing sounded way too polished, like I was listening to an AI sing her parts, it kind of took me out of the film.
The production design was easily one of the best parts of the film. It was giving big Harry Potter/Diagon Alley energy, and the candy shop set that gets destroyed looked phenomenal. The costumes as well were great, I could have used a bit more color saturation though, across the board. It's a colorful film, but all of the colors are a bit cool, I wish there had been a little more warmth in there.
It's not great, but I would watch this over the Johnny Depp 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' ANY day
This movie is insane and terrible and I think I need to watch it every day. I was laughing from the very first second. The fist indicator that this film was being phoned in by literally everybody was when the opening titles was just white text on a black screen. No one bothered to make even a 5 second opening title sequence. It's then immediately followed by an opening scene with some of the clunkiest dialogue I've ever heard, combined with the most laughable zooms in the editing. It's truly a bizarre thing to see.
Dakota Johnson is giving an absolute max of 80% at any given moment, and has a few line deliveries that had me dying laughing, both intentionally and unintentionally. Everything to do with the villain and his assistant from Girls is pure insanity, from "de-aging" the girls 10 years by simply removing their masks in the picture, to all the ADR, it's all confounding. Adam Scott is certainly there, saying his lines, along with Emma Roberts. Neither of them have much of an impact on the story except to tangentially connect Cassie to an infant, alternate universe version of a character we already know, but they sure are there and saying things.
TL:DR This movie makes every wrong choice and I want to spend the rest of my life trying to understand it
2024-01-01T00:00:00Z2024-12-31T23:59:59Z