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{"id":1732,"date":"2007-05-29T00:41:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-29T00:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2007\/05\/1732\/"},"modified":"2007-05-29T00:41:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-29T00:41:00","slug":"1732","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2007\/05\/1732.html","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

AND IN A DARK BROWN VOICE, SHE SAID<\/strong>: Movie reviews<\/strong>. Spoilers abound.<\/p>\n

Bring It On<\/strong><\/em>: How can a cheerleading movie starring Eliza Dushku, and with \u201cOh Mickey\u201d as end-credits music, be depressing?? Watch and learn.<\/p>\n

First, Dushku is hotsauce, and although she isn\u2019t Faith levels of awesome here, she\u2019s still amazingly fun to watch. I\u2019m not sure why I don\u2019t like Kirsten Dunst, but I don\u2019t\u2013I find her really bland\u2013but she isn\u2019t the problem here.<\/p>\n

The problem is that this is a feel-good movie about class war. It\u2019s yet another movie where the white characters are morally compromised but never morally interesting<\/em>, and the black characters are set dressing. I liked the idea behind the movie (almost entirely white cheer team learns that all its routines have been stolen\u2013by an unlikeable, characterless villainess, because that\u2019s so challenging\u2013from an inner-city all-black team) but absolutely hated the execution. Why does no one even suggest that the privileged squad should be penalized for its years of ripping off the inner-city team? Why does Gabrielle Union\u2019s character get approximately 1\/20th of the depth given any<\/em> white character? Why do I bother asking these questions?<\/p>\n

Come Back, Little Sheba<\/strong><\/em>: Ratty <\/a>noted that the title of the movie should have informed me that I was in for \u201950s melodrama. Yeah, this didn\u2019t work for me.<\/p>\n

Picnic at Hanging Rock<\/strong><\/em>: I\u2019m not sure what I would think of this movie if I\u2019d known more about it beforehand. The music is brilliant.<\/p>\n

But so much of the movie is predicated on the pretense that it depicts actual events. I only learned that the story was made-up when I google\u2019d afterwards. And that knowledge left me with a weird, \u201cYou\u2019re nothing but a pack of cards!\u201d feeling.<\/p>\n

The thing is\u2026 there are real events that can\u2019t be explained. Making up fake events to demonstrate the inexplicability of life can easily feel very paint-by-numbers: Every time a possible explanation comes up, remove a necessary strut, so it collapses. I felt like Picnic<\/em> did that. I also thought its emphasis on the sexual elements of its story became much, much less interesting when it turned out that someone made them up.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t present this as a confident opinion. If people who liked the movie want to object, I\u2019d definitely like to hear about it. But it stopped working for me once the curtain pulled back and I could see the Wizard of Oz.<\/p>\n

Sullivan\u2019s Travels<\/em><\/strong>: My first Veronica Lake picture! Oh, this was so pleasing. It\u2019s fast and funny and poignant; and Miss Lake\u2019s radiant beauty is matched by her unexpectedly deep, rich voice. That knockabout, ironic voice made the movie for me. But I\u2019ll note that its take on class conflict managed to be sunny-side-up and yet harder and smarter than anything Bring It On<\/em> even dreamed of.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"