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{"id":6463,"date":"2012-11-10T15:35:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-10T19:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=6463"},"modified":"2012-11-10T15:35:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-10T19:35:35","slug":"same-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2012\/11\/same-again.html","title":{"rendered":"“Same again?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last night I watched Grabbers<\/em>, an Irish sf\/horror\/comedy screened at AFI as part of their annual European Union Film Festival. It\u2019s a fun little confection with a lot of truly sublime shots of the Irish coast. The basic story: A young, uptight lady Garda comes to a remote isle, where she begins a \u201cyou\u2019re hideous, I love you\u201d thing with the local ultra-dissipated cop. Meanwhile alien critters are breeding and killing. Their weakness is that they\u2019re allergic to alcohol, so the alcoholic cop must go on the wagon to maintain order while everybody else is locked into the pub to get prophylactically plastered.<\/p>\n

People who like this kind of thing (like me) will probably enjoy it a lot! It\u2019s really, really old-fashioned\u2013the unsubtle music is the first hint, and you also get the classic B-horror trick of having one of the characters watch a classic horror movie on TV. It\u2019s got little hints of Attack the Block<\/em>, Shaun of the Dead<\/em>, and maybe even The Fog<\/em> (in the haunting, menacing coastline shots). The funny stuff is funny, there\u2019s chemistry between the romantic leads, and overall the movie has what it wants to have.<\/p>\n

What it does not have is a lot of thinking. The man cop\u2019s alcoholism is basically his biggest character trait, and I wondered if we were getting a movie about disaster as the fatalist\u2019s chance to finally change\u2013a disruption of the addiction narrative of despair. Instead we get a deeply sentimental wish-fulfillment fantasy. Every drunk wants to think that eventually there will come one moment when they\u2019ll get the chance to do the right thing when it really, really counts. Like Grantaire in Les Miserables<\/em>. (Uh, spoilers?) One shining moment of doing the right thing by the people you care about. You may be totally useless from day to day, but in the apocalypse, you\u2019ll get it together and save the day! And after that, the new life can begin.<\/p>\n

This\u2026 does not actually happen all that often. Habits break slow. Mostly in the apocalypse addicts act like always<\/a>. David Carr\u2019s Night of the Gun<\/em><\/a> is, among other things, a corrective to the sentimental \u201cI\u2019ll be there when you really<\/em> need me\u201d narrative. (Also, quitting alcohol cold turkey the way Officer O\u2019Shea does is really, really dangerous<\/a>! I know it\u2019s just a movie but this plot point was distractingly prettified.)<\/p>\n

I suppose I liked the movie enough that I was willing to put up with the sticky sentimentality. But the movie would be smarter and harder-edged if it had avoided it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"