On DVD and Blu-Ray
The film begins with Will Smith announcing he’s going to commit suicide to a 911 operator. What follows is an unbelievably and unnecessarily convoluted mess of a film where Smith yells at strangers, physically assaults people that he barely knows, and stalks people with debilitating ailments. Smith’s usually reliable charisma and likability is replaced here with pompous and sanctimonious absurdity. His “acting chops” consist of a constant furrowed brow and the occasional constipated grimace. As his love interest, Rosario Dawson provides a little depth but her longing glances and overwrought emotional state wear thin after awhile. Their “crocodile tear” make-out scene is hilarious, accentuated by the distracting dissonant score by Angelo Milli.
Click below for the rest (with spoilers).
As we learn during the climax, Smith has been acting so strangely due to guilt for causing a car crash (by reading a text message) that killed 7 people. After the accident, his brother needs a lung lobe, and Smith gets in the habit of donating organs (a liver lobe, a kidney). But to give Rosario his heart (literally!), he’ll have to take an ice-cold bath with a jellyfish. He definitely gets a perfect score on the suicide-originality index. The jellyfish scene is the most unintentionally hilarious scene in recent memory. Smith acts as if the jellyfish is fellating him and then the shower curtain is pulled off as he climaxes, I mean, dies.
The film is the most medically inaccurate film I’ve seen in a while. It’s not that they call Rosario’s condition “Congenital Heart Failure” or the fact that a corneal transplant changes Woody Harrelson’s baby blue eyes to dark brown (they didn’t transplant the iris). It’s that they brush over how complex transplantation is. It’s not just blood type, but tissue type, then months of steroids and other drugs to suppress the immune system and prevent rejection. I’m not sure how death by jellyfish would affect the complex inner workings of cardiac electrical system, but it’s probably not good. I knew going in this would be a disaster but thought it would be good for a few laughs. I wasn’t disappointed. D
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Seven Pounds - D
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
For some reason, even though the movie did leave a lot of stuff out, I reacted strongly to the review listed above. Describing a scene of death as "hilarious", especially when there are so many horrific deaths that happen on a daily basis, seems to show a certain callousness on the part of the reviewer.
Sorry if this sounds harsh - for some reason I just reacted to the review. Maybe both of us would feel differently if we were put in situations similar to the characters in the movie.
I think that some movies just need to be watched and absorbed, not nit-picked to the enth degree. I think, and I know multitudes of people would agree, that some movies just have to be taken for the underlying sense of what's going on, and not at face value.
Sharing Doc's sense of humor and basic movie taste, I would offer up a defense. This movie takes itself so seriously and the execution of its scenes is so preposterous that the only natural reaction is to laugh at its sanctimony.
All of the medical mistakes took me out of the movie quickly, leaving me detached from the characters and their situations. I felt for Rosario and her Congenital Heart Disease, but did not buy for a second that she would fall for a moody guy who's been stalking her (though that was en vogue last year - see the Best Picture winner).
And surely Smith could come up with a better way to kill himself than an ice-cold jellyfish bath. How did he know for sure it would work? He was some kind of engineer, not a marine biologist. His death was as over-the-top and ridiculous as anything seen in Death Race or any other action film last year.
The pre-jellyfish organ donations are noble and should have been stressed more. The story is told so haphazardly with cross-cutting and time-shifting that the movie didn't find an emotional rhythm for me. They crammed all the important plot points into about 10 minutes toward the end.
But worst of all is Smith's self-important performance (and I actually liked him in Pursuit of Happyness and almost everything else he's done before this).
Sorry my coarseness negatively affected you. Most people I work with at the hospital would never describe me that way. I have a great capacity for compassion and understanding in real-life non-jellyfish deaths and ailments.
By the way, there's no such thing as a Surprise! organ donation. There's extensive tissue typing, blood typing, waiting lists, etc. The film sacrificed all intelligence for feelings.
doc, one thing i love about you is that you continue to harp on the ridiculous of slumdog as best pic. never stop.
I think the Pussycat Dolls video has stoked the fire. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrVlBrooxcM
Also, finding out that Jai Ho was actually written for another film and transferred over when it didn't fit in that film. Everything fits in Slumdog because nothing does. What? There's no underlying theme or consistency or plan? Who cares? That's the point! Genius!
Finally, Boyle initially wanted the fancy pants dance scene in the middle of the film instead of the closing credits. And it was there until late in the editing. Good move! Let's manipulate the audience and send them out feeling high. Hopefully they'll forget about the crap, horror, gaping plot holes, inconsistencies, and overwhelming coincidences.
I was doing a google search about organ donation after death by jellyfish after watching this movie for the first time the other night and came across your review.
Hilarious! I did a search on jellyfish venom and after reading that cardiac arrest is the common result in the painful death I thought....well then how did they use his heart for donation? I was going to do more research on eye transplantation...but no need; your blog cleared it all up for me..
Thanks for your sense of humor, I appreciate it. Next time I watch the movie I bought for $4.99 at Target (Christmas Gift)...I'll enjoy it on a more humorous level.
In addition: while I was watching the movie...I leaned over to my husband during the ice water bath scene and exclaimed "as soon as I started to climb in the freezing water I'd change my mind...nope not worth it."
Post a Comment