Evil Little Valentines: Bad Reviews

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I fell in hate with this movie, and I can pinpoint the exact moment it happened, too: the very first frame, which let me know that everything was going to be so much brighter and more modern and comprehensible than in the original. It got so that I hated the movie so much, I began to wonder what hateful thing was just around the corner, and it never disappointed: it veered from stupid to lame to irritating to nauseating to dumb. I realize that we are in a Tim Burton movie, but for satire to work, there has to be something good, too, or at least a center of gravity. Anyway, I sat through the credits just so that I could know who to blame and envisioned them all falling through that little trapdoor to the garbage shoot that Veruca Salt fell through. This movie is like hell –Johnny Depp not sexy, Helena Bonham Carter not pretty, kids not charming, parents not trustworthy, candy not tempting, music horrible. Ugly and fascist. The only purpose it served was to make me realize how much I loved the original movie.

No offense to those who liked it. I mean, most of the critics did, so you’re all in good company. Whatever.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Yes, it’s alternately boring and irritating in the beginning, but after that, it’s great. A whole world made out of candy—awesome, I used to daydream about that as a kid. “Come with me, and you’ll be/In a world of pure imagination…” That’s exactly where this movie is, and it’s necessary that the first part be boring so that the second half can be more enjoyable. Somehow, Willy Wonka restores balance. He refuses to be the indulgent parent when the kids are bratty. He just…gets rid of them…and maybe they can come back, but he refuses to give false hope.

Jack Frost

When I was in elementary school, I had to read this book (a Newberry award winner, I think) called Miss Hickory, about a character made out of sticks who gets grafted onto a tree at the end of the book. (If that sounds to you like a great plot for a kids’ story rather than a nightmare, you should not read the rest of this review.) In this movie, a dad who spends a lot of time on the road gives his son a harmonica to play, should he ever need him. To make a dumb story mercifully short, dad dies, kid plays, and daddy returns as a snowman…a fake-looking CGI one, at that. Mom seems fine with it, and the kid seems even happier about the new dad, who now does nothing but hang out and do fun winter stuff, like sledding and throwing snowballs at inhuman speed, with these little stick arms whirring around in a blur. The only thing that would redeem it all is to have a final scene in which Michael Keaton comes back in the flesh to announce haughtily that he was testing them all along, and he is leaving their a&*es because mom is either a sexless robot or getting it on with the milkman, and the kid is a selfish, heartless little boy who would rather have a hunk of frozen water around the house than a real person. (And then he could become an ATF guy and run off to Barcelona and find Jackie Brown…but I digress.)

Dogville

Can’t review this movie, as I’m boycotting Lars von Trier.

Kontroll

The cinema of ugliness. Some interesting moments, but overall it depressed me.

The Blair Witch Project

Made me feel sick, literally. I can’t watch hand-held camera things for very long. The nausea was enhanced by the margarita I had beforehand, no doubt.

La Mala educación

There's something bitterly fascinating about queens, who I can only appreciate in movies because they'd probably never talk to a midwestern woman educated in Baptist schools. Probably right. I'd only want to save them and want to know who did their hair.