Post by Mozenrath on Mar 12, 2017 7:50:09 GMT -5
What a loathesome f***ing film. Chiklis does his level best, and for a fairly inexperienced actor, he actually does a fantastic job with what he's given, but considering what he is given is a cynical, excruciatingly disrespectful film, it only goes so far. It's like if they made a bio film of George Michael a year or two from now, and the majority of the film was contained in a public restroom. I understand that yes, we should see aspects of his life as a cautionary tale, just as we should anyone whose death comes from circumstances like that, but to try to mask it as being about him when just about the only person in the project who seemed concerned at all with treating John like a 3 dimensional person was the man playing him rings really goddamn hollow to me. It's manipulative trash expectorated onto celluloid.
You can handle someone's excesses, their failures, their misdeeds, all of that, without using kid gloves, but you do not need to strip them of humanity to do so, or reduce them to a one-note caricature. John wasn't an angel, and you could have tackled things like his misogynistic behavior towards Jane Curtin, for instance, and it'd have been fair game, but that would require the biography or film adaptation to have any shits to give about fleshing John out beyond fat jokes and drug anecdotes.
Sorry to vent like this, it's not even like I am a massive Belushi fan, other than enjoying Blues Brothers and all that jazz, but what I do have experience with is quite a lot of addiction in my family tree. I've been open about my mother's meth addiction in the past, or my uncle's alcholism, and may have mentioned one of my best friends narrowly avoiding paralysis brought on in past by heroin addiction he fortunately has successfully overcome, and just, thinking about any one of them being summed up in such a narrow, contemptible way like Woodward's book or even more with the film just makes me seethe. This is no more a bio film than The Self Destruction of Ultimate Warrior would have been if that came out after his death. The book was a slap enough in the face to his family and friends, the film worsening it with a shit fantasy element. He has to play an angel at pinball to try to win his life back, but loses. Why don't they just edit it to where Ted lost his various contests against death in the second Bill and Ted and just play that after his death, I'm sure that'd be in great taste. Sorry, Judith, John just sucked dick at pinball and had to stay dead. Astonishingly poor taste.
So yeah, how are you?
You can handle someone's excesses, their failures, their misdeeds, all of that, without using kid gloves, but you do not need to strip them of humanity to do so, or reduce them to a one-note caricature. John wasn't an angel, and you could have tackled things like his misogynistic behavior towards Jane Curtin, for instance, and it'd have been fair game, but that would require the biography or film adaptation to have any shits to give about fleshing John out beyond fat jokes and drug anecdotes.
Sorry to vent like this, it's not even like I am a massive Belushi fan, other than enjoying Blues Brothers and all that jazz, but what I do have experience with is quite a lot of addiction in my family tree. I've been open about my mother's meth addiction in the past, or my uncle's alcholism, and may have mentioned one of my best friends narrowly avoiding paralysis brought on in past by heroin addiction he fortunately has successfully overcome, and just, thinking about any one of them being summed up in such a narrow, contemptible way like Woodward's book or even more with the film just makes me seethe. This is no more a bio film than The Self Destruction of Ultimate Warrior would have been if that came out after his death. The book was a slap enough in the face to his family and friends, the film worsening it with a shit fantasy element. He has to play an angel at pinball to try to win his life back, but loses. Why don't they just edit it to where Ted lost his various contests against death in the second Bill and Ted and just play that after his death, I'm sure that'd be in great taste. Sorry, Judith, John just sucked dick at pinball and had to stay dead. Astonishingly poor taste.
So yeah, how are you?
