[Gabriel Macht as The Spirit]Written by GL
The new year has been ushered in and it's time to expect a whole new line up of developments from toy-lines, movie studios, merchandising outfits and television premieres. And, without a doubt, previous years have had they're share of blunders. But we ain't talking about that.
Tonight we're talking about a current blunder that is of almost Catwoman-like proportions. Let's talk about The Spirit.
The gross for the opening four-days was a disappointing $10.3 million only. And a general criticism that came out of this was that many felt Frank Miller (the director and, on top of that, one of the greatest comic writers to have ever lived) was too obsessed with the visuals and not the storyline. Let's have a look at what some critics had to say:
- Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times) said; "There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material".
- Owen Gleiberman (Entertainment Weekly) said; "ludicrously knowing and mannered noir pastiche, full of burnt-end romance and 'style, but robotic at its core".
- A.O. Scott (The New York Times) said; "To ask why anything happens in Frank Miller's sludgy, hyper-stylized adaptation of a fabled comic book series by Will Eisner may be an exercise in futility. The only halfway interesting question is why the thing exists at all".
- J.R. Jones (Chicago Reader) said; "Someone get this man a decent script".
- Jason Anderson (Toronto Star) said; " At which exact point The Spirit hits rock bottom is a matter of debate".
- Colin Covert (Minneapolis Star Tribune) said; "It's not easy to make a thriller that's both incredibly convoluted and intensely boring, laboriously narrated yet befuddled, but Miller -- creator and co-director of Sin City -- triumphs on all counts".
[The Spirit & Darwyn Cooke]Being the naughty little buggers we are, we decided to pull a little experiment with our friends. Having watched the movie first, Kal-el and I already had an idea of its stinky-ness. But our circle of friends didn't. So, upon their finishing of watching the movie, Kal-el and I decided to openly rave and glorify what we thought of The Spirit - we were going to say it was the best-test-test movie we had seen in years. And when we did, out of all our friends: no one said they hated it !
Two key messages from this, boys and girls: don't watch The Spirit and get a new circle of friends.
