Last night a friend had free passes to Wristcutters: A Love Story. I'm glad I didn't pay actual money for this. I can't believe this thing won a bunch of awards. I'll say this for it: It was short — only about 90 minutes. The high point for me was the appearance of Will Arnett*, which thankfully was quickly followed by the ending.
I was turned off at the beginning, actually. This kid cleans up his messy room, only to slit his wrists? If you're going to kill yourself, why waste time and energy on cleaning up your room? Oh, and the parts where they're supposed to be in hell? Hellish for me, although I did enjoy the bits with Azura Skye and Abraham Benrubi. And then, when they're on that lengthy trip on the road to nowhere, where do they get enough money for food and gas? Whatever. Oh, and don't even get me started on the Russian guy and that annoying music from Gogol Bordello. Ugh!
Once they end up in the camp that's not really a camp and the main character gets hung up on these unexplained "miracles" — oof. I can't stand listening to Tom Waits, and I also can't stand John Hawkes ever since I saw him in that movie where he sets his arm on fire. At this point, I was really ready for things to be over. I think I dug out my phone to check the time, and couldn't believe that it had only been an hour. Eventually, after some more monkeying around — a throat-singing mute named Nanook? Really? — Will Arnett shows up and it's pretty much over.
There are some amusing parts, but apparently my tastes are totally bourgeois and boringly mainstream, and thus this was not my idea of an awesome flick. Oh, yay! Someone else hated it, too! However, this review makes some comparisions to Wes Anderson films. I always go to those and enjoy them, but that's probably because Luke Wilson is in most of those. I will sit through a lot for Luke Wilson, which is why I'm sorry he's not in The Darjeeling Limited.
*Well, I should say, Will Arnett's face. Am I spoiling part of it if I say that you briefly see the back of his head fairly early in the movie? Oops.
GOGOL BORDELLO ROCKS!!! In fact, they are on my "to buy" list.
ReplyDeleteWhatever. I still stand by my initial reaction, and I am definitely not getting you any of their CDs for your birthday.
ReplyDeleteOver lunch, I was telling Susan how the Wikipedia article claims that the group's frontman said that Parliament-Funkadelic is one of the band's main musical influences, and how I find that hard to believe since P-Funk can remove any faults, defects, or shortcomings (You know, like arthritis, rheumatism or migraines.) and GB only induces throbbing headaches and severe vomiting.
She said that I should edit that entry to say that Pat Boone is the band's major influence, and see how long it takes anyone to notice.
Ha! Awesome idea. I almost choked on my pasta, I was laughing so hard.