Okay, so this is one of the rare times when I review a movie that seems to be the hot one of the moment. Yes, a lot of people have been talking about it, and for once, I went ahead and watched it.
Yet, perhaps as a sign of how little the movie hooked me, it took three tries for me to finally get through it. I kept waiting for that moment when it would hook me, when I would just finally get into it. But it just never really happened.
It is not a bad movie. That is not what I am trying to say here.
So, let me explain what exactly it is that just did not quite work for me in this movie. Also, I will try to do so without any spoilers, just in case someone reading this might want to see it.
That said, it is a movie that I find myself wondering about, particularly why they bothered to make it. The first one was released over 30 years ago, and it was very funny. This one, by way of comparison, just kind of falls flat. Perhaps the humor is repetitive, or just works better in the time period of the eighties when the first one arrived. Or maybe it is just that Eddie Murphy seems to have a fraction of the energy and craziness that once seemed to come so easily to him.
All of this is just speculation. Truth be told, I am not even entirely sure what it is. After speculating, perhaps it just is not something I can quite put my finger on. Only, again, it just felt like this one did not work nearly as well.
Now, it did have some moments. There were some laughs, here and there, and some wit that I appreciated, particularly when the movie actually manages to make fun of itself. Anyone who saw it, or will see it, will know exactly what I am talking about, but again, it is not my intention to spoil it.
Indeed, it did have some funny moments, and some of the return characters were possibly the best part of the movie. But be warned: the title is deceptive, because most of the movie does not take place in America, even though they do return to Queens on a couple of occasions.
The three daughters felt too perfect and, frankly, uninteresting, even unreal. And the new characters introduced from Queens in this movie felt too stereotyped, with a lot of exaggerations and predictable outcomes. And all of this, again, just felt like they were created for a big name movie that could be the flavor of the moment and generate some cash. I wanted to forget all of that and just get lost in the movie, something that the best movies, or books, or general works of art, allow me to do. Watching this one, it was very difficult not to see that the writers were working to try and produce what they hoped the audience wanted to see. At least for me, it never came alive, like the first one did, or like really any good and engaging movie. Case in point, I just watched "Monster's Ball" for the second time, and forgot how good that movie was. For the couple of hours or so while watching, I could almost forget everything else, and just immerse myself in the movie. The best comedies can be the same way. This just never came close to reaching that level.
Somehow, some of the humor and scenarios felt forced, and it felt at times like they were trying too hard. This felt particularly true of Wesley Snipes and the dancing characters surrounding his General Izzi character. The story line was also flimsy and felt forced, and just never grabbed me, hence the three attempts to finally get through this. All of which might have been forgiven, if the movie had reached a taking off point when it indeed became hilarious. Again, the first one was a very good and funny movie. So, I am not entirely sure what happened here, except that, once again, a sequel fails to live up to the billing from the original movie. Perhaps also they waited too long. After all, it was well over three full decades since the first one came out, and a lot of things changed since then, including humor.
Of course, this might work for some. I made a point of not looking at any reviews for this movie before writing my own here, but now that I am done, it seemed logical to go ahead and take a look. Just over 50 percent of people enjoyed the movie on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, while 55 percent enjoyed it, according to IMBd. Yet, among Google users, a whopping 81 percent said that they liked the film. So who knows? Maybe in part, it was some nostalgia that helped people like this film, because my sense is that they likely really did not need work particularly hard for some fresh humor. There were some funny moments, but most of those were more or less running jokes from the first movie, which means that they borrowed heavily from that one. Another way to put that is that they did not really work hard enough to try and earn laughs on their own, and they seemed to have just thought that a mixture of nostalgia for the first film, along with some clever humor almost exclusively borrowed from the original would be enough. For some, clearly, it is indeed enough. But I just did not really enjoy it as much as I had hoped to, and feel that this was one of those sequels that did little to nothing to enhance the first movie. It is watchable - again, this is not a horrible movie, or anything - yet it also is not particularly memorable and has no lasting value, which the first movie obviously had in droves.
No comments:
Post a Comment