I went to see Last Holiday last night with Mel and Lori. The movie is about a woman who is told she has three weeks to live and spends her last holiday in a spa in Europe, only to find out she has been mis-diagnosed. Ooops, I spilled the beans, but really, anyone with an IQ over 20 knew that was going to happen when Doctor Gupta (no, not the one on CNN) tells us at length about how the hospital's new CAT machine is actually used and old.
Queen Latifah plays the central character in a script that obviated any need to act. The entire second and third act her character is absolutely perfect. Everything she says is the right thing. Everything she does is perfect. I'm sure that a few scenes that put her in line with Mother Theresa were left on the cutting room floor. In fact at more than a few points other characters call her a 'saint'.
It's so over the top that it's tough to watch at some points. There is no self-effacing humor at all. That could be fixed through the script by giving her something that she would regret, like a tatoo. Then giving her a moment of "ooops" realization when she finds out she is going to live.
Or, if you wanted to go on the cheap, you could just throw in outtakes like they did in the 70s. Remember all those cheesy Burt Reynolds flicks where he would even look in the camera and give you that smile that said; "There is no way I'm going to lose. I'm Burt fucking Reynolds." The only reason those movies are pallatable is the outtakes that come immediately after the last scene that show you that Burt is, in fact, just a laughably moronic hack. And we all have a laugh, take another hit off the beer bong, and say; "Man, that was classic."
For me Die Hard created the fallable hero. Until Die Hard we got movies where the main character would be in a firefight with 10,000 bad guys and never get a scratch or muss his hair. Die Hard changed all that. Even our super-heros are just suped up humans nowadays. I would hate to see us going back to putting perfect saints on screen again.
Posted by jherr at January 16, 2006 06:48 AMYou can't tell me you went to this movie and expected anything.
Posted by: bsaz at January 17, 2006 11:05 AMYeah, clearly it was just fluff. In fact in the car on the way home Lori and I talked about the movie and we asked Mel what he thought. He said that it was just fluff and, well, there you go.
We agreed that picking apart the movie was like trying to decide which was better; nugate or caramel.
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