Rues of Roo

Image taken from New York Times

Have any of you ever bought ‘First’, the Singaporean self-declared ‘Asia’s Premier Movie Magazine’?

There’s a reason why it’s all of S$4.50 while UK’s Empire is a whopping S$18.50. Allow me to cast your eyes on the recent issue which reviews Hancock with the tagline:

“Hancock: Bad boy, my butt”

Wow. I can feel the critic in me jump up and exclaim at the insight into that statement.

The article goes on with lines like:

“the character Hancock is obviously so far from who Smith is as a person that it makes the whole picture just seem off”

And:

“It’s not necessarily bad cinematography, but it just adds to the overall vibe of off-ness”

And:

“Hancock starts as one sort of movie (good), and ends up being something else (weird and kind of lame)”

The best thing about the article is that the writer obviously looked up ‘Words of the Day’ in dictionary.com to put in one word he thought was intelligent in “moribund” that leaps out of the page due to its uncharacteristic placement in an otherwise simplistic article, but seriously, what kind of articulate critical analysis of a movie flick uses words like ‘off-ness’ and ‘kind of lame’. Oh, and how could we forget, “my butt”.

I suppose what cries out in the overall stench of mediocrity of the review is that it reads like it belongs on Stomp or some blog somewhere. But I paid for this, so why should it read like something that is even less entertaining than xiaxue.blogspot.com (and I jest not, she’s really quite entertaining).

What I dislike even further is that I actually liked the movie because it is desperately deeper than the superfluous plot so many reviews seem to insist exists in this movie. There were actually less punchlines than I expected from a Will Smith movie (“good job”) and an interesting take on a superhero’s tragic life in battling with love and mortality.

Anywho. I suppose I can’t say much, since I’m not exactly writing for the New Yorker. But can I just say, you’re (much) better off reading movie reviews on the New York Times online than spending S$4.50 on First (Asia’s Premier Movie Magazine) because for S$4.50, you can buy tomato soup and two slices of garlic herb butter bread from Saybons which is actually pretty damn nice (even if I initially thought Saybons was the worst and most horrible tragic ‘play’ of words on c’est bon but whatever…). The point is, if you are going to put down a movie in a movie magazine, at least do it well.

Go and watch Hancock, it is a not lame but cOoL A$$ MOVIE, YO!