Movie Review: "Cloverfield"
Ok, I admit it, all the internet marketing got to me. I've always been a fan of Godzilla like monster movies since I was a kid, however the Americanized version of Godzilla was so bad I have yet to see it in it's entirety and don't plan to. I should have taken the same course of action with Cloverfield.
I'm sure by now you all know what this film is and that it's shot using a shaky-hand-held-camera to get that first person view, and that the gist of the plot is that a monster attacks NYC, and a bunch of friends travel through the city to find a longtime female friend of the main guy (Rob), who have secretly loved each other for years but only recently hooked up just before he moves away to Japan, but they had a fight right after hooking up...oh who gives a fuck...I want to see the monster destroying shit! Sadly, I barely did.
The film is 1 hour and 24 minutes, and the first 20 minutes are wasted developing the "characters". I saw one critic complain that the characters were like the cast of Friends. I was not a fan of Friends but I've seen it enough to know that at least Friends had some characters less annoying then others, I mean Matthew Perry's character was at least the cool sarcastic character. No such luck here, you end up with a bunch of characters with the personality of Ross/David Schwimmer. And the guy holding the camera, Hud, seems like he was being played as if he were borderline mentally handicapped.
So finally we get to the scene we've all seen a million time over in the original trailer. Shit starts going down, and an extremely inaccurately small representation of the Statue Of Liberty's head flies down the street. From there I'm starting think, ok this is where it's going to become a rollercoaster ride. Instead, all I hear is a lot of, "oh my god"...a phrase uttered so many times in the film one could play a drinking game with it and be shitfaced pretty fast. I'm guessing that phrase was uttered because if they said what they actually would say in that situation like, "holy fucking shit!", they wouldn't have gotten the PG-13 rating.
Anyway, instead of the film being full of mayhem with the monster, we see a lot of nothing as they continually find places to hide in order to have long segments of dialogue and "character development". I love arthouse movies, and sitting and watching a film like "Before Sunrise", which is all dialogue and character development for an hour and a half, but when I'm watching a monster movie I want to see a monster attacking a city and ripping shit apart. Occasionally you see the giant monster (I won't disclose what it looks like...it's certainly not Godzilla like though), but in the entire film I think you see the giant monster maybe 5 minutes. You also see some little versions of the monster (that falls of the bigger monster), but they are only limitedly seen.
By the end of the film when you're supposed to be hit with the big emotional core, all I could say was, "that's it! What a crappy ending!"
Wait for this film to hit cable if you must see it. It's certainly not worth the ridiculous price that theaters are charging these days.
Ok, I admit it, all the internet marketing got to me. I've always been a fan of Godzilla like monster movies since I was a kid, however the Americanized version of Godzilla was so bad I have yet to see it in it's entirety and don't plan to. I should have taken the same course of action with Cloverfield.
I'm sure by now you all know what this film is and that it's shot using a shaky-hand-held-camera to get that first person view, and that the gist of the plot is that a monster attacks NYC, and a bunch of friends travel through the city to find a longtime female friend of the main guy (Rob), who have secretly loved each other for years but only recently hooked up just before he moves away to Japan, but they had a fight right after hooking up...oh who gives a fuck...I want to see the monster destroying shit! Sadly, I barely did.
The film is 1 hour and 24 minutes, and the first 20 minutes are wasted developing the "characters". I saw one critic complain that the characters were like the cast of Friends. I was not a fan of Friends but I've seen it enough to know that at least Friends had some characters less annoying then others, I mean Matthew Perry's character was at least the cool sarcastic character. No such luck here, you end up with a bunch of characters with the personality of Ross/David Schwimmer. And the guy holding the camera, Hud, seems like he was being played as if he were borderline mentally handicapped.
So finally we get to the scene we've all seen a million time over in the original trailer. Shit starts going down, and an extremely inaccurately small representation of the Statue Of Liberty's head flies down the street. From there I'm starting think, ok this is where it's going to become a rollercoaster ride. Instead, all I hear is a lot of, "oh my god"...a phrase uttered so many times in the film one could play a drinking game with it and be shitfaced pretty fast. I'm guessing that phrase was uttered because if they said what they actually would say in that situation like, "holy fucking shit!", they wouldn't have gotten the PG-13 rating.
Anyway, instead of the film being full of mayhem with the monster, we see a lot of nothing as they continually find places to hide in order to have long segments of dialogue and "character development". I love arthouse movies, and sitting and watching a film like "Before Sunrise", which is all dialogue and character development for an hour and a half, but when I'm watching a monster movie I want to see a monster attacking a city and ripping shit apart. Occasionally you see the giant monster (I won't disclose what it looks like...it's certainly not Godzilla like though), but in the entire film I think you see the giant monster maybe 5 minutes. You also see some little versions of the monster (that falls of the bigger monster), but they are only limitedly seen.
By the end of the film when you're supposed to be hit with the big emotional core, all I could say was, "that's it! What a crappy ending!"
Wait for this film to hit cable if you must see it. It's certainly not worth the ridiculous price that theaters are charging these days.