When did it become a bad thing for a movie to be silly and overblown, as long as it’s at least moderately entertaining?

I’ve seen some people blasting this movie lately, not because it was bad (which it can be at times) but because it was over the top and absurd. I found it particularly amusing when one critic accused it of being a fantasy world “too similar to our own” because horses are used for transportation and swords are the weapon of choice.

/facepalm

Granted, this isn’t a particularly good movie. “Krull” is weighed down almost to the point of collapse with clichés, and some of the acting is painfully wooden, especially the performances of Ken Marshall and Lysette Anthony (the hero and damsel, respectively). It’s one of those rare cases where the supporting cast (some very familiar names, including Liam Neeson, Robbie Coltrane, Freddie Jones, and Francesca Annis) saves the main cast from disaster.

And the movie’s special effects leave a lot to be desired, in spite of its budget. When “Krull” was made, its budget of roughly $26 million was considered lavish…and it sort of fell flat on its face. (By comparison, “Star Wars: A New Hope” – to which “Krull” is often unfavorably compared because of its plot – was made for $11 million a few years earlier.) Some of the effects are pretty neat for the time…pretty much anything involving the Slayers comes to mind immediately (especially their very unusual deaths and the way they have of rising out of the ground in the swamps…a conventional but extremely effective effect). And the hero’s magical weapon, absurd as it is, is kind of neat.

Also, much of the budget would appear to have gone into the soundtrack, the costuming and set design, as well as casting and the one blockbuster effects shot of the massive crystal spider in its huge web. But this unfortunately short-changed the rest of the effects, and some were particularly awful near the end of the movie. Anyone who’s seen it knows what I’m talking about (the badly rotoscoped, out-of-focus fish-eye-lensed Beast, and the hero’s flame-thrower hand…oy).

But it’s a movie with a tremendous amount of heart. Even Marshall and Anthony manage to turn in a couple of overeager but emotional scenes (the wedding scene, for example). The majority of the best work in the movie comes from the secondary characters, though. Freddie Jones’ wise old sage routine, for example, is always worth watching, and the scenes he did with Francesca Annis are emotionally charged and loaded with unspoken subtext-backstory that enriches the setting as a whole.

“Krull” also has one of James Horner’s most triumphant and entertaining soundtracks attached to it. It’s a rich body of music with excellent use of themes, heroic and tragic as needed, and only sounds a little bit like his score for “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (from the previous year, and on which it was pretty obviously based). The overture in particular is a magnificent piece of choral and orchestral music, and the later “Ride of the Firemares” track is one of my favorite pieces of fantasy film music.

Make no mistake, this is not a terribly good movie. There are parts of it that are actually painful to watch (due to bad acting or bad effects…or both…), and the ending pretty much trips over its own feet and falls flat on its face. And it’s possible that a lot of the value I find in the movie is purely nostalgia…when I was a little kid, it was a GREAT MOVIE!

Heh.

But it’s not an awful movie, either. It’s what I call a “popcorn” movie. It’s a light piece of fluff, parts of it are great and parts of it are tough to get past, and when it’s over you might feel a little guilty about having enjoyed it. You might even wonder why you enjoyed it.

That’s okay. Try to remember that not every movie needs to be a masterpiece. And even a bad movie can be entertaining.

(Aside: Anyone who’s familiar with James Horner’s body of work knows that my comment above about repetition in his work isn’t criticism. His film scores have a tendency to reuse themes from movie to movie, to the point where you can hear his brief Klingon theme from “Star Trek II” not only in other Star Trek movies…but also in “Aliens,” and it can be tracked back to its rudimentary form  – still recognizable – in his very first score for Roger Corman’s “Battle Beyond the Stars.” You can hear themes in his score from “A Beautiful Mind” which were clearly lifted from his score for “Bicentennial Man,” which in turn lifted themes from his score for “Braveheart,” and so on. It’s just how he works, building and evolving a theme until he’s apparently content that he’s said everything there is to say with it.)

There’s not really a lot to say about this movie. But it’s one that most people don’t recognize the name of when I mention it in conversation, and it’s one that I’ve enjoyed repeated viewings of.

Though “The Ghost and the Darkness” is a movie loaded with historical inaccuracies and anachronisms, it is, nevertheless, really based on a true story as it claims. There really were two man-eating lions that harrassed a bridge-building effort in Tsavo, in East Africa, and they were killed by the real Lt. Colonel John Henry Patterson in 1898. He kept the lions’ skins, and they can now be seen on display at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Which is pretty much where the truth ends and legend and fiction begin.

Fortunately, the screenplay was written by a very creative and clever writer, and the director was able to successfully frame and shoot an exciting movie. Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas obviously enjoyed the script they were given, and were strongly invested in their characters. And the film is loaded with actors who brought to life secondary characters that could have destroyed the movie if they’d been wooden and uninteresting.

The dialogue is – as one would expect from the man who wrote “The Princess Bride” – sharp and witty. “The Ghost and the Darkness” runs the full range from dark and tragic to cheerfully funny without any of it feeling forced or out of place. And it has a really lovely soundtrack.

As with a lot of movies I’ll be reviewing, this movie has not received a lot of critical acclaim. And, truth be told, it’s not a spectacular movie. It’s not high art, and it was never destined to win any awards. It’s not a complex movie, it doesn’t have any strangely dramatic twists, and it doesn’t have a surprise ending.

But it does successfully what many movies today never manage to do: it sets itself to tell a story, start to finish, and does so without stumbling over itself. Its story is involving, the characters are interesting enough to make you hope things turn out well for them, and it has just the right mix of action and talk to keep the pacing of the movie steady.

It’s a good addition to any collection. And if, when it’s over, you’re interested in what really happened, you might be able to track down a copy of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, written by Patterson himself. You can also visit the Chicago Field Museum’s website about the exhibit at http://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/exhibit_sites/tsavo/default.htm, where they have both pictures of Patterson and his lions, and a brief factual writeup on their history.

Let me start by saying in no uncertain terms that I’m not a fan of the original cartoon or the manga. I find both incredibly boring and often offensively stupid. The name Speed Racer dredges up no childhood nostalgia for me.

Which should put the rest of this review into some sort of context. Because I honestly believe that fans and critics alike are much too hard on this highly entertaining movie.

The fact that I so abhor the source material says to me that this movie is a great example of what can be done by two clever film-makers with a real love for said source material, when given a budget, a good cast, and a passionate desire to do something nobody’s ever done before. The Wachowskis wanted to make a live-action cartoon, one which paid tribute to something they’d loved as children. They succeeded. To the point where their love of the material made me go back and take a look at the old cartoon again, to see if maybe I was being too hard on it.

(I wasn’t. I still can’t stand it. Which makes this movie that much more impressive to me.)

I’ll be honest…this movie isn’t art. It’s loaded with absurdities and silliness, loud noises, bright colors, and occasionally hammy dialogue. It was made purely for the sake of entertaining its audiences. But that’s not to say it’s not a GOOD movie. If you’re prepared to let yourself believe in all of the absurdities that make up Speed’s world and can look past them, you’ll find a surprisingly good story and a very well-constructed film.

One of the things that really stands out to me about “Speed Racer” is that the Wachowskis often manage to portray the characters’ emotions and thoughts without a single line of dialogue. For example: during the introductory scenes, we have a shot of a young Speed being picked up at school by his older brother, Rex. Before either of them says a word to one another, you know beyond all doubt that Speed worships the ground Rex walks on, and that Rex really cares about his little brother. The dynamic is just there…it doesn’t need to be explained, described, or shoved in the audience’s face with dramatic dialogue.

It simply exists.

It frames the rest of the scene, which is Speed convincing Rex to let him come along for racing practice. It’s not hard to believe that Rex would cave in and let Speed come with him. Rex never says anything like “All right, Speed, I’ll let you come, but only because I really love you, you rascal.” He doesn’t have to. We know.

That’s great film-making right there. And the movie is loaded with little moments like that, where we don’t need to be told about the Racer family’s dynamics…because it shows in the way they treat one another.

This is a movie where the good guy literally wears white (heck, even his cars are white), one of the bad guys has a fish tank filled with piranha, and cars can be used for martial-arts. It has a great cast (John Goodman and Susan Sarandon, amongst others), and they were obviously having a lot of fun. It’s silly, it’s way over the top, and has a pallette of bright, primary colors. It has a moral, and delivers it with all the subtlety of a bomb going off (it’s actually a newspaper headline at the end of the movie). It’s loud, cheerful, and energetic.

And fun.

Get a copy of this movie. Make some popcorn, grab a soda, sit back…and pretend you’re a kid again, watching Saturday morning cartoons. That’s the feeling it evokes, and the spirit in which it was made. It’s a great movie for a dreary day.

Beware, spoilers below.

Okay, I know I’m a little bit behind the curve on this one, but I didn’t get to the theater to see it.

Thankfully.

First of all, let me say that I’m a fan of the original movie. It’s not exactly high art, but it’s a fun flick, and it was some of the best work that Ray Harryhausen did before his retirement.

This movie was not “Clash of the Titans.” In fact, if anything, it was a live-action version of Disney’s “Hercules.” All it was missing was the satyr sidekick, and from about fifteen minutes into the movie until the end it was almost scene-for-scene the same thing, with a few elements lifted from the original “Clash of the Titans.”

Which is fine. A remake should always try to build on the original rather than simply reproducing it shot for shot. Mind you, that’s “build on,” not “abandon almost entirely.”

The 2010 version of “Clash of the Titans” is a total failure in almost every respect. But most galling is the fact that it falls squarely into a trope the folks at TVTropes.com call a “Broken Aesop.” The Broken Aesop is a movie (TV show, book, whatever) which states in bold terms a moral that it intends to teach the audience…then proceeds to tell a story which blatantly displays precisely the opposite message.

“Clash” makes no bones about the fact that it has a Message (capital M). Its Message is pretty simple: Mankind can get by just fine without the Gods. In fact, several characters in the movie harp on this repeatedly over the first hour, over and over stating that they don’t need the gods, they can do it without them, culminating in one of the soldiers telling Perseus “Tell them Men did this.” just before being killed by the Medusa.

Yet in spite of this repetition of the moral to be taught, when push comes to shove, everyone but our hero (a demi-god) is killed. And even our hero (said demi-god) is incapable of achieving his goals without resorting to the use of his divine powers and talents. And the magic sword Zeus gave him. And the magic horse Zeus sent him.

And when all is said and done, our hero has evidently decided that the gods aren’t that bad after all. He has a friendly chat with Zeus, acknowledges him as his true father…and is given back his dead girlfriend “Because you’re a son of Zeus!”

But we don’t need the gods!

Throw in a side order of the two characters who abandon our hero turning up in a later scene, having been rewarded for their abandonment with a tame giant scorpion to ride around on; some of the worst costuming continuity problems I’ve ever seen (pay attention to Io’s costume…her clothes change radically from a mini-dress to a flowing gown during conversations); and a slap in the face to the original movie by way of the brief and very insulting cameo made by the mechanical owl from the original, and you have the makings of a world-class /facepalm.

Like I said, I love the original movie, so it’s possible I’m biased against the new one. But I tried to  go into it with an open mind, and I did enjoy a lot of what I saw. The battles against the scorpions and Medusa were quite spectacular. Medusa in particular sticks out in my mind as a magnificent representation of the mythical creature. Likewise, the Pegasus in this movie was by far the best winged horse ever done on screen, and there have been some good ones.

But the movie reeks of development hell and executive meddling, and I suspect large chunks of it ended up on the editing room floor. It’s a fair guess…a quick look at the credits on the IMDb show that the movie had three screenwriters, four executive producers and two producers. Ouch.

In the end, I’m sadly disappointed. It wasn’t bad, per se…but it was a bit of a train wreck in terms of story and editing. And that’s not even getting into the acting, which I can’t decide if it suffered from the actors being apathetic towards the movie, or if it was just badly edited. I suspect badly edited.

I hope to see a director’s cut of this movie someday, especially if they edit back in a significant amount of footage (more than, say, 15 minutes worth). I suspect it would be a more cohesive and entertaining movie…and a less insulting one.