Well-Assembled Silliness: Independence Day (1996)

 

                       Image Copyright 20th Century Fox

     Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day is one of those movies that are basically critic proof, in the sense that the most common critiques of it pretty much miss the point entirely. Every time I read anything about the hackneyed dialogue, clichéd characters, and naïve patriotism in this movie, I tend to shake my head. In the case of a movie like Independence Day, these things are, paradoxically, strengths rather than flaws, because they play right into the film’s intended purpose- to be a high-budget throwback to those old, corny mid-20^th century sci-fi/disaster stories. Independence Day is the classic alien invasion film to end all classic alien invasion films, hearkening back to Cold War-era fears about malevolent saucer-men from space that have it out for us Earthlings. The movie incorporates nearly all of the requisite clichés, playing them to the hilt with great glee on a bigger budget than most old B-movies; even those who hate the movie concede that the effects are great. [Despite the presence of some CGI, this was basically one of the last gasps of old-school model work in American film, and it remains a wonder to behold.]

     At the same time, Independence Day is a product of the era in which it is made. The Cold War had just ended a few years before, with the United States as the triumphant nation. Silly as the movie’s unabashed American nationalism seems in a post 9/11 world, there really were hopes among some that the demise of the Soviet Union prefigured the permanent ascendance of American -or at least broadly Western- political and cultural values across the globe. Even today, knowing where things have gone since the 1990s, it hard not to feel something upon hearing the movie’s famous “Fourth of July” speech, even if it’s only bittersweet regret for the subsequent real-world demise of the hope and optimism for global unity embodied in President Whitmore’s words.

     Make no mistake, though; the primary attraction here is entertainment, and it’s present in spades. From the ensemble cast of delightfully clichéd and archetypical characters, to the silly one-liners and hilariously improbably situations, Independence Day milks its premise and setting to the fullest, offering viewers ample bang for their buck, so to speak. If you aren’t sold on the idea of the movie’s commitment to silly entertainment before everything else, watching it won’t do anything to convince you otherwise. But if you are, you probably won’t find yourself disappointed.

     Yet as much as the movie emphasizes daft fun, there is a method to its madness. Compared to many action blockbusters today, Independence Day is a model of restraint in a number of ways. For one thing, it has a very good sense of pace, taking its time to build up to the action and thus making the inevitable destruction/battle sequences something to savor. For another thing, it gives the majority of its characters something to do in the plot of some sort. And in yet another stroke of genius, the movie avoids overexposing the aliens themselves, preferring to keep them hidden for the entire first half, and only showing them sporadically throughout the second half. For these and other reasons, Independence Day can rightfully be considered an example of style over substance done skillfully.

     There are issues to be found. For example, a brief sequence at a strip-club is needless in light of the fact that the dialogue already revealed the occupation of the character in question, and it accomplishes nothing more than to be an offense to the eyes. This and a handful of crass comments add nothing of value to the movie, which would work perfectly well without them. Also, the family members of one of the characters feel underwritten, as though several critical scenes with them are missing from the final cut. [The eight-minute longer extended cut goes some way towards fixing this last issue, although the film is mostly the same otherwise.] For the most part, however, Independence Day stands as a well-assembled piece of daft entertainment, one which will continue to delight as long as moviegoers need an escape from reality into a world where a dog can outrun an explosion from a giant ray gun and a nerdy guy with a Mac can join forces with a Marine Corps pilot to fight alien invaders.

Actual Quality: 11/12

Personal Enjoyment: 11/12

A Well-Crafted Travesty: The Little Mermaid (1989)

 

[Image Copyright Disney]

     

     As time goes on, it’s becoming more and more socially acceptable to dislike Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Good thing, too, because as much as I hate arguing with people, I have to say it: I don’t like The Little Mermaid.

     Oh, I don’t wish to deny its landmark status. The film did a lot to make Disney animated films popular again after two decades of features that, while not necessarily terrible in and of themselves, nevertheless failed to capture the same level of love among audiences and critics that many of the animated films produced during Walt Disney’s lifetime had garnered. It’s not hard to see why. For one thing, it harkened back to Disney’s earlier roots in that it was an adaptation, however “Disneyfied”, of a fairy tale, the way Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was. For another thing, the animation was a notable improvement over the limited, less than fluid visuals that Disney had been releasing since the end of the 1960s. It had much catchier songs than its recent predecessors from the studio. And on top of all that, it played right into the emerging “you go, girl!” sentiments of the time that flourished during the 1990s, and that still exist today. Disney, it seemed, had reinvented itself. And audiences loved it.

     The question of whether any of Disney’s animated films from the 1970s and 1980s are worth a second look is a debate best covered elsewhere. For now, suffice it to say that The Little Mermaid was definitely a turning point for Disney.

     I said that I disliked it. Well, that’s not entirely true. The animation, while it has definitely been surpassed since the film’s release in 1989 [in fact, I’d argue that it was already being surpassed as of the next Disney release in 1990], still holds up pretty well; it’s much, much more fluid and less limited than the animation in a film like The Rescuers. Artistically, it strikes me as a blend of previous Disney animated styles and elements of what was to come from the studio during the 1990s. The songs, while not always my thing, are lavishly arranged, and are indeed quite catchy. I’ll willingly admit a fondness for “Under the Sea” and, to a lesser extent, “Poor Unfortunate Souls”.

     But alas! Where the film falls flat for me is in the categories that I care the most about: story and character. And what a fall it is. It’s not just a matter of the film not interesting me- I actually dislike the storyline. All the criticisms of Ariel being a self-centered, unsympathetic protagonist who’s a bad-role model for young girls are every bit as true as you’ve heard. She wants a man she’s only glimpsed a few times briefly, and she wants him now! [Any objections about her being curious about humans in general are non-sequiturs, in that the film makes Prince Eric the near-total focus of this curiosity.] She strikes a bargain with a thoroughly disreputable individual to get what she wants. And just when the film teases you into thinking that she’s going to learn her lesson, it pulls back, and gives her exactly what she wants. The End.

     There were so many nuances Disney could have inserted into this plot- I mean, if they were going to fundamentally alter the original story by [among many other things] letting the titular mermaid live, why not go all out and add nuance to the “true love” theme that the film’s plot hinges on? Why not give the overbearing father figure more nuance by exploring his motivations, and by letting Ariel learn that, however overprotective he is, he actually means well, or -*gasp*- has an understandable, if somewhat unnuanced, line of thought behind his attitude and actions? [And don’t try to tell me the last scene between them was her having learned to accept her father. She only accepts him -only says she loves him- after he gives her exactly what she wants.] But no, they had to play all the tropes so painfully straight. And the end result is a terrible role-model, who’s held up by the film as a person we’re supposed to root for.

     I’m sorry, but no thanks. For all his faults, my sympathies lie with King Triton- who, incidentally, has the closest thing to a complete character arc of anyone in this film. King Triton changes over the course of the film. Ariel doesn’t. King Triton learns something. Ariel doesn’t.

     Say, why couldn’t this movie have been about King Triton? His daughter is annoying, and her love interest, Prince Eric, is a total snorefest owing to a lack of personality on his part. King Triton would make for a much more interesting protagonist.

     In a movie where the character we’re supposed to root for is so fundamentally unlikeable, I have to latch onto what I can to keep myself engaged. And for what it’s worth, I do like some of the supporting roles. Sebastian the crab and Scuttles the seagull have their charms. Ursula the sea-witch is far from my favorite Disney antagonist, but her voice actress is clearly having a good time hamming it up- and it’s very hard for me to resist enjoying hammy villainy.  As for Flounder, his voice grates a little, but he doesn’t bother me overmuch.

     In the end, however, it’s the animation and parts of the score that are the main attraction for me. And when the storyline, the protagonist, and the message irk me so much, that’s not enough. I’ll never deny The Little Mermaid’s place in movie history. I’ll concede that is quite competently structured, animated, voiced, and scored, despite its lack of nuance in the story and character department. But in the end, I just don’t like it. 

 

Actual Quality: 5.5/12

Personal Enjoyment: 2/12

Becoming What You Criticize: Jurassic World (2015)

Image Copyright 2015, Universal

[Spoilers Ahead!]

     When it first came out, Jurassic World was much discussed. As of when I write this, it’s been more than seven months since the film’s initial release, and no one seems to be talking much about it anymore. It’s a situation that rather neatly encapsulates how forgettable this movie really is.

     If the previous two sequels had shown us anything, it was that there was never truly a need for any sequel to the original Jurassic Park. True, they both had much to offer on a technical level. But in terms of screenwriting quality, the second movie was downright ludicrous, while the third was rather below average. As a consequence, neither was able to truly merit the moniker of “good film”.

    Even so, both films managed to be entertaining in their own right, if not always in the ways they were intended to be. The contrast between the high quality production values and the nonsensical, hilariously pretentious screenplay gave The Lost World: Jurassic Park a sort of cornball charm that brought the effort into “so-bad-its-good” territory. Jurassic Park III lacked some of the late 90s cheese factor of its predecessor, but it did compensate with the return of Alan Grant and a welcome awareness of the fact that it had no justifiable reason to exist outside of showcasing dinosaurs chasing people and occasionally eating them. Provided you were able to switch your brain off, they did at least make for enjoyable nonsense.

     Would that I could say the same for Jurassic World. When it was first announced, I knew that for the film to succeed at all, it needed to demonstrate the same self-awareness about its own lack of purpose that the third film had possessed, or else be as ludicrously entertaining as the second. Instead, to my great disappointment, the end result was a film that tries earnestly to be genuinely good, only to run up against a brick wall when it realizes that it has precious little new to bring to the table. While technically more consistent than either of the previous sequels, Jurassic World is also more forgettable than either of them.

      To be fair, this fourth installment does offer what on paper is the most dramatically and thematically interesting plot of any of the sequels. What if, using the technology advancements since the early 90s setting of the original film, a successful dinosaur park that manages to stay open long enough for people to become jaded and bored of living dinosaurs? To what lengths would the owners of the park go to regain the public’s attention? Now admittedly,  the idea that anyone would front the money to give such a project another go after the ending of the second film is a tough pill to swallow- still more the idea that much of the public would become bored by the finished result after less than a decade. But assuming one is willing to go with the premise, it does offer plenty of possibilities. Alas that, after a semi-promising opener, the screenplay largely squanders them for what amounts to a dull, inferior retread of the original film. Once again, something goes terrible wrong as a result of a corporate espionage plot and the worst happens. Once again, the park is shut down, presumably never to be reopened. Once again, there are two kids that need to be saved amidst the chaos. Etc., etc., etc. The movie is stuffed with structural and callbacks to the original, yet it’s barely able to summon even a tenth of Jurassic Park’s soul. [One character’s in-universe belief that “the first park was legit” only serves to bring this issue further into the open.]

     Perhaps the most egregious example of Jurassic World’s lack of imagination is its main antagonist, the ferocious Indominus Rex. The park’s new bid to regain the public eye, the Indominus is a genetic hybrid of multiple species- and not just dinosaurs. For a creature that could have looked like virtually anything, it’s bitterly disappointing to see that the filmmakers have opted for what amounts to nothing more than a really big raptor with a bland color scheme. When the beast itself is dispatched near the end, my relief stemmed not so much from the fact that the day had been saved as from the fact that it had met its demise at the teeth and claws of two infinitely more interesting creatures- and that we consequently no longer had to put up with it being on screen. As a creature, the Indominus is annoyingly dull, which is all the more frustrating since it dominates much of the movie.

    Among the few scenes in the movie that stand out is a sequence where Jurassic World’s chief geneticist explains to its owner that “bigger, faster, more teeth” is what the public wants, going on to elaborate upon the cynical, corporate mentality he knowingly embodies. In context, it’s meant as thoughtful thematic commentary. Yet on a meta-level, the scene plays rather like a cynical commentary on the movie itself. The mentality that Jurassic World ostensibly criticizes is, in fact, the mentality that dominates much of the movie. The callbacks to the original film ring hollow, like cynical attempts to cash in on nostalgia. The dinosaurs are that much less wondrous for being rendered primarily in obvious CGI, as opposed to with extensive animatronic and puppetry work augmented by computer effects like with the previous three films. And the action scenes are -barring the final fight and one or two odd moments- less entertaining than the vast majority of what has come before. Even the film’s approach to science seems cynically unenthusiastic. The previous installments may have dealt with the misuse of science, but they each offered positively portrayed scientist characters as a thematic counterbalance. No such luck here.

     All of this might have been at least semi-forgivable had the characters been memorable and/or likable enough for us to invest in. But they generally aren’t. There’s no Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm, or Ellie Sattler for us to latch onto and root for as the circumstances turn nightmarish. Instead, we’re stuck with Chris Pratt, who basically just plays a phoned-in version of himself in a script that can’t be bothered to give him anything compelling to do or say. If he was any less bored playing his character than I was watching him here, I couldn’t tell. Of the rest of the performers, only Irfan Khan manages to rise above the fog of tedium, providing a portrait of a flawed but likable man in his portrayal of park owner Simon Masrani. It’s a pity, then, that the movie underutilizes him, and then kills him off at the midway point. Once he’s gone, the last character of genuine interest is gone as well.

     An unfortunate consequence of the film’s lack of any great interest in humanity is that the action scenes feel far more nasty and callous than they ought to. Gone are the majority of the little humanizing touches that the deaths of even the extras at least vaguely affecting. For all that they served up people as dino chow for our entertainment, the previous three movies did have a noticeable thematic undercurrent that valued human life in the abstract- something that served to counterbalance things lest we feel too guilty at enjoying such carnage in popcorn entertainment. Jurassic World pays brief lip service to such a notion, but largely disregards it in execution for sequences of carnage that are more gruesome [in terms of the level of violent detail shown directly] than any the franchise has given us before, in the laziest possible way. Especially distressing is the graphically prolonged death scene of a barely developed supporting character who -inso far as she receives any characterization whatsoever- doesn’t even really “deserve it”, so to speak. When a movie can’t even get something as basic as dinosaurs eating people right, you know you’re in trouble.

     Only at the very end of the climax, when the might T-Rex makes his reappearance in order to save the day in the most over-the-top way possible, does the movie truly become the sort of “dumb fun” it should have been all along. But while it’s enough to end things on a high note, it’s nonetheless too little too late. In the end, not even the king of the dinosaurs can save Jurassic World from being a hollow, cynical-cash on in our nostalgia for a much better film.

Actual Quality: 5/12

Personal Enjoyment: 2/12