Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Just for the record...

I thought The Hangover was stupid. I'm not opposed to stupid humor in general, but this movie was too dumb for me to enjoy very much.

The script was written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the same writers responsible for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, so I obviously went into the movie with certain expectations. I figured that it would be juvenile and gimmicky, and that any female characters would be depicted as simplistically and cartoonishly as possible.

I did my best to enjoy the movie, anyway, but I just didn't didn't find it particularly funny. I think that Lucas and Moore are good at coming up with a high concept premise, but they always go for the cheesiest and most obvious jokes, and they suck at creating characters. I prefer comedies in which even the antagonists are interesting and likable. Lucas and Moore write comedies in which even the protagonists are uninteresting and unlikable.

I was relieved that there were barely any women in the cast. The fewer opportunities these writers have to portray women, the better. Unless they want to hire me as a consultant, they should just stop trying to write women characters at all.

Also, I don't understand why they think it's so funny to use the words "gay" and "fag" as immature insults. I mean, in The Hangover, whatever, I guess you expect that kind of thing, but they did it in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, too, which is a PG-13 romantic comedy! What's the point of using those words and alienating a significant portion of the audience, for no comedic payoff? I really resent the smug, privileged attitude that pervades the work of certain straight, white, male writers.

The couple of times that I did laugh, it was in response to Zach Galifianakis's delivery. I did enjoy "Tigers love pepper!" (Although I liked Zach Galifianakis better at Comedy Death Ray, when he was making fun of my job and looking for magic mushrooms.)

Ed thought it was stupid, too.

2 comments:

Ed said...

If this is really the best movie of the summer Obama has failed us all.

Caitlin said...

Obviously Harry Potter is going to be the best movie of the summer.