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Get Breaking News on your cellThe Love Guru and Get Smart: When dumb comedies get decent reviews
9:59 AM Fri, Jun 20, 2008 | Permalink |
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Both The Love Guru and Get Smart have been savaged by critics far and wide. Yet you'll find that both movies got the same not-so-bad B- grades in today's paper. (I did Love Guru, while Tom Maurstad handled up on Get Smart). What gives? I can't speak for Tom, but the most important thing I can say about The Love Guru is that it made me laugh. It made me feel slightly ashamed for laughing. It sometimes made me wonder why I was laughing. But laugh I did. I can blame my inner eighth grader, but I can also admit that I went in with very low expectations, knowing that Mike Myers specializes in a sort of juvenile carpet-bombing humor. I got a slightly better version of what I anticipated - better than the last Austin Powers movie. Yes, I groaned through many of the gags, but plenty of them tickled me, and there's something to be said for a film that knows its limitations (The Love Guru barely bothers to tell a story). Plus it only lasts 88 minutes. Nothing makes a critic's heart sing like a movie that checks in at under 90 minutes. (Love Guru photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures) |
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Comments
Posted by K. Bowen @ 11:10 AM Fri, Jun 20, 2008
Actually, so far, it looks like Get Smart has mainly gotten middling, notch-above-or-notch-below reviews, with a few surprising positives (J. Hoberman and Andrew Sarris, for example). Nobody is mistaking it for Bringing Up Baby, but it seems to be getting a fairly good number of passes.
Now Love Guru, yeah, that's getting savaged.
Posted by Tom Maurstad @ 11:46 AM Fri, Jun 20, 2008
This is the second time (so far) this summer that I have been out of step with critics community, though not as egregiously as when I gave Speed Racer a solid A while the rest of the country panned it. That movie sank like a stone at the box office so I will have to wait for history and the DVD market to deliver my vindication. But, truthfully, I don't care what happens because I "know" Speed Racer was/is a great movie.
Get Smart is absolutely not a great movie, but it is a pretty good movie. Like you, Chris, I went in with low expectations and was, for the most part, pleasantly surprised. I don't really care what "most" critics think or how my reaction compares to the consensus on rottentomatoes.com. There are particular critics that I read and respect and if their reactions vary sharply from mine, I will think about what they did or didn't see and contrast it with what I did/n't. I have certainly missed the mark on plenty of movies. For that matter, I think it's a sign of really good movies that your experience of them changes the more often you see them.
But that isn't what's going on with Get Smart -- it is what it is, a kind of smart, kind of funny movie. I think at least some of what's going on here has to do with a sort of mob mentality that has overtaken so much public discussion in the age of the Internet. Various web sites make it so easy to compile opinions. We used to read individual reviews, then we read individual blurbs, then we scanned to see what grade or star-rating a movie got, and now we check a meter that averages all those ratings into a single rating. We live in the age of aggregate criticism.
I think one result of this is that the "correct" or "fashionable" take on a movie can be set very quickly and any counterpoint seems that much more out of step. So be it. I've got no problems with being a majority of one.
Posted by K. Bowen @ 9:49 PM Fri, Jun 20, 2008
Tom,
1) I liked Get Smart more than I didn't, which is to say it beat my expectations. It had some pleasantly surprising comic moments, and a good cast that brings life to what could be stale things. I think there are certain critics who have trouble sitting back and enjoying a mindless 90 minutes even when it's competently done. I'm glad to see you are not one of them.
My favorite critic complaint about GS is that it has a flimsy plot. That's like saying The Thin Man isn't much of a mystery. It's true, but it misses the point.
I just thought that by using the word "savaged" the original post overstated the venom being directed its way by critics. I would even say it's gotten mixed reviews so far. I'm only referring to RT.com as evidence that that is the case.
I'm absolutely with you on Speed Racer. If you're ever in a bar fight over this thing, just give me a call and I'll be there. It seems to have irritated a lot of critics, but I thought it was magnificent. And surfing the Net, I find a lot of intelligent things said in support of it. Critics complain that they are constantly fed the same-old, same-old, then they get something out of the ordinary, and they complain about that. :)
I've enjoyed your reviews of both films, and felt they were accurate and fairly positive.
Posted by Kip Mooney @ 6:13 PM Sat, Jun 21, 2008
All I have to say is:
Sometimes you feel like A Prairie Home Companion, sometimes you feel like oh, say, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Laughter is laughter, and if you don't have to work very hard for them, well, that'll work.