I saw A Series of Unfortunate Events and Blade Trinity in the past 24 hours. I wasn’t really satisfied with either of them.
The thing about A Series of Unfortunate Events is that while I might usually like that sort of thing, I’m getting tired of stories in which the author doesn’t even bother to give a nod toward my suspension of disbelief. That is, I go ahead and say, “Alright, I’ll buy into your psychosis just so that I can follow the story,” and then all I get is more psychosis. The author doesn’t even bother to tempt my suspension of disbelief with anything plausibly deniable.
The things that keep happening to the kids in that movie are just stupid. And while I’m willing to buy into a certain level of this ain’t the normal world, this was just too much. The girl and boy are smart enough to figure their way out of these precarious circumstances, but they can’t just ditch Olaf? No, that’s stupid. It’s completely unlike Edward Scissorhands.
I’m not saying that the movie should have been Edward Scissorhands, I’m just saying that nothing in Edward Scissorhands causes you to doubt that Edward needs to have scissor hands. At the same time, there aren’t gaping holes of obvious escape for Edward. These kids, man… They could have just left.
Maybe I’m missing translation from the book where the adults just never listen to them, but it seems like they expended the minimal amount of effort to get heard. If it were Abby, the entire freaking town would have known that the stinking lab assistant/sea captain was Olaf, because she wouldn’t stop screaming about it until someone heard her. Eh, whatever.
Blade just throws the whole suspension of disbelief out the window. They should make it more clear from teh beginning that Blade is based on a comic, because without that, this thing has no thread of reality to hang from.
The second movie was pretty bad, and lacking in the butt-kicking department. This third movie was pretty bad and had goofy uber-weapons that weren’t really used, but it did have Jessica Biel. Not that her acting was great, but she was pretty to look at.
The premise - hey, this is Blade, why bother with premise? - was stupid. Dig up Dracula to reveal the secret of day walking for vampires. Not that they need this secret, since they can wear cold cream out onto the beach at dawn and not fry.
I’m still hung up on the vampire mythos in this world. Their jaws hinge three ways? There are vampre dogs? They die when hit with silver bullets? And where did these vampires come from anyway? There is very little background in the movies.
Is there anything good coming out soon? I’d hate for the Academy to have to nominate Fat Albert for an award just because everything else sucked so bad.
