Review of Being John Malkovich (1999) by Kevin M — 31 Oct 2015

I've softened up to this movie a little bit, giving it probably a 4/10, just one below average (which is pretty good for first film standards! It's about the same grade I give many of my favorite filmmakers' first film) but I realize that my problem with this movie isn't that it's not saying anything, it's that it is saying something so blatantly obvious that it beats you over the head with it (that being the desire to be someone else or belief that being someone else would make your life better).

15 minutes in, I get it. I understood it. And after that, I desperately wanted the movie to shut up, but instead it keeps going on and on, doing random artsy things for the sake of doing random artsy things and it just did not feel like a well-structured story nor did most of the movie justify itself.

It would work much better as a short. With that said, some of the imagery is nice and the performances were all solid. It just felt very messy at times, but I don't consider it one of the worst movies I've ever seen, just one that people seems to love more than I.