Review of Flashbacks of a Fool (2008) by Richard B — 14 Jun 2009

I won't mince words here: I utterly hated this insipid piece of warmed over horseshit. The movie boasts an impressive cast... on it's front cover... in reality these talented thesps (such as Daniel Craig and Mark Strong) are given very little screentime and the flashbacks the title promises is actually just one flashback. One long, tedious, pretentious, pointless flashback that takes up maybe 2/3 of the movie.

The set-up is that Daniel Craig is a once successful but now struggling British actor living in LA and he receives news that his childhood friend has died. Cue a long, boring, increasingly stupid flashback to the 1970s. Daniel Craig is now a pudge faced teen with an appalling lisp and he shares one thing with Daniel Craig's Bond, he's a remarkable pussy magnet. The film shows him hooking up with his milfy neighbour (who seems utterly unhinged, but crazy chicks apparently make for the best lays) and a cute, glam rock chick who is obsessed with Roxy Music and David Bowie, and likely the only way she'd contemplate fucking this dull tosser is by getting him all dolled up like Ziggy Stardust.

Naturally this guys mistakes lead to him ostracizing himself from the cute girl and his best friend. Also, the milfs daughter explodes on top of a sea mine. I didn't just make that up. It's as ridiculous as it sounds.

Daniel Craig's present day scenes are merely a framing device and very little in the way of insight into his changing relationships with those who used to be a part of his life is covered, and no real attempts are made to redeem the character - it's all in the past, so why bother?

It is a film struggling to find a point and instead placating us with pretention and farce, whilst being inexplicably straight faced about the whole thing. The flashback says very little and offers few insights into his character, the story could have been better served with a series of small flashbacks intercut with scenes of Daniel Craig actually doing things and not just showing up for a few days to get a paycheck between Bond films. He's given 20 minutes after the flashback disappears mercifully like a fart in a wind tunnel, and that's hardly enough time to build a profound or interesting character drama on - the flashbacks communicated roughly 10 minutes of information but lasted most of the fucking film.

I'm really not articulating just how bad this movie is and just how much I fucking hated it. It's the product of a director with his head firmly lodged up his arse, and every excessive instinct in his body is succumbed to, giving us a pointless jaunt of nostalgia which only seems to exist to make use of a surplus of retro clothes - and a bit of fanwankery relating to Roxy Music. It almost makes me hate Roxy Music by association.

A bad piece of popcorn entertainment is one thing, they're easy to sit through, if nothing else. What is worse is a film posing as a prestige picture, pretension filling it's every pore, and it actually turning out to be shallow and retarded nonsense.

If this movie were a face, I'd punch it.