Review of Gerry (2002) by Webb G — 10 Jan 2004

I like Gus Van Sant.

I'm not going to say I'm a Van Sant [i]fan[/i], per say, but I like most of his output (save for the odd "Finding Forrester," or "Even Cowgirls..." or "Psycho ver.1b"), and even his worst is still pretty interesting. "To Die For" is one of my personal favorites, and "Drugstore Cowboy" still holds up a dozen years after its release.

So what category does "Gerry" fall under in my Van Sant scale? The Good? The "At Least Interesting"? Somewhere in between?

To me, it is clearly a piece of bowel matter.

When a movie's most exciting scene (and not exciting in a car chase kind of way, exciting as in story development and plot) revolves around one character jumping down from a 15 foot rock, one comes to the realization that said film is a colossal waste of time (as a viewer, and in the filmmaking sense).

As is the case here. Not only is the rock-jumping sequence the most entertaining few minutes in this overlong filmic exercise (exercise for whomever is watching, experiment for Van Sant and Co.), it also contains most of the film's dialogue (there's probably 10 minutes of dialogue in the whole 103 minute movie).

I could tolerate a movie with as little plotting as there is in "Gerry," but I couldn't get past the tedium of having the characters stay quiet for the entire running time -- while I'm on the subject of running, to compensate for dialogue and character and actual events, Van Sant and Will Hunting and Affleck Jr. fill out the movie with long, endless tracking shots of the two leads walking, and walking, and walking, and occasionally sitting, and sometimes tracking shots with no one in them.

So "Gerry" sucks. There's no hidden subtext that I'm not "getting." The movie is a shallow grave, albeit a grave that is often times pretty to look at (but never as pretty as story).

There was potential in the premise...there's no doubt that the talent behind and in front of the camera are capable of doing good work...they just chose not to do it here (maybe they fulfilled whatever mad scientist experiment they have envisioned, but I could care less).

One thing I can praise the movie for is giving me the time to practice with my guitar while I was watching. Anytime there was a long patch of nothing happening (like during one of the 10-minutes walking shots) I'd pick up my guitar and practice chromatics to get my fingers in a more nimble shape.

So thank you for that, Mr. Van Sant (et al).

** Oh, a P.S. **.

As for the DVD's extras, there is no commentary from anyone involved in the production. It would have been nice to get an apology from Van Sant or Damon, but all's we get is a ten minute pseudo-making of and trailers to other Miramax films. Blah to the whole affair.