Review of Howl (2010) by Louis F — 06 Feb 2011

Boooooooo. A thousand boo's.

Where to begin? Well first off, this film starts off with a gimmicky little fun thing that sounds fun, informing the audience that everything spoke in the movie was actually spoke by the actual people actually when it actually happened. So you're like, "Woah. This'll be cool!". But guess what. There's a reason why people write screenplays. Ever have jury duty? Ever see any actual trial footage on TV? It's boring. Wicked, super, major boring. Just like all the trial scenes in "Howl". Oh, which by the way, are like, not many at all. Yeah you might've thought because of the trailer and the poster and the box that it was going to be some kind of legal drama thing with explosive stand offs and like, a comprehensive look at the blah blah blah. No. There's barely any trial scenes, which, by the by, is where the majority of the big time cast members are, so watching "Howl" it feels like the cast has been cut from the thing. And the trial scenes that are there are like watching paint dry. Now what's maybe the worst thing you can do to poetry? Did you say "Try to nail it to the floor, make it so every line and stanza is dissected to death and you start handing down concrete images and interpretations of a work and proclaiming it as gospel"? You didn't. Well my friend maybe you just don't know poetry like I do. I know it pretty well (smell my fingers). The point being? The point. Throughout the film there are these truly pathetic animations that are so cheesy, so dumb and so just, I don't know, extremely literal, if you're going to animate poetry, try to keep it abstract, don't go, "Right. Well, here's a line about a car, so let's animate a car." This films messages are all screwed up. The trial is all about how "Howl" is a masterpiece and you can't define art and you can't define a poem and how it's ethereal and magical. Then, the other half of the film is beating you over the head with concrete images of what "Howl" means and nonstop dissection of the poem until you no longer give a shit what it's about (ProTip: it's about gay sex). That's another thing, all the "raw talk" that goes on in this film, it's not giving you an insight into Ginsberg's life or work, you can tell it's the film makers going, "Look we'll include all this like, raw and dirty talk to freak out the squares and make 'em go, 'Woah! That film was so raw and real dude!" There's no thought behind it other than shock value. Also, when you do the main character talking to the interviewer thing it makes your main character extremely unlikable, because everyone sounds like an obnoxious douchebag when they're being interviewed. "I'm Not There" would be a good example of this, except Bob Dylan already sounds like a douchebag, interviewer or not. This movie should've been called "HOLLYWOOD DOES THE BEATS!" WATCH AS THE BEAT GENERATION GETS THE SEXY SEXY MAKE OVER THEY HAVEN'T BEEN ASKING FOR ALL THESE YEARS! Franco does as good a job as anybody can. The acting is solid. The film is just silly and a waste of time. Shitty animation, dull, monotonous court room scenes and watching "Howl" get the shit kicked out of it as it gets tied to down to whatever the film makers narrow ideas of it are. SKIP unless you're one of those air head, trustafarian, prep school, hippie amherst douchefucks who tongue kiss the smelly asshole of anything having to do with the 60s (yeah, I know this takes place in the 50s, but they don't know that).