Review of Rocket Science (2007) by Lanning : — 10 Jul 2009
A long time ago, I remember myself recoiling at comments made about the script for The Usual Suspects. What made me flinch most of all were critics who made unfathomable -- for me, I admit up front -- comments about the "cleverness" of the script -- saying that the script was too clever for its own good.
Well, I've harbored my, I believe, well-founded grievances against ill-informed comments like that ever since, and I actually took a blood-oath that if any movie ever came along that, for me personally, achieved cleverness to this abysmal degree, I'd lay the like pronouncement upon it.
That moment, at long last, has arrived, and I tell you with utmost sincerity that the moment is not a gleefully happy one for me. At my advanced age, there are precious few moments left to indulge myself in watching movies.
I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. So while I still draw breath, I must force my self to type: This piece of tripe is way way way too clever for its own good. Thank goodness, I guess, that I've now lived long enough to fulfill my life's movie-script-despising-moment mission.
But I digress. Wait, I do not digress . . . o-o-or duh-do I? Well-well-well-well muh-maybe . . . buh-buh-but maybe not?-?-? I have just summed up, for those of you still reading this, just how clever this script wants to be, especially in terms of its humanitarian effort to portray disability in a fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-funny light.
The word "academic" comes to mind. It's as if this were a writing exercise that Iowa writer workshop profs set in order to torment incoming Iowa writer workshop newbies -- you know, to separate the, uh, well the wheat from the chaff.
No offense to Iowa farmers. The saddest part of all is, of course, that the IWW profs must have liked what the newbies churned out -- no offense to Iowa dairy farmers. Friends, please don't waste your precious time on earth by watching this extremely artificial intellectual exercise in script crafting.
It's so un-this-world clever it's come around the real-world curve and ended up in extremely-annoying-stupid-ville.
This review of Rocket Science (2007) was written by Lanning : on 10 Jul 2009.
Rocket Science has generally received positive reviews.
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