Rant: That's Happening with a zzzzzzzzzz...
So , I was in L.A. working last weekend and I stayed at the home a taste impaired friend. You may well have this guy in your circle of chums. He is the intensely passionate but completely indiscriminate film lover. No matter what flashes across the screen, my boy is lovin' it. And I do mean no matter WHAT it is.
At this point I have watched everything on his shelves that I consider to be a good movie. So each trip down to stay I am left to sift the new releases for points of interest...this is seldom a fruitful exercise. During my latest pick however,I could smell and feel the putrefaction of my cortices as I watched,
"The Happening"
I have read the complaints about this film and I agree with all of them. I want to take it one step further. M. Night Shyamalan is a hack. He caught lightening in a bottle with "The Sixth Sense" and has been churning out miasmic dreck ever since. Seriously, leave out "The Sixth Sense" and give me a film he's done where there wasn't at least one god-awful performance, a bevy of questionable editorial choices and horrendous gaps in the logic he has created. With his latest, Shyamalan has created a film space that is flatter than a single dimension, less compelling than unsalted peanut butter and lousy with professional mediocrity. "The Happening" is a watershed moment for the, seldom seen at this level, school of barbiturate acting.
When this technique is married the film's wildly incongruous big-ass orchestral score it creates tangential and perhaps dangerous ideas in the mind of the viewer. Like...
What if Jim Jarmusch remade "Pearl Harbor"?
Was Marky really the best actor in The Funky Bunch?
Did I just dream that The Boo-Yaa Tribe exterminated The Funky Bunch and The Young Black Teenagers in a fit of pique in the early 90's, or did that actually happen?
Where does Zooey Deschannel get off pronouncing her name as (zoh-ee) when it is clearly meant to be (zoo-ee)?
How many wax-wrapped mini-cheese wheels can I eat before this film ends?
Is it bad if I don't unwrap them first?
Back to the movie or Shyamalan or whatever the hell I was talking about. I detest Shyamalan for what he's done to the good name of horror and suspense cinema; for what he has done to me personally, which is effectively nothing; and lastly, I hate him for working under a pseudonym and not being courageous enough to use his real name...
Uwe Boll or was it Uli Lommel, I can't remember.
When the final lifeless frame of "The Happening"
passed before my eyes, the wax hit my stomach and Zooey Deschannel ended our imagined conversation by saying "Yeah, whatever. Fuck you 'Thor' !" I got up off the sofa, and in response to this DVD trauma, I committed a singular act of charity towards my good friend and wayward film fanatic. With the next heavy rain his copy of "The Happening" will be making it's debut at the bottom of the L.A river. I work with troubled teens daily but this may well be the deed that puts me in good standing with St. Pete.
My apologies to Uwe Boll and Uli Lommel for any unfavorable comparisons I have made during this rant.
