This is another example of how glitz and glam can secure a film an Oscar by appealing to the fruitball contingency within the Academy. My review and rating are slightly skewed because of two subjective factors I have a hard time getting around: 1) I despise Richard Gere; 2) Renée Zellweger hasn’t been pretty since Jerry Maguire, making her hard to look at.
Overall, it’s a good film, but not spectacular. Some interesting lighting and costuming decisions, but it’s also very hokey. Perhaps that comes from the fact that it’s based on a Broadway musical from the era of excess. There’s something about musicals that were produced beginning in the late 60s that just seem excessive and unnecessary. Perhaps it just the way it was converted into a movie that rubs me the wrong way (Cabaret is a great musical but a lousy movie).
With Chicago, the characters have a big thing to do with my being turned off. The characters in this film are deplorable human beings. There is no reason to like any of them and yet they are the only ones we are presented with. Of course, that was the point of the film- two lovely jailbirds hitting the big time by manipulation and sex appeal. While the musical numbers are presented in a clever way (by sort of entering the minds of the singers as if they were actually in the limelight of some glitzy production), there is still next to zero redeeming qualities about the main characters.
While all the glitz and glam packs the film with enough sparkle and fizz to satisfy an Academy fruitball, it’s not enough for me. For a film to be Oscar-worthy, there needs to be substance, which Chicago lacks. It sends the wrong message, akin to dimwit rapper 50 Cent’s motto of Get Rich or Die Trying. When the bad guys succeed in the end, it’s not such a triumph, considering we were never supposed to like them in the first place.
Chicago is a heaping sized portion of glitz and glam with meager portions of substance. Sadly, style wins out over substance again, and the Academy fruitballs have their way with the Best Picture ballots.
Wildly weird, shamelessly indulgent and intentionally vulgar, Boogie Nights is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s second major motion picture, the first of his films he was truly happy with, and much, much more.
It seems as if it is a combination swan song and memoir for the “glory days” of pornographic films, while also being a dramatic, complex character study. Boogie Nights is first and foremost an ensemble film. Though his next film, Magnolia, would divvy up screen time more evenly among its cast, Boogie Nights remains largely focused on Eddie Adams (played by Mark Wahlberg) and his path in and out and back into the porno scene.
It’s the 70’s and Eddie wants desperately to become a porn star and he knows just the man to see. Burt Reynolds plays a deliciously shifty porn producer in what may be his best acting since Deliverance. In fact, the entire cast turns out tremendous performances. Each character really has depth to them (a testament to Anderson’s craft), experiencing joy, sorrow and anger. The only way to do this for all the major players in an ensemble film though is to make it long. Ticking in at just over 2 and a half hours, Boogie Nights may be more than some people can handle.
The film runs through Eddie’s foray into porn, the creation of his alter ego (Dirk Diggler) and his rise and fall through porn stardom in the 70’s and 80’s. The sleeze of the industry and the indulgence of the time period are expertly crafted and captured, leaving you feeling a little overwhelmed and unsure as to whether or not it’s okay to like the film.
But it is okay to like. A bit heavy handed and providing more detail than you would probably want, but it is certainly okay to like Boogie Nights.
(I will warn those who are on the prudish side that this film, being about porn, contains lots of sex and nudity and a healthy dose of language and violence- not for the faint at heart)
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
