I finally got around to watching Red State, even though my days as a teenage Kevin Smith enthusiast are over (I’ve given it some thought and come up with the following reasons: I have terminal hayfever, which imprisons me inside all summer every summer with a DVD collection for company; I dabbled in recreational drugs and thus I found the continuous stream of references simply hilarious; there was another teenage Kevin Smith enthusiast at my school with, you know, breasts). It’s okay. It’s an okay film. As a satire it lacks bite, as an action movie it’s in dire need of a more skilful directorial hand, and there’s too much flab for a ninety-minute running time. Still, it’s an entertaining way to spend an evening. There’s a whole genre of films like this one. You watch the film, then you pack up your things and you walk away from it with no strong feelings either way. You’re no better or worse a person than you were an hour and a half ago. Then I gave it five minutes’ worth of thought, and I said to myself: self, what else did you want from a film? And a Kevin Smith film, at that. I saw Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece The Room last night. I don’t use the term tour de force very often – except to point out that I don’t use it very often – but The Room is a tour de force if you view it from a very specific angle. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about The Room. Nothing about that film works at any point along the spectrum that runs from “high art” and “just high.” It’s literally off the charts. It’s the Citizen Kane of bad choices, and I mean the choices of both the filmmaker and the audience. But I had fun watching it, because when you watch The Room with a friend, you have to find a way to make the experience a positive one. You’ve thrown your friendship into a trial by fire, and it’s either going to be the greatest decision of your lives or you have to avoid eye contact when you meet each other again, like soldiers who did awful things in the war or swingers who did awful things at the last whatever it is swingers do socially. So it evens out. Some films, like Red State, balance out all on their own, because for all its faults there’s still some explosions, there’s still some funny lines and John Goodman is saying some of them. Something like The Room becomes a neutral point or even something awesome when you have people laughing at it with you or if, like Dee and I, you pack a bottle of vodka to make yourself some cocktails for the drinking game you make up on the fly, which is one of the classiest ways to get hammered and yell at the screen for an hour and forty god damn minutes oh my sweet jesus how is it this long. As with many of the posts you’ll see here on this blog, I’ve long forgotten what my original point was. I came here to review Red State, I suppose? Let’s give it three stars. It would be two-and-a-half but I can’t abide when magazines give something half a star and I can’t tell at first glance whether it’s a full star or not. I don’t read your magazine for the content, Empire. Just give me a rating already and tell me if it’s worth going down to the cinema for. Yeah, that’s right. Boil down the moviegoing experience to a so-subjective-it’s-basically-meaningless rating system devoid of subtleties. Boil it right down.

I finally got around to watching Red State, even though my days as a teenage Kevin Smith enthusiast are over (I’ve given it some thought and come up with the following reasons: I have terminal hayfever, which imprisons me inside all summer every summer with a DVD collection for company; I dabbled in recreational drugs and thus I found the continuous stream of references simply hilarious; there was another teenage Kevin Smith enthusiast at my school with, you know, breasts).

It’s okay. It’s an okay film. As a satire it lacks bite, as an action movie it’s in dire need of a more skilful directorial hand, and there’s too much flab for a ninety-minute running time. Still, it’s an entertaining way to spend an evening. There’s a whole genre of films like this one. You watch the film, then you pack up your things and you walk away from it with no strong feelings either way. You’re no better or worse a person than you were an hour and a half ago.

Then I gave it five minutes’ worth of thought, and I said to myself: self, what else did you want from a film? And a Kevin Smith film, at that.

I saw Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece The Room last night. I don’t use the term tour de force very often – except to point out that I don’t use it very often – but The Room is a tour de force if you view it from a very specific angle. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about The Room. Nothing about that film works at any point along the spectrum that runs from “high art” and “just high.” It’s literally off the charts. It’s the Citizen Kane of bad choices, and I mean the choices of both the filmmaker and the audience. But I had fun watching it, because when you watch The Room with a friend, you have to find a way to make the experience a positive one. You’ve thrown your friendship into a trial by fire, and it’s either going to be the greatest decision of your lives or you have to avoid eye contact when you meet each other again, like soldiers who did awful things in the war or swingers who did awful things at the last whatever it is swingers do socially.

So it evens out. Some films, like Red State, balance out all on their own, because for all its faults there’s still some explosions, there’s still some funny lines and John Goodman is saying some of them. Something like The Room becomes a neutral point or even something awesome when you have people laughing at it with you or if, like Dee and I, you pack a bottle of vodka to make yourself some cocktails for the drinking game you make up on the fly, which is one of the classiest ways to get hammered and yell at the screen for an hour and forty god damn minutes oh my sweet jesus how is it this long.

As with many of the posts you’ll see here on this blog, I’ve long forgotten what my original point was. I came here to review Red State, I suppose? Let’s give it three stars. It would be two-and-a-half but I can’t abide when magazines give something half a star and I can’t tell at first glance whether it’s a full star or not. I don’t read your magazine for the content, Empire. Just give me a rating already and tell me if it’s worth going down to the cinema for.

Yeah, that’s right. Boil down the moviegoing experience to a so-subjective-it’s-basically-meaningless rating system devoid of subtleties. Boil it right down.

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  1. captainthoughtless reblogged this from jamiedrew
  2. breki said: Why didn’t this go to CSICON? :-( ;)
  3. iwillnothangmyselftoday said: God, I love your reviews.
  4. jamiedrew posted this