#iirtb

THE GOOD

Ana de Armas is genuinely the brightest spot in the film. She plays Marilyn Monroe with such a sweet, charming innocence that it makes all the suffering she goes through that much harder to watch, and the fact Armas is also very good at making it seem like she could burst out sobbing every time she opens her mouth only compounds it. It is almost worth plodding through this film just to see her performance. Almost.

On a technical level, the movie is also impressive. The score is great, the cinematography is great… yeah, there’s a few touches here and there that feel kind of superfluous like the random switches between black and white and color film, but at the end of it this is a film that looks really good and sounds really good.

But those are the only nice things I have to say, because this film is very much not very good.

THE BAD

I know Marilyn Monroe’s life had a lot of tragedy. She was sexually abused growing up, her marriages were messy, she had multiple miscarriages, and she died young of an apparent suicide brought on by depression which was exacerbated by all of the above. But she was a shining star in her brief time on Earth, and she did a lot of good things while she was here. It wasn’t all doom and gloom for her. But watching this movie, you wouldn’t know it, because there is not a single scene in this entire film where Monroe isn’t suffering some kind of physical or emotional abuse. The first twenty minutes have her abused and almost murdered by her mother, forced into the foster care system, and then she is raped as she’s trying to become a star. And things only get worse! Joe DiMaggio beats her, Arthur Miller starts incorporating their life into his writing against her wishes, JFK abducts and rapes her, Charlie Chaplin, Jr. tricked her into believing her mysterious disappeared dad was writing to her for years, and generally just everyone around her has some nasty comment about her life, career, personality, and so on.

The very worst bit of all, though, is when her unborn child shames her for having previously had an abortion—an abortion completely fabricated for this story, mind you. And of course that baby ends up dying anyway which makes the whole thing feel like her unborn child is just compounding her suffering out of spite. Any and all happiness she experiences in this film is fleeting, with the highlights of her life glossed over in favor of watching her get put through the wringer. Now, I don’t think a quote-unquote biopic should avoid the darker and more tragic aspects of a celebrities life; hell, I’m not going to see that MJ biopic because I am dead certain the more disturbing parts of his story are going to be completely whitewashed or ignored in favor of lionizing him. I don’t like that. I like when people are multifaceted. But there comes a point where if all you’re showing is the worst, most miserable points of someone’s life, it becomes little more than misery porn feeding on the audience’s sympathy for the subject.

This is why I fucking despise The Passion of the Christ; why the fuck would you want to make a movie that is solely about the point in Jesus’ life where he is brutally tortured and crucified? Why not highlight all his accomplishments first before culminating in his sacrifice for the sins of mankind? That’s what Martin “The GOAT” Scorsese did with The Last Temptation of Christ, and that is one of my all-time favorites! And that’s what they should have done here. Marilyn Monroe didn’t live long, but she did a lot of wonderful things in her life. Why not focus on the positives in between the suffering so that a full and complete picture of the woman is painted? I suppose that won’t stir up controversy and get people to hate watch, but it might make a good fucking movie.

And it’s not like changing things around or making stuff up for a biopic is bad. I tend to just accept any and all films based on a true story spice things up by adding or combining elements of the subject’s life, because unsurprisingly reality does not often follow a three act structure. My issue comes when stuff is changed to such an egregious extent it feels disrespectful, and this film sprints into that territory at record speed. It’s not really changing anything to streamline her story or form a more coherent narrative or anything, it’s just piling miseries onto a woman who had plenty of real ones because this movie is preoccupied witch showcasing a woman be mentally and physically tormented at every turn.

The worst thing is that since this is nearly three hours of watching a woman suffer every single indignity she could have possibly faced at that, time all performed so well by Armas that it is genuinely painful to watch, her death comes off as more of a relief than anything else. Do I need to explain why this isn’t good? It should be the saddest thing in the world, but this movie paints her life as being such an avalanche of miseries that she might be better off being dead! I SHOULD NOT FEEL HAPPINESS THAT MARILYN FUCKING MONROE IS DEAD FROM AN OVERDOSE.

THE UGLY

I guess I should touch on the abortion thing, because that was the source of a lot of drama when this came out. Obviously it has no basis in reality, Monroe did not get abortions by any account, but at a time when Roe v. Wade was being overturned it really left a bad taste in people’s mouths to have her bad CGI fetus shaming her for a forced abortion she had in the past. Now, that begs the question: Is this movie trying to push anti-abortion sentiment?

In my opinion, no. This movie isn’t trying to take a stance on abortion one way or the other; it’s inconsequential. Monroe’s forced abortions and the shaming by her unborn child exist in this narrative for the sole reason that it makes her suffer more and thus even more miserable. Let’s not attribute any sort of commentary or attempt to create a dialogue, however stupid a dialogue it might be, to a film more concerned with exploiting the tragedies of Marilyn Monroe.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Oh yes it is! In fact, this film is even worse than I imagined—and I’d already assumed it would be bad going in. And the reason why is just how shamelessly hypocritical this movie is. It’s trying to showcase a heavily fictionalized take on the life of Marilyn Monroe to portray her as a tragic figure while decrying how she was taken advantage of and abused while engaging in just that and turning her life into salacious misery porn. It’s doing the very thing it’s trying to take a stance against, and it causes the entire film to be performative at best, hollow and shameless at worst. See how I didn't use any pictures from the movie in the section about the bad shit? That's because I do not want to exploit Marilyn's misery like the film does.

I imagined it would be anyway but boy was I truly shocked at how this is a perfect sister piece to Wired! They have opposite approaches to how they portray their focal character, but spiritually they are the same thing as they defile the legacy of a beloved celebrity for a quick buck and cheap spectacle. As much as I hate this movie, though, it’s not quite as bad as Wired. It’s down there, yes, but this movie at least knows that all sympathy should be with Monroe and doesn’t demonize her to the extent Belushi gets. Essentially, this is just severe food poisoning diarrhea compared to Wired’s dysentery.

I also think this is also spiritually close to The Passion as well, but unlike Wired I do think this film is worse than that one. Gibson being an evil cunt aside, I can't really fault the film for showing how grueling and awful Jesus being tortured and abused is the way I fault this film for showing Monroe being abused; as much as I feel it's poor taste to focus an entire film on Christ's murder, I don't think showing what happened there is quite on the same level as fabricating multiple abortions and JFK having Monroe abducted and raped, to say nothing of her fetus berating her before dying. They're awful for similar reasons and good for similar reasons, but I find one more excessively gross towards its focus character than the other... which is very funny in a dark way. I think Marilyn Monroe suffered more than Jesus Christ. This movie is making me say sentences no human will ever or should ever have to say.

THE GOOD

I do like some of the celebrities here. Kathy Griffin has a nice supporting role, Arleen Sorkin has a cameo and she’s always a delight to see... Ween show up, and who doesn’t like Ween? I feel like this film would have been a perfect opportunity to play “Waving My Dick in the Wind” if only they had the foresight to record three years earlier than they actually did.

By far the best part of the movie is Dave Foley as Pat’s equally ambiguous partner Chris. Chris is just adorable, someone way too good for Pat, a pleasant and supportive voice in their life that they do not deserve at all. And I gotta say, Foley looks pretty damn fine as a person of ambiguous gender.

THE BAD

So, going onto TVTropes when the movie was over, I decided to see some of the YMMV tropes and bore witness to this gem:

And you know, normally I don’t want to use audience reaction stuff as a point of criticism because it’s outside the scope of the movie, but… HUH???? The only likable character is the deranged, obsessive stalker who makes it his life’s mission to find out what’s in Pat’s pants to the point he destroys his marriage and starts dressing as Pat and who also steals Pat’s diary, tries to make them strip naked multiple times, barges in on them in the bathroom, and essentially sexually harasses them is somehow more likable than Chris, the incredibly cute and sweet love interest of the title character? Charles Rocket’s performance is fantastic and all, but he’s the exact kind of person I log onto Twitter and see trans people talking about being afraid of. He’s like JKR, Graham Linehan, and some random Karen at the bar’s bathroom all rolled into one, and this would make him an engaging character in a better movie—but this is It’s Pat. We’re supposed to laugh at his absurd, deranged obsession that drives him to madness but it might be the aspect of the film that aged the worse because he’s just too real of a character nowadays.

But this movie has a far bigger problem, something that absolutely sinks it. You wanna know what it is? It’s Pat!

Pat is a thoroughly unpleasant, miserable, and insufferable piece of shit. They might actually be one of the single most obnoxious protagonists ever put to film. As repulsive as his behavior is, I can almost see why someone would root for Kyle over Pat because Pat is just the fucking worst human being imaginable. They’re cruel to potential Valentine’s as a child, are apocalyptically bad at every job they have, emotionally abuse Chris through their relationship, treat everyone around them like garbage, are utterly incapable of self-reflection, and at one point even convince a guy to kill himself out of sheer apathy and irritation. There is literally nothing redeeming about Pat, and while they do suffer at Kyle’s hands and have numerous setbacks, they are so far up their own ass that they either don’t realize or don’t care. This is the kind of thing that works better in a shorter format like, say, a skit on a TV show that airs live from New York every Saturday night, but stretching it out to 70 minutes is simply an agonizing concept. We all know someone who’s an arrogant cunt like Pat—we don’t need to spend more time than is absolutely necessary with them.

And of course, because Pat is like this it completely evaporates any opportunities for charm or humor. Very few jokes land, and the ones that do only barely land completely in spite of Pat. So what we have is a film with a horrible protagonist who sucks the joy out of every moment, jokes that do not land… Is there a point to this movie at all? Do they at least reveal what Pat’s gender is since this is the huge driving question of the plot and ostensibly why you would even bother to see a feature-length version of a skit based on that single joke?

Nope.

This completely and utterly unfunny one-joke premise doesn’t even land the goddamn punchline. This movie is one long joke that completely fizzles out, and one that never even bothers to make you laugh at any point in between. It is quite frankly one of the single most pointless and worthless cinematic experiences ever conceived.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Oh my god, yes. This movie is fucking awful.

It genuinely baffles me this ever got as far as it did. Like, at no point in the development of this thing someone said “Hey, this is pretty bad, maybe we shouldn’t release this.” That is just insane to me. This is so clearly one of the most terrible ideas for a film I’ve ever seen, just a colossal waste of time; how did anyone even see money in this idea? It is a one-not premise stretched out to 70 minutes and it doesn’t even have enough plot to fill out that runtime, it raises a question that drives the film and never answers it, the main character is one of the most unpleasant beings in cinematic history… all of this is just so blatant, and yet everyone still allowed this to go all the way through and release however briefly in theaters.

I don’t think there could possibly be an SNL film worse than this. Like, it just isn’t possible. The fact that they do not even bother to reveal Pat’s gender, literally the only reason anyone would even give a single flying fuck about a cinematic Pat experience, makes this an actual waste of time. I watched this movie for free online and I still want my money back. My buddy Huyh has always said that the worst movies of all are bad comedies, and I’ve tried really hard to disprove that with all the shitty movies I watch—but no, time and time again he is vindicated because perhaps the single most agonizing thing a film can do is try and be funny but fail at it. At least other shit movies like Lucy or Artemis Fowl can get a chuckle out of me from their sheer lack of quality; how can I laugh at anything here, when the movie is falling flat on its face trying to get me to do just that?

Don’t watch this. It’s horribly unfunny, tortuously unpleasant, insanely transphobic, and just all around fucking awful. Unless you’re a freak like me who watches bad movies at the whims of equally freaky followers or just want to get the full scope of the SNL film canon there is literally no reason to waste your life on this. Genuinely anything is a better use of your time.

And I wasn't kidding, eight minutes and forty seconds is all it takes for Tarantino to shine through.

THE GOOD

Kate Hudson is giving a genuinely good performance here. She also looks pretty hot with short hair.

Oh, I guess the music is okay too. Nothing really stands out compared to Sia's big hits, but it's not... awful...

Ok I can't muster up anything else nice to say, let's move on.

THE BAD

The writing in this is utterly incoherent and ridiculous, with the story trying to do so much at once that it leads to massive levels tonal whiplash. It veers from serious drama to cutesy rom com to flashy musical and back again. You’ll have scenes of Zu realistically dealing with her addictions, then she’ll be with Ebo making goo-goo eyes at him, then she’ll have to struggle to deal with Music and we’ll get a number, and then oh look she’s selling drugs to Sia! Oh and now Music’s neighbor is fucking dead! That is genuinely a thing that happens, and it barely has any relation to the plot and receives no resolution.

The glurge is completely off the charts here. For those who don’t know, “glurge” is a word coined by a Snopes reader, and comes from the sound you make when you barf; it is a catch-all term for describing sappy, sentimental, supposedly happy morality tales that contain horrible implications, are overly heavy-handed in their messaging, or don’t make sense if you think about them too much. You have definitely seen a story dripping in glurge before, and Music is definitely up there as one of the most egregious this side of a Hallmark Christmas movie. It’s a story of a recovering alcoholic who becomes better by learning to care for her autistic sister, a sister who is incorruptibly pure and kindhearted despite her simple mind and who sees the world as Sia music videos. The only thing anyone struggles with in regards to Music is her meltdowns, and that aside everything is peachy! It’s so, so disingenuous and treacly that it genuinely makes my stomach churn. As mentioned before, there are darkly realistic moments, but the overall message by film’s end is so overly corny and sentimental it’s hard to take anything seriously.

Now for Ebo… hoo boy, this is a loaded one. The title character was the one I knew going in was seen as a horrific stereotype—and don’t worry, we’ll be on to her in a bit—but I was kind of shocked that Ebo was just as much a mishmash of African tropes as Music is of autistic ones. To wit: He’s a boxing coach, he has HIV, he has a thick accent, he’s from a vague, superstitious village from Ghana that may or may not have killed his brother for having autism, and most glaringly of all his sole function in the film is to uplift the white female protagonist. Beyond that role he isn’t much of a character so much as a walking stereotype.

Oh, but speaking of stereotypes...

THE UGLY

Time to address the elephant in the room.

The title character is easily the most contentious part of the film, and with good reason. You know in Tropic Thunder how Ben Stiller’s character tried to make an Oscar bait movie about an autistic person, but he played him as so stereotypically low-functioning that it was laughed at in-universe? Y’know, the movie RDJ’s character pointed out failed because Stiller’s character went, and I quote, “full retard?” That’s kind of what happened here. Music is the most gratingly stereotypical portrayal of an autistic person you can imagine, with exaggerated facial expressions, exaggerated movements, just everything turned into an over-the-top caricature. It’s an autism minstrel show, something exacerbated by the fact Music sees the world through gaudy music numbers. And let’s not even start on the genuinely lethally stupid methods they use to “calm” her (they physically restrain and pin her down).

But see, while all of that is bad, this isn’t the real reason Music is bad and offensive. I thought that’s why going in, but she’s actually awful for a worse reason: She is not even important to the plot whatsoever. That’s right. The title character has no agency in the story and exists entirely as a living prop to motivate her half-sister into becoming a better and more responsible person. She doesn’t do anything besides exist and act stereotypically autistic so that Zu has to push herself to be better. Music has no arc, no development, nothing. You could cut her from the movie and make Zu’s cherished dog necklace that reminds her of better times the catalyst for her to change and be better and the movie would probably not suffer much and in fact be a great deal less offensive.

To be clear, I don’t blame Maddie Ziegler at all; she knew her being cast in this role was a fucking awful idea, and she apparently broke down into tears over this while filming. No, the fact the title character is the worst aspect of the film is on Sia. The entire character is such a mind-bogglingly offensive creation it’s astounding no one at any point said “Hey, Sia, this fucking sucks actually!” This is like if there was a cute romance movie where everything else was normal, but in the middle of it all there was randomly some white guy in yellowface and buck teeth doing a horrible Asian accent and having little to no bearing on the plot. God, can you imagine how fucking awful that would be?

I think genuinely the only nice thing that can be said here is that Music is a rare portrayal of an autistic woman; the last time I remember seeing one was in Our Guys: Outrage at Glen Ridge, and that was a film about the sexual assault of an autistic woman. At least here she’s happy, though considering her meltdowns are dealt with by forcibly crushing her I can’t say she’s much safer. Funnily, Sia said the “crushing her with love” moments would be edited out in later releases. They weren’t.

And just when you think this couldn’t be worse, here’s a double whammy: Not only is the character of Music based on a non-verbal autistic man Sia had befriended, but Sia herself ended up being diagnosed with autism! I don’t doubt she had mainly good intentions making this movie, but you know what they say about the road to Hell. Autism or no, autistic friend or no, she made a movie steeped in horribly offensive stereotypes that is actively demeaning and ignorant and uses the autistic character as a prop to push the narrative of the neurotypical lead.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Yes.

I thought for sure I wouldn’t see anything worse and more offensive than Blonde, at least not this soon, but boy was I in for a shock! What amazed me most was how this movie was offensive in entirely different ways than what I expected going in. The cringeworthy portrayal of autism being The Birth of a Nation for the neurodivergent was one thing, but the fact she’s only half of a stereotype sandwich with Ebo and much like him is little more than a one-note prop to further the story of Zu is just a whole new level of tasteless. The fact Sia was just unrepentant about everything, with knee-jerk reactions to criticism and just genuine displays of ignorance, make me pretty happy she has faded away for the most part.

Maybe it’s because I’m neurodivergent/autistic myself, but I genuinely think this movie should be in the Bottom 100 on IMDB and the fact it’s rated high enough to avoid it is yet another grievance I have with that damn list. This should be a 1, and even that is way too high; Hudson’s genuine good acting doesn’t make up for how bad, stupid, pointless, and/or offensive literally everything else around this movie is.

THE GOOD

I think one of the biggest surprises for me is that Ryan Reynolds wasn’t too bad here. I like the guy a lot, but ever since the success of Deadpool it feels that’s the only thing he plays anymore and it gets genuinely exhausting. Here, he dials the cynicism and snark way back and plays the naive, sweet everyman Guy who dares to do the most badass thing a person can be in a shitty world: A genuinely nice guy. I’m not going to call it a particularly complex or deep role, but Guy was charming enough that he carried the film through the suckier parts.

Surprisingly, despite the memes around him being in the film and his modern nature as a pariah for the crime of making a mediocre Marvel movie, Taika Waititi is actually a solid effective villain. He’s an evil gaming CEO named Antwan who is motivated by greed and who is willing to cut as many corners and plagiarize as much as possible if it means making more money. While I’m not sure he really took an already funny script and riffed on a level that was freaking sublime, I do think he’s honestly one of the most realistic depictions of a corrupt CEO of a video game company, surpassed only by the nugget guy in Smiling Friends.Funnily enough, he even has a speech involving chicken, though in this case he’s using it to mock the idea of making anything other than a sequel. Genuinely one of the realest, most delightfully obnoxious caricatures imaginable.

The film also has some surprisingly interesting concepts, like how much value an artificial life holds, artistic integrity over financial gain, breaking free from the shackles of tedium that hold you back and daring to be better and live free in a chaotic world… Look, these are not new concepts, nor are they deeply explored, but considering this is a stupid Ryan Reynolds video game movie they didn’t need to exactly write anything interesting in.

THE BAD

I hate to say this because it is such a common excuse for forgiving awful movies, but this is genuinely a movie you need to turn off your brain for. So much of how the game works, how characters behave, and what they get away with is so ludicrously unbelievable it frays my sanity thin, and the movie was genuinely annoying me at times in the first forty minutes. It doesn’t help that there is just an absurd amount of needle drops and, worst of all, Shawn Levy’s bland direction.

That’s really the biggest problem, honestly: Shawn Levy. He’s the kind of guy you hire for a mindless popcorn flick, and he delivers perfectly fine direction with little in the way of flair. He’s a guy who tends to let his actors do the talking and create the style; Night at the Museum is all about the ensemble, Big Fat Liar is Frankie Muniz and Paul Giamatti, Deadpool & Wolverine is Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman… you get the idea. He’s allegedly the cook but everyone else is adding the meat, veggies, and flavoring. Levy is basically the water. And you know, water’s great and all, but it is extremely basic, and “extremely basic” is what I’d call his direction. Don’t expect to be wowed by anything.

And of course this leads into another issue: If you are not a fan of Ryan Reynolds already, you are not going to enjoy this since he is the one seasoning Levy’s boiled chicken of a film. Unless you really like totally radical gamer stuff and pop culture references you’re not going to be having any fun here. And let me tell you, some of those pop culture references are beyond corny. Did we really need the Avengers theme when Cap’s shield shows up? Do we need the Star Wars theme when the lightsaber shows up and then multiple characters announcing it’s a lightsaber? Does this movie need to be so fucking annoying and self-referential?

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

No? Literally no? At any rate it’s not abysmal dogshit slop. I would call it enjoyable, stupid slop.

Have we really become so miserable and cynical as a society that some dumb popcorn film is held up as the shittiest, most soulless film around? Like I get not liking this or thinking it’s bad—this is a very dumb film you really have to suspend your disbelief for, and I was not onboard early on—but to say this is one of the worst films ever just reeks of not only a high level of jadedness, but of recency bias. It’s always some modern film that’s the worst thing ever, the latest bad Marvel film is somehow worse than Thor: The Dark World, the latest Alien entry is worse than Resurrection, historically awful movies are actually less awful than a film that’s worst crime is being dumb and annoying. It’s genuinely ridiculous! Why the fuck is Free Guy making me realize just how shitty modern film criticism in, shittier than I even realized!

This is a harmless, fun, stupid film with some good ideas in it that never really comes together to be truly great. It’s a lot like Ready Player One in that way, but I’ll admit that secret Spielberg sauce has me enjoying that film way more than Shawn Levy’s basic, sauceless “good enough” approach to filmmaking. It’s the perfect example of a “Coworker movie,” a film you can bring up to your chums at work to start a conversation without looking like a lunatic. You’ll get weird stares bringing up Pink Flamingos or Nekromantik around the water cooler, but Free Guy? The boys in the office will be hitting you with quotes I bet.

I genuinely cannot fathom how a movie this harmless and dumb has became the shorthand for slop these days. The thing with this movie is it is just so disposable, so forgettable, that getting mad at it is like getting mad at a cat for purring. You are mad that something is fulfilling its joyful duty, the thing it was born to do. What the fuck is wrong with you? This isn’t a movie you’re meant to care about or give thought to, it’s a film you watch with your friends or put on in the background while you do something else, and it is not aspiring to be any more than that. Again, I understand disliking this because it is not good. I do not understand the sheer vitriolic hatred some have for this film. It isn’t worth that because it’s barely worth a thought to begin with!

I’m kinda on the fence with regards to its surprisingly high score. A 7 for this is definitely because it’s mostly normal, average moviegoers and not cinema enjoyers like me watching it, but even then I’d only drop it down to a 6.5 at worst. It’s a fun, stupid, harmless little film. There are far more egregious examples of pandering garbage that could be shorthand for slop, so I can’t say it deserves that level of scorn, but it really is just a stupid film. But it’s the nice kind of stupid, the kind of stupid that has a place in this world. If you genuinely think this is a worse and more insulting film than anything else you’ve ever seen I can only assume you’ve seen five movies. Even I genuinely thought this was bad it’s sitting behind about forty other comedies that are far more egregiously awful, and that’s only shit I’ve seen.

THE GOOD

It’s hard to deny the biggest saving grace of the movie are the two pimps played by Eddie Griffin and Katt Williams, Pope Sweet Jesus and Lord Have Mercy. They got genuine laughs out of me whenever they showed up, were actually nice to Norbit, and steal the whole show when they hijack the wedding at the end of the film to buy Norbit some time. It’s not surprising when side characters end up stealing the show, but it’s a lot more impressive when they’re stealing the show from Eddie Murphy.

This movie won Rick Baker an Oscar for Best Makeup, and while this seems laughable to the point of comparing it to Suicide Squad’s win, it is an entirely deserved victory. The level of work put in to make Rasputia a believable character is astounding. Heavyset doubles with Eddie Murphy’s face being digitally transplanted onto them should not be this convincing, but it is almost impossible to tell. I actually had to double check IMDB to be entirely sure Murphy was playing her. In a way, it is kind of hilarious one of the greatest and most convincing works of dual performance ever put to film was in fucking Norbit of all things, but I’m not complaining.

Speaking of Rasputia, she actually surprised me because I was absolutely thinking I was going to hate her for the wrong reasons instead of the right ones, but ultimately I think she’s a pretty entertaining unsympathetic villain. She actually got a few chuckles out of me, especially with the bed-breaking sex montage and the water slide incident. I do think at points they portray her abuse of Norbit as a bit too lighthearted and I don’t like how she barely gets any comeuppance, but she did not grate my nerves like I imagined she would. The same goes for Norbit himself; I thought I’d find him a frustratingly insufferable pushover, but I kind of found his character engaging and interesting, and his character arc was done decently well for what this film is. When he finally manages to stand up to Rasputia and pull a fast one on her, I was genuinely impressed and even proud of him. So yeah, I’d say Murphy did good with two out of three of his characters. The third? Uh...

THE BAD

Yeah, I’m not defending this Mickey Rooney bullshit. I thought this was bad when I believed this was just a Chinese actor that was forced to play as stereotypical a role as possible. Imagine my disgust when I found out this is fucking Eddie Murphy in yellowface. I guess I’m much more impressed with the makeup here than I was with Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but this is still a blisteringly racist caricature that I cannot believe was okayed even back in the mid 2000s.

The most Rasputia-sized problem with the movie, however, is the plot. I actually really liked the story, truth be told, but the problem is the tone. This is actually a pretty chilling depiction of female-on-male abuse, with Rasputia constantly dominating the meek and timid Norbit, pressuring him into sex and emotionally and physically abusing him. This leads Norbit to trying to find escape in his childhood love, which only angers Rasputia more and leads to more abuse. On paper, this is actually a very interesting concept and there are points where it actually works. The issue is that, by and large, all of this abuse is played for laughs. I don’t think I need to explain why this is just utterly disgusting. It most certainly wouldn’t be funny watching a fat man pressure a timid woman into having sex and slapping her around, and the reverse isn’t particularly funny either.

In the film’s defense, it never portrays Norbit as anything less than sympathetic, and I will admit some of the abuse got a cheap laugh out of me, but by and large it was just jarring tonal inconsistency. I think if they really wanted to make this comedic they should’ve stuck more to the black comedy of the original script and just gone darker a la Heathers. That movie works because while it is showing genuinely horrible things like teenagers murdering each other, suicide, and attempted school bombings, it knows when to reign it in and play things seriously and when to mine a few laughs from the bleak events unfolding. I think things would’ve been a bit easier to swallow if Rasputia and her family got more of a comeuppance for their various crimes, but they ultimately escape punishment and live in exile in Mexico. Like they still lost everything they had, but I think this is really a slap on the wrist considering the kind of characters they were. Ultimately, I get why this movie left a bad taste in Newton’s mouth.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Honestly, I think I’m with Murphy on this one. This is not his worst movie.

Now, do I think it’s a good movie? Fuck no! This is stupid, bottom-of-the-barrel lowbrow schlock! But it is exceptionally well-made lowbrow schlock, and there is enough effort and passion to be seen in this that I kind of respect the movie. I don’t think I’m a fan per se, but if someone were to tell me they enjoyed Norbit I’m not gonna look at them funny like I would if they said they liked Meet the Spartans or Epic Movie. I’m a huge fan of Freddy Got Fingered and I love White Chicks, I’m not immune to trashy 2000s comedies.

The “Good”

From a technical and a basic storytelling perspective, this movie is monumentally important. So many camera techniques were introduced here, from close ups to tracking shots, and I’ll admit that it is kind of interesting seeing these things put into practice for the first time. And this is the first attempt at massive storytelling on such a grand scale, so for the first time so many tropes make their cinematic debut here. In particular, it has been argued by many such as Alan Moore that this movie is the genesis of the “masked hero” popularized later by superhero comics, right down to the quote-unquote hero being inspired by seeing a white sheet used to scare black children. Certainly a possibility, but it also reads like Moore once again being (mostly rightfully) bitter at an industry that burned him.

The other “good” quality here is that, when viewed through a modern, non-racist eye, this film is really fucking funny due to the sheer over-the-top nature of its racism. For instance, one scene features a black man attempting to propose to a white woman, to which she shrieks and flees from him as he gives chase. To the audiences of the time, this was meant to imply he wanted to rape her, but to someone with a brain that doesn’t have lethal levels of racism poisoning she just looks like the most racist bitch alive. It gets darkly hilarious when, rather than talk to the man at all, she flings herself off a cliff and smashes her head off a rock. Now that’s what I call a cracker!

Later, the Klan decides to go after this guy, and the narration cards assure us they want to bring him to a fair and just trial. Soon after they catch him and bring him to… a Klan rally! No points for guessing the verdict. They then dump his corpse on a politician’s doorstep, complete with a fancy greeting card. It’s all just so horrifically absurd and stupid that you pretty much have to laugh so you don’t lose your mind at how fucking stupid and gross it is.

The Bad

So, as a palette cleanser I decided to check out a few of the films of Georges Méliès, particularly his famous A Trip to the Moon. That film—which is 1/9th the length of Griffith’s epic—was more impressive in just about every aspect, be it story and effects, and it came out a decade prior. It’s short, simple, and silly like a fairy tale but considering it’s over a hundred years old and predates a so-called landmark of cinema, I find it all the more impressive that it blows it out of the water.

And ok, maybe it’s not fair to pit a sci-fi fantasy against a historical fiction narrative, since the former is very light on plot and characterization by nature. But that’s the thing! The Birth of a Nation is ALSO light on characterization! For three hours we follow the flattest characters imaginable. Literally the only person in the film worth giving a shit about is Abraham Lincoln, and not only is he barely in it by design but they STILL ignore anything that can’t be used for Confederate apologia!

And yes, all of that is bad. But it’s the reasons behind why it’s bad that are beyond heinous and get a whole section to itself.

The Ugly

Guys. I don’t know if you know this, but the KKK aren’t heroic good guys who saved the South.

This film is propaganda, pure and simple, bolstered by numerous exaggerations. No, Woodrow Wilson, racist though he may have been, was not whooping and hollering and claiming this was like writing history with lightning; as far as history is concerned, he got up when the movie was over, thanked Griffith for the screening in a letter, and never commented on its quality one way or the other. And sure, this film was the first in a lot of regards which makes it technically impressive, but films after did everything it did way better while usually being less racist.

In this film, the white “good guys” are either naive and too trusting of the black people, or are defined by being extremely racist. The black people are treated as wild animals who are undeserving of the freedom they’re given, something exacerbated by the “reasonable” black people all being servants who are happy in slavery—and that’s if they’re even black, as most of the “POC” are white people in obvious blackface (can’t imagine why black people wouldn’t want to star in this!). Worst of all, though, are the “mulattoes,” the results of miscegenation and the evil conspirators who wish to bring about black supremacy and rule the South with an iron fist. None of this lends itself to a pleasant viewing experience for normal people.

This is illustrated pretty well by the abnormal freaks who loved this film: the Klan. They pretty much got pulled up out of the dirt thanks to this film’s propaganda and all the bullshit urban legends inflating its importance (as well as the actual, tangible things of importance it did) and their membership went up over the next decade. Like there are plenty of examples of films having negative effects on society throughout history, but nothing else approaches what this film did. It is genuinely an evil and amoral picture that emboldened domestic terrorists to regain honor that had been rightfully stripped from them with disgusting revisionist takes on Reconstruction as well as how it pushes the eye-rollingly stupid “Lost Cause” narrative.

One of the most baffling things of all is that Griffith almost immediately had huge regrets about this movie. No, not the fact that this is one of the most racist works of art ever, but that people thought he was racist. Yeah. Contrary to popular belief, Griffith was very proud of this film and followed it up with his (bold for the time) anti-racism film Intolerance not to repent but to say “See guys? I’m not racist!” And I mean… It’s cool that he did the right thing even if it’s for the wrong reasons, but I don’t think it makes up for reinvigorating the Klan.

It just blows my mind, though. Even people at the time thought this film was too much, so how could he possibly be so dense? The movie ends with a violent Klan insurrection putting black people back into terrified squalor after they finally got a crumb of dignity and respect after three hours of portraying black people as tastefully as Mel Gibson portrays Jews. How the fuck is this not meant to be seen as racist? Like he was getting shit for this in the 1910s, do you realize how racist you have to be in the early 20th century for people to say “This is too much?”

Is There Any Value In This Film?

Sadly the answer is yes… kind of.

If you, like me, love the medium of film and want to learn where certain tropes and techniques originate, you sometimes have to watch films like this. Innovation and great art are not the sole domain of the good and righteous; great innovations can come from evil places, and great art can be created by shitty people. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging it.

Thankfully, for the latter point we don’t have to worry, because as a piece of art this film is shit even setting the racism aside. This is a long, tedious film where barely anything interesting happens in the first half and where the only character arc anyone goes through is “Somehow becomes more racist,” which just is not interesting character progression no matter how you slice it. You can’t expect much from an adaptation of a racist book written by a racist asshole, because racists of the caliber needed to deify the fucking KKK are going to be incapable of crafting any kind of coherent narrative. Art and innovation can come from anywhere, but there is a point where your bigotry precludes you from producing anything worthwhile.

One thing I hear about Mein Kampf is that, as historically important as it is, it’s almost unreadably awful because Hitler fucking sucked at writing. And that applies to this movie too, I’d say. Is it a pioneering work of art that pretty much codified what cinema could do going forward and showcased camera tricks and storytelling tropes to the world for the first time? Yes! But is it also a tedious, nigh unwatchable racist screed that is so hellbent on being propaganda that it forgets to tell a good story or have engaging characters or do ANYTHING to entertain a person who isn’t a racist troglodyte? Also yes!

So ultimately, my verdict is this: If you have an interest in film history, watch this movie. Otherwise, don’t. I would hesitate to call a work of art evil under normal circumstances, but has any other work bred hate quite like this? Don’t subject yourself to this unless you absolutely have to or unless you really want to learn the origins of filmmaking techniques or what the ugly face of 20th century racism looked like.

Or maybe I should just say the ugly face of racism, period. It's truly disturbing and unfortunate that, despite the world rightfully condemning this film, we are in a time and place where the sort of views this espouses are now seemingly socially acceptable for sitting politicians to post on the internet.

THE GOOD

The biggest thing that stood out to me while watching this is that Captain America and Red Skull are genuinely perfectly done. Let’s talk about Skull first, since he’s a bit more mixed.

His makeup is extremely weird, but we only see it in the first quarter of the film, and his backstory is unexpectedly tragic seeing as he’s a boy forcibly orphaned by Italian fascists (yes, he’s Italian rather than a German Nazi) and turned into a super soldier through torturous experiments in a backstory that is vaguely and ironically similar to Magneto in a lot of way. But those things aside, he very much feels like a megalomaniacal comic book villain, complete with dramatic speeches and a truly dastardly plan. You see, he—a fascist foreigner—wants to mind control the United States president and use him as a puppet to rule by proxy. Thankfully, nothing so ludicrous as a foreign fascist using the president as a puppet could happen anywhere but in the world of comic books and their movie adaptations!

It really is Scott Paulin’s performance that carries the character. Yes, it sucks that Red Skull’s skull is not actually red outside of the World War II scenes that kick off the movie, but with how deliciously menacing he makes the guy it’s hard to be too upset. He may not have the look, but he has the wickedness down to a T.

But more impressive, and the thing that stuck out to me the most, is how good Matt Salinger is as Cap. I wasn’t expecting to be blown away, but boy did Matt knock his role out of the park despite the script and budget not always letting his Cap go as hard as he should. His simple refutation of Red Skull mocking everything he stands for—a simple rebuke of “I care,” delivered with conviction and sincerity—is so fucking good that it’s worth the price of admission alone. Salinger also nails the sweetness and corniness of Steve, such as genuinely complimenting his now elderly former flame by telling her she’s still beautiful or just in general having a cheesy fish-out-of-water charm of a man from the 40s transplanted into the 90s. I love Chris Evanas to bits, and his Cap is one of the best parts of the MCU… But I think Salinger might actually have done Cap best. If nothing else, it's very funny seeing a Salinger prevent presidential assassinations instead of being blamed for them (yes, Cap is The Catcher in the Rye author's son).

Ronny Cox as President Kimball is probably the biggest surprise in the cast, though. You’d expect the kidnapped president of the United States to just be a helpless plot device or even a dick, but no! Kimball is badass and resourceful, escaping on his own and being utterly willing to die just to foil Red Skull’s plans. When he finally gets to meet up with Cap near the end, they also have a really fun little dynamic going on. It’s so easy to make a shitty, unlikable douchebag president so it was just refreshing seeing a noble, selfless, and likable one, even though such a thing makes it glaringly obvious this is a work of fiction.

THE BAD

Look, this is a low-budget action movie and it shows. The action scenes are few and far between, and when they show up you can see where a lot of the corners were cut. Not to say there’s nothing good, but when half of the scenes feature Cap running away rather than kicking everyone’s ass, you know there’s a problem. There’s also a lot of really bad acting, particularly from the non-Red Skull villains. Like these guys just have awful line reads. And don’t get me started on the wings on Cap’s helmet. I am more charmed than mad at how silly it looks, but I’d be remiss not to mention it.

Of course, the bigger problem is just some of the weird creative choices. Changing the Red Skull from a Nazi to a fascist Italian lab rat is the big one, as is only letting him keep his iconic look for a brief window. While the latter is presumably due to budgetary reasons, the former is strange because while his new backstory does garner him some sympathy it’s just… not really dealt with at all? Like it never comes up after the opening, at least not until Cap weaponizes his trauma to give him PTSD flashbacks in the climax. It’s not glaringly awful but the fact they do pretty much nothing with it and have Skull be a scheming, unashamedly evil supervillain makes this feel like a forced attempt to garner pity from the audience.

Then we have Cap. Yes, Salinger does a great job with him and makes him extremely charming and likable, especially in the corny ways Cap should be, but the writing of the film also kind of makes him a dick in a couple of moments. I am of course referring to the two times he fakes carsickness in order to jack a car. Yes, seriously. I think people do harp in this too much—it’s not a huge dealbreaker and both times he is at least a little justified as to why he does it—but it is so strange to see Cap do something so petty and ridiculous that I have to mention it. At least it’s pretty hilarious.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

So. You thought I was going to hate this movie.

For the first time I held a poll asking what viewers of my blog predicted what my opinion of the film would be, with the negative option winning by a very slim margin. Considering this movie’s reputation, it’s easy to see why, especially since as a big superhero movie fan and an ardent MCU defender I at least try and have some standards. But as a B-movie lover and a trashy cinema aficionado, it was pretty impossible not to be charmed by this film.

Yes, this film has tons of issues because of its tiny budget. No, this is not some pitch-perfect adapatation or an awesome action showcase. Yes, it is unbelievably corny. But I think in the vein of the unreleased Fantastic Four movie, this film has something a lot of other superhero films of the time don’t: Heart. This film has personality oozing from every pore, and for everything it does poorly or weirdly it makes up for with how well it understands core aspects of Steve Rogers and Red Skull. Salinger and Paulin really do carry this film, their acting paving over the cheap action and the janky acting of the villainous goons.

THE GOOD

So here’s The Thing:

No, literally, Michael Chiklis. He is absolutely fucking great as Belushi. You can really feel him pouring his heart and soul into the guy, delivering the sort of performance only someone who was actually a fan of Belushi could, and he manages to make the scraps the script gives him work to the best of his ability. He manages to inject sympathy and emotion into the guy when the movie otherwise actively refuses to, and captures his mannerisms and quirks quite well. I genuinely think this film is almost maybe worth watching at least once, just to see Chiklis’ first film role.

But he’s the only good thing here.

THE BAD

Hey guys, did you know John Belushi did drugs? Well, this movie is sure going to ensure you know this fact, because every single scene contains one of the following:

1. John Belushi doing/being on drugs.

2. John Belushi lashing out at the people around him because he doesn’t have enough drugs.

3. People bemoaning his death because of his drug problem.

The film is, essentially, a corny after school anti-drug special. But while those are usually just benignly stupid, this one is insidious because it’s not only using a real guy’s tragic death to push the message, weaponizing him to push an agenda, it also goes out of its way to demonize him. Belushi comes off like a raging asshole half the time, a racist, adulterous, hedonistic manchild who is constantly screaming at and berating those around him while denying he has any kind of problem. Par for the course for the Reagan era, where sympathy for anyone who wasn’t a white heterosexual American man was less than zero, but it makes it easy to see why everyone who knew the guy took umbrage with this. The nadir of this is when Bob Woodward is berating Belushi on his deathbed for doing drugs, the kind of scene only someone who’s snorting more coke than Tony Montana could think is tasteful.

Speaking of which, beyond the rampant character assassination it is just horrifically tasteless. Have you ever wanted to see John Belushi begging for mercy as an autopsy is performed on him? No? Don’t you know anything about comedy you dipshit? LAUGH. They literally try playing him being chopped up by morticians as he squirms and cries for “laughs,” and then later they also expect you to giggle at how his coffin can’t fit in a plane so they just throw his body bag into one of the seats! Oho! Belushi’s death is constantly made light of, the butt of so many jokes, and it never stops feeling uncomfortable. Then there’s the film’s relationship with Woodward, which is... weird. On one hand, the movie veers into fantastical realms the book does not, and it straight up has Belushi being told (after gushing about how cool Woodward is) that the book will air his dirty laundry and ruin him. But on the other… like I already mentioned, Woodward berates him for his drug use as he is fucking dying. If you actually liked the book you’re probably not going to enjoy the shots at the author, and everyone else is going to find the glazing of a guy you only know from either his takedown of Nixon or getting murdered offscreen by the Comedian in Watchmen at the expense of John fucking Belushi too much to stomach.

On top of everything else, the film feels completely unreal, and I don’t just mean because John Belushi plays pinball against a Latino angel (played by a white guy) who he was extremely racist towards so that he can win the right to live again. As everyone who knew Belushi wanted nothing to do with this shitstain of a film, they couldn’t replicate any actual SNL skits, so they had to just fabricate stuff like the Blues Brothers meeting Elvis and Colonel Sanders and Bob Woodward interviewing Conehead Nixon. It’s so phony, so insincere, and it only compounds all the films other issues.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate this film since I first watched. There are about 380 other films I watched prior to this one this year, of varying lengths. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of hours of film it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for Wired at this micro-instant. Hate. Hate.

I am only barely exaggerating my disgust for this film; it’s not the worst or my least favorite film ever made—Lucy, Bucky Larson, Wonder Woman 1984, and Disaster Movie still outrank it on my shit list—but out of those this movie is the only one that genuinely offends me. It is one of the cruelest, most slanderous movies I’ve ever seen, a horrifying hit piece on a beloved comedian taken from us far too soon. And it’s not even like that for any interesting reason! It’s just propaganda, demonizing drug users as raging assholes undeserving of sympathy just like so many other eye-rolling PSAs meant to serve Reagan’s “war on drugs.” It may not be the worst film on my list, but it’s one of the most evil; I’d go so far as comparing it to The Birth of a Nation, but at least that film has some historical value! The only thing this has going for it is a fantastic performance from Michael Chiklis, but I can get that in a dozen other places, including two films where he’s a big orange golem!

This is one of the nastiest films ever made. I cannot even fathom who this film is supposed to be for. Like there is plenty of value in making a Belushi biopic, either by making it an irreverent black comedy in the style of his own comedies or having it a more somber and contemplative affair that examines the tragedy of how such a good, kind man couldn’t escape his demons even though he tried so hard. Instead we are given a surreal fantasy film that only does one and a half of those things; we have the black comedy, sure, but instead of a somber look at Belushi’s struggles we get a vicious condemnation that goes out of his way to demonize him. Again, this is a man who was beloved by just about everyone around him and was adored by America for his comedy skills! Who the fuck would want to watch a movie like this? What possible value is there in even making this hit piece?

However bad you think another biopic is, this is worse. Oh, they toned down how queer Freddie is in Bohemian Rhapsody? At least they didn’t have his ghost constantly listening to people berate him for dying of AIDS or sobbing as he’s dissected. The only film about a historical figure I can think of that misses the point this badly about all the great achievements of its topic’s life is The Passion of the Christ—and its historical accuracy is dubious to begin with! I don’t think I can recommend this film to anyone, because there is no audience for this outside of people who try and rehabilitate the image of bad movies by giving them a fair shot. At least I can rest easy knowing that this is the only biopic of a beloved, talented celebrity that exists solely to demonize them while also pushing a shitty agenda… right?