| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Armond White,
New York Press |
The Pursuit of Happyness |
"Will Smith has come a long way from being the token black guy of big-budget summer blockbusters like Independence Day, Men in Black and Wild Wild West to being the producer and star of The Pursuit of Happyness. It's yet another product of the Hollywood system, but this time with a personal message: I got mine, get yoursÉ Success is all that matters in The Pursuit of Happyness because it's the one idea that hip-hop artists have learned they can sell to America, and the world, unilaterally...[The film] suggests that the drive for success is what defines Americans. In other words, Smith is no longer merely a figurine fronting the Hollywood institution; he now owns a piece of the plantation." |
This is an excellent and incisive review, but we have to note, for the record, that Will Smith wasn't "the token black guy" in either Men in Black or Wild Wild West. He was the star lead in both films. And what's more, producing isn't anything new to him: He was the Executive Producer of his own show, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, way back in the mid-90s. |
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Manohla Dargis,
New York Times |
The Good German |
"In his genre pastiche The Good German, Steven Soderbergh has tried to resurrect the magic of classical Hollywood, principally by sucking out all the air, energy and pleasure from his own filmmakingÉAs it turns out, they don't make them like they used to even when they try. Mr. Soderbergh has explained that with The Good German he was seeking to make a film that looked and sounded like an old studio picture, but without the old studio prohibitions. In the name of verisimilitude and creative freedom, his actors talk a blue streak in black-and-white images captured with period-era camera lenses. More lewdly, Tobey Maguire...helps the film earn its R rating by doing the kinds of things to Ms. Blanchett that audiences could only dream of doing to Ingrid Bergman. Here's looking at you kid, flung over the bed and on your knees." |
We'd like to note that Mr. Soderbergh doesn't always need genre pastiche to suck the air from his own filmmaking. Surely, anyone who saw Solaris knows that. Also, for a negative review, Manohla's piece might make some readers awfully curious to see this movie. Gee, why could that be? |
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Dana Stevens,
Slate |
Charlotte's Web |
"Charlotte's Web is, for the most part, a scrupulously tasteful rendering of a children's classic (though it does comply with the industry bylaw that every kids' film contain at least one fart joke). But the brand of childhood wonder the movie traffics in is just a little sweeter, a little louder, a little busier than White's, and that shade of coarsening makes all the difference." |
Great. They put a fart joke in Charlotte's Web. That "shade of coarsening" is looking browner and browner. |
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Stephanie Zacharek,
Salon.com |
Dreamgirls |
"This is a puny, pinched vision of R&B history and of R&B itself, a sanitized, show-tunized reading of some of the greatest pop music to come out of the 1960s. An early scene in Dreamgirls features a speech about how the white man has repeatedly stolen from the black man, and yet the show's music sounds like one massive instance of thoughtless appropriation. The songs — with lyrics by Eyen and music by Henry Krieger — sound nothing like those that came out of Motown (with their repetitive but dreamily seductive Holland-Dozier-Holland hooks); they have the toe-tapping sheen of the phoniest show music, as if you could give a melody soul just by wriggling your spirit-fingers extra-hard." |
Zacharek, watch what you say: Telling the average hipster that he can't get soul by wriggling his spirit-fingers extra hard is like telling a six-year-old there's no Santa Claus. |
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Scott Foundas,
LA Weekly |
The Pursuit of Happyness |
"The Pursuit of Happyness... isn't one of those noxious, neo-Dickensian fantasias that tend to arrive during the holiday season Ñ you know, the ones where overpaid studio executives seem to be working through their guilt about being rich by evoking the nobility of the starving class. (Think The Family Man, or Surviving Christmas.) Here, there's nothing noble about trying to make $250 support a family of three for an entire month, or having to hop out of a taxi midride because you realize you don't have enough money for the fare...[F]or a movie conceived and executed in the mainstream Hollywood idiom, it has uncommon depth and honesty. And the thing it's honest about is the embarrassment and humiliation of being poor, especially in a place like San Francisco, where the steep hills provide an apt metaphor for the city's income gap. It's honest about something else too — that money can indeed buy you happiness. Just ask anybody who's ever had money and then lost it." |
This is actually a very touching review, in which Foundas discusses his own father's economic travails earlier in life. The question is: Is the movie as honest as he's crediting it, or is he projecting a veneer of honesty onto a Will Smith Oscar vehicle? |
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