Saw 3D (2010)
Two years ago I wanted to review the new Saw movie for The Rotten Tomatoes Show. Having not seen the most recent installments of the series, I marathoned the first five films and then dragged myself to the theater to see the sixth. When I was finished that day, I had witnessed a series that consistently got worse with each subsequent sequel. The following year, I consciously ignored the release of the purportedly final Saw. But now it’s available free on Netflix, and I figured that I might as well see the way the series ended.
Wrapping up the now-sprawling mythos of these movies would be no short order. After the innovative original and the first two subpar-but-not-wholly-inexcusable sequels, the filmmakers killed off Jigsaw and started f0llowing Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), who managed to be the most unfulfilling and bland replacement a horror series has ever seen. We’ve followed this cardboard oaf around for three films, and his fate is the focus of the ultimate entry as well. The parallel victim story follows Bobby Dagin (Sean Patrick Flanery), a man whose fabricated Jigsaw-survival story has made him a best-selling author. Flanery has to go through and save a bunch of his acquaintances by playing Hoffman’s games. It’s the exact same set-up that we saw in the 3rd, 4th, and to some degree 6th film in the series, and its familiarity is stifling. Worse off, the filmmakers try to include some kind of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” theme, but it’s too underdeveloped to be clever in any way.
On Hoffman’s trail is the latest one-film protagonist, Detective Matt Gibson. Actor Chad Donella fits in with the rest of the cast since he’s hammy and awful. Detective Gibson fits in with the rest of the characters because he’s entirely unremarkable. The film eventually tires of him, lazily gunning him down with an automated turret early on in the third act. Under Gibson’s protection was Jill Tuck, Jigsaw’s ex-wife who has popped up in every film since the fourth. Her role is much more central to Saw 3D, which is both a good and bad thing. Good because Betsy Russell has obviously made some kind of deal with Time – at 47 years old, she is still every bit as toned and attractive as a 20-somethings woman; bad because she’s weak as both a character and an actor. But she did make me laugh whenever she ran, so that’s something.
Being part of the series that helped establish the phrase “torture porn”, Saw 3D has all the gore you’d expect it to. The opening scene features flying intestine, another has Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington getting the skin ripped off his back, and in one unnerving scene, a fish hook has to be yanked out of a person’s stomach through their throat. Just typing that disgusts me. These gruesome acts are filmed in the usual unforgiving close up. But you already knew that this would be the case, it’s a damn Saw movie.
As the film begins to wrap up, its flaws appear more and more egregious. Logic is trampled by the need for more gore. One of the last tests that Dagin has to endure is unlocking a door using a combination etched into his molars. Nevermind the complete inanity of how one could have chiseled numbers with such precision in the back of this man’s mouth – anything so long as the end result is someone pulling their own teeth out with a wrench! The film’s final twist is both predictable and disappointing. Spoiler alert, turns out that Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes), the guy who cut his foot off in the first film, has been helping Jigsaw this whole time also (because Amanda and Hoffman’s retcons weren’t enough, apparently). This whimper is the way that Saw chooses to die. It’s something it really should have done four movies ago.
The first Saw was a great horror movie. Sure it was flawed, but it was original and bold. As the derivatives kept coming, the series kept dulling itself. Sure it maintained an unhealthy level of gore, but it traded its sincere originality for imitation intelligence, with convoluted storylines in place of actually smart twists. Nothing embodies this drastic decline better than Mandylor as Hoffman. As he lumbers around the police station, stabbing person after person in the exact same way, it becomes shocking how this movie manages to be even worse than its precursors. There’s really no way that Saw 3D couldn’t be the last film in the series, because with it, the devolution of the series is finally complete.
Final Rating: 1/10
–James A. Janisse
When in Rome (2010)
After seeing Legion the week before, I was thankful that, statistically, it was unlikely that I would have to endure anything so horrible so very soon afterward. Unfortunately for me, I hit the horrible movie jackpot, and for the second week in a row I saw a movie that wasn’t worth the celluloid it was printed on.
When in Rome is a romantic comedy starring Kristen Bell as an overworked woman who winds up in Rome for her sister’s wedding. While there, she takes some coins from the fountain of love, thus making the original owners of the coins fall spellbindingly in love with her. Meanwhile, she struggles with her feelings for a charming guy she met at the wedding, Josh Duhamel.
Something I didn’t know going into the movie that would have helped me greatly is that this movie was written by the writers of Old Dogs. With that knowledge, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that there’s not a single original joke in the entirety of the film. Let me get the cliches out of the way. In fact, list form might be most appropriate.
*Predictable and cheesy ending
*Stereotypical friends, including “the fat one” “the weird, quirky assistant” and “the gay guy”
*Everyone in the film (even the taxi driver) constantly talks about love and how Bell doesn’t have a boyfriend
*Bell talks poorly of her ex, who’s standing RIGHT BEHIND HER
*Bell can’t speak Italian, so Duhamel has to translate her wedding speech for a foreign audience (poorly) – “hilarity” ensues
There are tons other, but I’m sure I’ll drop them throughout the review in prose form instead.
The lead actors are likable and struggle admirably through the horrible material they’re given. Kristen Bell is as cute as ever, though because of her giddy cuteness I had a problem believing her as a successful businesswoman. Josh Duhamel is very charming, and although he’s nearing 40, is still a hell of a good looking guy. He’s perfect material for romantic comedies, but the writers of When in Rome waste his possibly talent by having his character unbelievably clumsy. Duhamel falls into manholes and walks into trees like it’s his job, and I guess we as the audience are supposed to ignore when he’s clearly nimble, like when he flips his phone in the air before putting it away. Duhamel needs to find a part that exploits not only his charm but also his dashing coordination.
The worst part about the story is that it’s one of those horrendously offensive romcoms that always seem to be written by a man about a woman. It’s where the woman is successful in her career, but happens to be single, which is made into the biggest problem of her life. Movies like this imply that women need men to be happy in their lives – here, Bell not only needs Duhamel as a lover, but she also needs him to break a vase for her, translate her speech, and even save her job (the one thing she’s supposedly good at in the movie). Stories like this are lazily misogynistic, the product of writers who can’t come up with good motivations for their characters.
Speaking of characters, the reason I was hoping this would be better than the trash that I routinely throw away was the supporting cast. Bell’s unwanted admirers who fall under her spell are played by Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, and Danny DeVito. I’m a huge fan of two of these actors, and the other two are enjoyable for the most part. Well, at least in other movies. In this one, all four of these men were put to waste.
The characters that these actors play are ridiculously simple and only provide one joke each, repeated ad nauseum. Arnett is an Italian painter. So every scene he’s in, he’s painting. He has a horrendous Italian accent (explained away in the end by him not really being Italian, but still) and doesn’t produce a single chuckle. Danny DeVito is an old man who sells sausages. While he’s equally unfunny in the film, there was a moment or two where he at least seemed like an actual human being, which is more than I can say for the other three clowns.
Dax Shepard plays a model who is almost as in love with Bell as he is with himself. All of his lines just reference his impressive physical form. None of them are funny. And finally, Jon Heder ends up being the worst of the bunch. His character is a street magician. I don’t think I have to say anything else. Every single scene that the four stalkers are in just serve to remind the audience of their particular one dimension, and it’s old and unfunny before they’re all even done being introduced.
I’ll briefly comment on the other supporting actors in case anyone reading this wants to see the movie because of them. Anjelica Huston phones in a “bitchy boss” performance that could have been done by anyone who has seen Devil Wears Prada. Alexis Dziena is cute. And that’s all her character is given to do. Bobby Moynihan plays Duhamel’s friend, and pretty much just impersonates Jack Black whenever he’s on camera.
The only one worth mentioning in a positive light was involved in the singular scene that had me laughing. Flight of the Conchord’s Kristen Schaal plays a waitress at a pitch-black restaurant, where the patrons are unable to see and the wait staff gets to wear night vision goggles. The scene was absurd and hilarious as Bell and Duhamel were forced to blindly grasp at things in the dark, all in a crowded public setting. Schaal added the perfect creepy element of hilarity. Yet even this scene unravels and devolves by the end into more unfunny cliches, as the stalkers track down Bell and invade the “Black Out” restaurant with their unfunny caricatures.
The film’s 90 minutes feels like twice that, and besides the restaurant scene, never garnered a single chuckle from me. Perhaps most telling of the film’s quality is its climax, where a clown car (exaggeratedly small in a jab toward European vehicles) drives through a building (with the help of real magic by Heder) and into an elevator. A clown car in an elevator. That was the film’s big punchline. If I wrote a film where that was the ultimate gag, I’d gladly hang up my writing hat, and never take it down again.
Despite an appealing cast, When in Rome shows that you just can’t do much with piss poor writing. Without an original bone in its body, the film fails on every aspect, most strikingly in its humor. Despite its title, most of the film takes place in New York City. I suspect that the backers read the script and refused to front the money for location shooting. After all, why pay to visit an Italian bathroom when you can just go in the backyard and shoot the same piece of shit at home?
Final rating: 1/10
–James A. Janisse
Legion (2010)
Legion was released in January, a month that rarely sees a movie of substance. I knew this going into it, but I had seen the trailers some time ago and remembered the creepy old lady in the diner. I thought the film might be entertaining at the least, and maybe it could even be a bit creepy or scary. What I got was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in quite a while, matching the abominations of Transformers 2 and 2012 while reducing the entertainment and pace. Frankly, I wish I had stayed home.
Legion begins with a very Terminator-like scene of an angel falling to Earth. He subsequently cuts off his wings and goes to a random stockpile of weapons that’s conveniently near by. This introduction sets the movie up for one of the worst premises imaginable: God has decided he is sick of humans and wants to exterminate them. Instead of using his omnipotence to do so, he sends down angels. The angels possess the weak-willed humans in a VERY demonic way, and kill all the other humans around them. The angel who cut off his wings is Paul Bettany’s Michael, who has apparently out-faithed God, still has hope in humanity, and decides to fight on their side. His goal is to protect a pregnant woman whose unborn child may be the second coming of Christ. There are also swarms of flies for some reason. I don’t really know, the entire idea was embarrassingly stupid.
There’s an “ensemble cast” here, but really, I think they just seem like an ensemble because the writers are bad at character development. The characters are all together because they’re stuck in a diner with the pregnant woman, and it’s this setting where Michael and the cast make their stand. The movie is mostly a “defend this point” film in the vein of Dawn of the Dead, but instead of a mall for the characters to play around in, they’re just stuck in a very boring shithole diner in the middle of nowhere.
Lucas Black plays the most annoying of the crew, a southern good ole boy named Jeep (yeah, really) whose drawling lines made me laugh at their outlandishness. Dennis Quaid is stand-out awful as Black’s father, a man who has lost faith and is in the rungs of alcoholism. Other cast members like Tyrese Gibson and Charles S. Dutton are inoffensive, but Bettany’s really the only one who is able to do anything with the garbage material he’s given. I actually felt bad for Bettany, seeing how he clearly has some talent but he somehow got involved in all of this. I’d also claim that Kevin Durand does adequately as the antagonistic archangel Gabriel, but I’m a huge Lost fan so that comment may well be biased.
The main problem with this movie is that it’s just so damn boring. The trailers show a demonic old grandma and a twisted ice cream man getting their creep on, but the unfortunate reality is that the trailers showed everything there was to show. Both of these horror draws are gone as soon as they come, with the ice cream man seriously serving no purpose at all. They try to make the old lady creepy by having her swear a lot, but it just comes off as childish and campy. There’s also a possessed child somewhere in the chaos of all this, and whether they meant to or not, the kid looks like a direct rip-off of Chucky from the Child’s Play series. He has some of the worst lines in the film, lines that someone apparently thought would be cute, funny, or scary. They were none of the above. They were just trite.
The scenes I just described are intermittently strewn throughout the film, with long durations of dialogue between them. The dialogue is stiff and uninteresting, with a lot of discussion about faith. The film’s last line is a message to have faith, but I’m not sure what they’re trying to say here, because you have to keep in mind that God is the antagonist. So, really, I’m not entirely sure, but I think the film’s message is to keep your faith to God even when he possesses the weak-willed half of humanity and tries to kill off your species.
The fact that the angels came down and possessed people at all is, in my opinion, a gaping plot hole. Durand shows that the angels are fearsome warriors when they’re in their winged form, so why bother having them possess people at all? I guess to have the very poor-looking CGI where peoples’ heads shake violently as they’re being possessed. But it’s not the only stupid instance in the film – there are a laundry list of them, from having the world’s LOUDEST ice cream truck ever to having a newborn baby survive a horrifically violent car crash.
That same car crash sees the hands-down laziest killing off of a character I’ve ever witness. When the previously pregnant woman climbs out of the car, she inquires about her child, who she’s told is safe. She then asks about the fourth passenger, a young girl. Jeep shakes his head no, and the couple and baby move on. If only someone had shaken their head no to the making of this film, perhaps the world could have been spared one of the worst films made in recent years.
No matter what you’re interested in, there is no reason to see this movie. It’s not scary or creepy, it’s not entertaining, and it’s not badass. The swarm of angels flying around that you saw in the trailers is shown as a flashback, and there are never any battles of epic proportion in the film. It’s just people standing on a roof and shooting zombie-like people who are possessed by angels but acting like demons. It even has a horrible ending, with a character reciting the same exact quote that they began the film with. It really doesn’t make any sense to end the film with this quote, but by that point I had come to expect nothing better from the horrible filmmakers that brought us Legion.
Final rating: 1/10
–James A. Janisse
