Reviews

Cloverfield — Snark Review

Let me get this out of the way first: The movie is cooler than all hell and I had a great time watching it. I think that’s exactly what the filmmakers — director Matt Reeves, screenwriter Drew Goddard and producer J.J. Abrams — intended, so they did a great job. But now I can really see why they took the hand-held “you are there” camcorder approach to the film because it makes the action whip by about fifty thousand times faster than normal so you don’t have time to stop and think about all the inconsistencies and annoying parts.. Those come later and they still don’t detract from my initial feelings about the movie. But, let’s talk about them anyway.

First off, a lot of the geography of the film bugged me. Not only that, but wherever the main characters seem to go on the isle of Manhattan — surprise! — that’s exactly where the monster shows up. Of course, yeah how else is the script going to go? But when it happens, it’s in the context of not making a lot of sense.They’re having a party downtown? Boom, the monster’s just a couple blocks away. So, they decide to cross the Brooklyn Bridge — even though the Williamsburg would have been closer? Boom, the monster’s under the water tearing it down. (How and why did it get there?) Then, they travel in the subway from SoHo’s Spring Street all the way up to Columbus Circle by Central Park? Boom, the monster’s heading right for them! Thank God they had a video camera to document all this because they were the four or five unluckiest people in all of NYC.

As for that monster, even though it pops up seemingly around every corner, it’s really not in the movie a whole hell of a lot. I would say it has three or five minutes of screen time tops given that it’s seen mostly it’s seen in brief glimpses. While I didn’t mind that approach to the film, would ten or fifteen minutes been too much to ask? Although maybe it would have been because, honestly, it didn’t look all that great. While the destruction of the city is all very realistic seeming and that flying Statue of Liberty head is a great sequence, the monster for the most part (I’m trying to avoid spoiling the ending with some of my vague pronouncements here) looks too CGI-ish. Again, that doesn’t really distract from the fun of the film. The best shot of it is a brief glimpse up at it’s roaring maw as the characters duck into a subway. It was kind of a goofy shot that made me laugh out loud and I wish there had been more moments like that.

And given the credentials of the folks behind the camera, it’s really no surprise that the actual plot is like a left-over storyline from Felicity. The main dude, Rob (Michael Stahl-David), is leaving for a VP job in Japan, so he’s supposed to be, what, in his mid to late 20s? Yet, the whole beginning has everyone acting like teenagers because — oooh! — Rob slept with Beth (Odette Yustman). It just came across as very childish to me and, frankly, when Rob decides to go save his one true love, or I guess Beth’s supposed to be, I really could have cared less and I thought of that main action just as the excuse to have a plot that it was.

The acting overall was pretty ok. The only negative points go to T.J. Miller who’s the guy who holds the video camera for most of the film, so we don’t get to see him much. His wisecrack routine was actually very funny at first and he’s actually the best part of the opening party sequence. I found myself laughing at him a lot. But after awhile he just turned into Hank Azaria from Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla flick. And the real standout in the film is Lizzy Caplan as the depressed, cynical Marlena who really seems to be trying to bring a little more depth to her character than just about everyone else. She’s the person we really know the least about and I tended to care about her the most.

Overall, as I said in the beginning, it’s a fun flick. Did it live up to the hype of the past year? Not quite, but the hype probably did it’s job of getting folks to flock to the theater to check it out, as they should. I don’t feel gypped, but the film didn’t have any real lasting impact on me. I was already questioning it by the time I got to my car afterwards. But it certainly is fun and that counts for a lot when it comes to a giant monster movie.

© 2008 Cinema Snark.