I watched it yesterday, and thought it was good. Easily the best thing I’ve seen in theatres since Sinners, although that’s not saying a whole lot. Don’t think I’d ever rewatch it, but would recommend it to people.
The main problem imo was:
Movie format has to be far too quick and loses out a lot of what made the story great for me. In the book it was interesting to read hypothesis → trial → result → repeat in high stakes scenarios until a problem was solved. Movies don’t have the time to show this, so it was largely the movie explaining the problem, then immediately showing the solution.
I don’t rule out an eventual rewatch, but I think it’s probably a long way out if it ever happens. That length is kind of a lot to bite off for what I was getting back.
When three childhood best friends pull a prank gone wrong, they invent the imaginary Ricky Stanicky to get them out of trouble. Twenty years later, the trio still uses the nonexistent Ricky as a handy alibi for their immature behavior. But when their spouses and partners get suspicious and demand to finally meet the fabled Mr. Stanicky, the guilty trio decide to hire a washed-up actor and raunchy celebrity impersonator to bring him to life.
I stayed away from this one because of that absolutely terrible title, but folks let me tell you, this is a great movie. Lightweight and full of heart and humor. I laughed hard throughout. The masturbation version of pop songs was hilarious. And the air dicks sequence is a clear competitor against Silicon Valleys dick to floor sequence.
Ya this looks bad. The vfx look especially bad (the deer and animals) unless it turns out there is some screenplay reason for it.
Edit. The more I think about this I bet there is some screenplay reason for these vfx. There is no reason to make a vfx deer and cat that look so “uncanny valley” when you can just use the real animals. It must be some screenplay driven things like an alien metaverse or something.
I think people are sleeping a little on the visual mastery of the film. It’s significantly more beautiful than any space film in decades, including interstellar. It borrows heavily from many great space films included 2001, Contact, and Gravity.
i’m gonna read more about it and go again this week on a morning by myself since i’m off for spring break anyway.
i think an issue is a lot of it was dark, so it was harder to see the visual beauty stuff. obviously there were some eyepopping scenes/images, but i think what makes sci-fi movies legendary (like interstellar) is the ability to pause the movie on holyshitomg scenes to soak it in. like ive had gargantua/the black hole as my laptop screensaver and have stared and pondered over many scenes from interstellar. somewhat bc of that, interstellar has been my answer to “what’s your favorite movie” for some time now.
the other thing that i’d bet will bump up my rating a little is, last night i took my standard half gummy walking into the theater. makes everything more entertaining, but i’m also prone to miss stuff as i’m wondering if the woman’s elbow next to me is gonna hit mine, how many people exactly were in the theater, what i’d do if john wick came into the theater shooting, etc.
i ended up with sinners as 9.5/10, obaa 9/10 and weapons as a 9/10, but i’ve seen all of them 4-5x and have revised them a couple times. phm i have as 8.5/10, but i know there’s more to see still.
just gotta decide if i wanna get and finish the book before going to see the movie again or vice versa. probably should go with the book first.
also, for a packed theater, it was the quietest crowd i can remember for a packed theater. the dialog could have been more entertaining. like there were a couple lines that were setup to be crowd-pleasers and just weren’t. i dunno. i haven’t read any reviews, after doing that and seeing it again i bet ill appreciate it more.
still obviously a great sci-fi movie, it’s just hard when for a week or two i’ve been reading about it being a GOAT candidate, and interstellar is my comfort movie so that’s tough.
It’s so widely critically acclaimed (it’s literally 100th best film ever on letterboxed with over 100k 5 stars, which is silly) that it’s going to suffer the inevitable “not as good as people are saying” backlash and even the “lol it’s crap” backlash.
It’s a bummer some people are going to go in expecting Citizen Kane when it’s really just a perfectly crafted crowd-pleasure taking all the best from space films before it and making a perfectly crafted pastiche.
They don’t say exactly but in the book there is lots more on the biology of induced coma. The reason Grace must go is less because he knows the science and more because he happens to be among a small percentage of people with a genetic makeup that allows for induced coma.
When fucking Everything Everywhere All at Once was brand new, it hit #1 all-time on there.
I did appreciate that in a reaction video the filmmakers made and submitted to Letterboxd, which me if the directors led with, “uhh, we would like to thank recency bias for this honor…”
It’s #228 now. Still too high since it doesn’t really merit any all-time ranking, but given that movie’s popularity it at least makes sense that it registers on the list.
Oh, no, I meant that EEAAO is at 228 now after being #1 initially. PHM is still sitting at #100 right now, but this early fever will break and moderate things. It always does.
I’m glad they got rid of that subplot, was one of the stupider ones in the book. Enjoyed the book a lot, but the author could use a bit more feedback/editing on some weaker stuff.
