Premise: Who the hell knows?Starring: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Justin Timberlake, (that guy) Curtis Armstrong, Nora Dunn, (that gal) Beth Grant, Christopher Lambert, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Jon Lovitz, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Zelda Rubinstein, Kevin Smith, Eli Roth, Janeane Garofalo... who the hell isn't in this damn movie?
My Reaction: I don't think I've ever seen a movie that I've felt is simultaneously crap and genius... until now. The story is convoluted and hardly makes a lick of sense. The acting is (purposefully?) cheesy and horrible. Every 5 seconds you see a new actor or actress that you recognize, cameo or not. But this is also a movie that made me both want to turn it off and keep watching with endless intrigue (that, and I was waiting for Wallace Shawn to go "Inconceivable!" or "never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"). I never knew what was going on, but I never really felt lost. I guess because I'm decently versed in the Book of Revelation, so I was sitting there trying to figure out who was supposed to represent who the whole time (and I didn't know this was an allegory prior to watching, either... if you can call it that). Not to mention the movie was full of bible references, literary references, and musical references. By the time it got to the Zeppelin scenes at the end, I just couldn't look away. The movie is like a Jackson Pollock painting. It's a total mess and is utter crap... but deep down inside, you know it's a work of freakin' genius. As such... I cannot give it a rightful rating. So there are my thoughts. Think of them as you will.
Well, good! You're one of the few people that walked away with the same reaction that Mrs. Fletch and I did. I saw it in the theater and awarded it my highest and lowest grades simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall Eli Roth in it - who was he?
Eli Roth was in a super brief cameo. When the military guys are going through the Neo Marxists' building and killing everybody, there's one where they bust open a door and kill a guy sitting on the toilet. He was the guy on the toilet.
ReplyDeleteI was like "Hey, it's Eli Roth. This is getting ridiculous with the cameos." And then I looked on IMDB to make sure, and they do have him on there, but it's unconfirmed. Still, I'm like 99.9% sure it's him.