GONE GIRL is Not Great

[jab]

Just got back from watching Gone Girl, which I mostly enjoyed, the way one enjoys a well acted, well shot, highly improbable and lurid melodrama.
I can't believe it is being touted as Oscar bait.

The story requires characters to be smart sometimes and stupid other times, more to move the story along than for reasons of character development and consistentency. Most noticeably, one very smart, meticulous, manipulative and observant character does a series of small, unobservant careless things in order for the scriptwriters to move the story in another direction, not because it is believable that that character would behave in such a dumb way.

The final surprise twist at the end requires one character to have planned ahead, and saved something for a highly unlikely contingency which there is no believable way the character could have seen coming at the time or the times it would have been necessary to secure this something. There is however no other believable reason for this character to have deliberatelty saved this something and/or secreted it away where no one else, including the police, would have found it before the character needed it.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I mostly agree with you. I saw this knowing there would be plot twists but not knowing more than that -- other than that the picture has great buzz. Having seen it -- it's overhyped. Plot is contrived to say the least -- and the picture's 'villain' has a rather glaring Achilles heel, I thought. A similar but much better plot/film is Presumed Innocent -- Bonnie Bedelia's final scene in that is a true suck-in-your-breath moment. Good acting in Gone Girl, as you said. I also loved the takeoff on our lovely, lovely Nancy Grace -- is she called Ellen Abbott? Altho' to be a true homage to Nancy Grace, a little more scowling is required.

 

[prideandfall]

totally agree - i panned it in my review in the movie review thread, and generally thought that it was forgettable pulp cinema crap, like the last 2 Fincher movies has made. in fact, with his Trilogy of Mediocre Crap, fincher has now lost his spot in my list of favorite directors, which is quite sad. (guy ritchie and wes anderson, it's all on you guys now!)

it reminded me a lot of the movie Side Effects - you remember that movie? no? it was equally well done but stupid, but it didn't get any buzz or talk of oscars because it only had channing tatum in it instead of ben affleck.

gone girl isn't terrible, but in relation to the buzz it's getting and the 3 hours of your life it was slurp up, it's a giant steaming pile of shit.
the only 'good' thing i can say about it is that it stayed above this year's benchmark for god-awful intolerable movies. my friend and i walked out of seeing Gone Girl, looked at each other, and at almost the exact same time we both said "well, at least it wasn't as bad at 47 ronin."

 

[Shadowy Man]

Just got back from watching Gone Girl, which I mostly enjoyed, the way one enjoys a well acted, well shot, highly improbable and lurid melodrama.
I can't believe it is being touted as Oscar bait.

The story requires characters to be smart sometimes and stupid other times, more to move the story along than for reasons of character development and consistentency. Most noticeably, one very smart, meticulous, manipulative and observant character does a series of small, unobservant careless things in order for the scriptwriters to move the story in another direction, not because it is believable that that character would behave in such a dumb way.

The final surprise twist at the end requires one character to have planned ahead, and saved something for a highly unlikely contingency which there is no believable way the character could have seen coming at the time or the times it would have been necessary to secure this something. There is however no other believable reason for this character to have deliberatelty saved this something and/or secreted it away where no one else, including the police, would have found it before the character needed it.

When people criticize science fiction/space movies about the illogical science in it, the critics are dismissed as being too nitpicky and not suspending disbelief. Maybe you just needed to suspend your disbelief about how intelligent people behave and enjoy the movie?

Note: I am on the side of thinking that things in movies, be they people or laws of nature, should make sense and follow logically. A movie-maker has complete control over what is presented, so when things are presented unclearly, or contrary to what a rational person would expect, I consider this to be a deliberate attack on the sensibility of the movie-goer, whether it is done purposefully or through negligence/ignorance.

 

[prideandfall]

When people criticize science fiction/space movies about the illogical science in it, the critics are dismissed as being too nitpicky and not suspending disbelief.

true, though by the same token people who are bagging on a movie for illogical science are often doing so because they either can't or are too lazy to think about and discuss the problems with the film they didn't like, so pick one thing to freak out about.

Maybe you just needed to suspend your disbelief about how intelligent people behave and enjoy the movie?

i am quite adept at doing this, i don't share most of jab's complaints about the movie, and yet i also hated it and think it was a terrible film for other reasons entirely - so, it wasn't simply that.

 

[jab]

Just got back from watching Gone Girl, which I mostly enjoyed, the way one enjoys a well acted, well shot, highly improbable and lurid melodrama.
I can't believe it is being touted as Oscar bait.

The story requires characters to be smart sometimes and stupid other times, more to move the story along than for reasons of character development and consistentency. Most noticeably, one very smart, meticulous, manipulative and observant character does a series of small, unobservant careless things in order for the scriptwriters to move the story in another direction, not because it is believable that that character would behave in such a dumb way.

The final surprise twist at the end requires one character to have planned ahead, and saved something for a highly unlikely contingency which there is no believable way the character could have seen coming at the time or the times it would have been necessary to secure this something. There is however no other believable reason for this character to have deliberatelty saved this something and/or secreted it away where no one else, including the police, would have found it before the character needed it.

When people criticize science fiction/space movies about the illogical science in it, the critics are dismissed as being too nitpicky and not suspending disbelief. Maybe you just needed to suspend your disbelief about how intelligent people behave and enjoy the movie?

Note: I am on the side of thinking that things in movies, be they people or laws of nature, should make sense and follow logically. A movie-maker has complete control over what is presented, so when things are presented unclearly, or contrary to what a rational person would expect, I consider this to be a deliberate attack on the sensibility of the movie-goer, whether it is done purposefully or through negligence/ignorance.

I can't unreservedly enjoy dumb movies that present themselves as being intelligent. I can't unreservedly enjoy movies or tv shows where the scriptwriters are dumber than the characters they are trying to write. I really don't like deus ex machina endings in movies that don't see themselves are fantasy but as searing serious depictions of how married couples live now . You'd think from the hype that this was a movie made by Ingmar Bergman at his height. However, the movie is really the depiction of the more exceptional case of a marriage to a sociopath. And it's not a good enough depiction to be insightful even about that: This psychopathic person's intelligence seems to be very variable depending not on the character's complexity but on the needs of the plot, and the psychopathic person is blessed with a preternatural prescience in keeping, hiding and preserving intact for a long time something which, in order to be preserved, must be kept in a very constrained and not easily maintained set of environmental perameters; I.E. the filmmakers were pulling the requisite last-minute jizz from their melodramatic asses.
All in all The Bad Seed from the 1950s was a better portrayal of a family burdened with a psychopath/ sociopath.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Having seen good books turned into bad movies, I wonder how good the book might be.