I’m about an hour into it and wondering if it’s worth finishing? Disappointed so far.
Absolute shite, I abandoned ship halfway through.
I didn’t particularly care for it. A little mystified as to why it’s getting so much critical and awards acclaim, other than that it’s got a bunch of high profile names attached to it.
I haven’t done a review in a little while, mostly because there just hasn’t been much to get me interested in going to the theaters lately. That said, some stuff is coming out on streaming, so I thought I’d offer a review of one of the critical darlings of this award season.
Bob is a retired activist and full-time buffoon, who left the excitement and danger of his revolutionary days long behind him to raise his daughter Willa. We find Bob and Willa in current day, lives suddenly thrown into turmoil as they discover they’re being hunted by Col. Lockjaw (yes, that’s the real character name), a military figure with deep ties to white nationalist groups and mysterious hidden connections to Bob’s past, and Willa’s long lost mother Perfidia (yes, also the actual name). Through twists and turns Bob tries to save Willa from Lockjaw, as the two discover secrets about Perfidia, and Willa decides for herself whether she’ll follow in her parents’ footsteps as an activist.
One Battle After Another has some of the big names that you expect to see during awards season. Bob is played by DiCaprio, Lockjaw by Sean Penn, and Bob’s friend and karate sensei is player by Benicio Del Toro. There are some other recognizable faces including Tony Goldwyn and Regina Hall. The performances are fine. The basic story is also fine, and boils down to father racing to save his daughter from the menacing Colonel who is determined to capture her for his own evil purposes based on a connection he has with her parents from nearly two decades earlier. The problem is that the production and performances are schizophrenically overdone. It’s as if the director (Paul Thomas Anderson) couldn’t decide if this was supposed to be a farce or a serious thriller. Some of the situations, reactions, dialogue, and even character names are so “on the nose” that it’s distracting. One of the character’s names is actually Junglepussy. DiCaprio puts in a slapsticky frenetic performance that sometimes tries to inject some sentimentality, but just didn’t work for me. Likewise, Penn as Col Lockjaw is a caricature. There’s some obvious messaging about our current socio-political discourse, and again, it just fell flat for me. The pacing is pretty high throughout, and the visuals are good quality cinematic work. I’m sure Anderson is a capable director, but this vision was just too stylized and inconsistent for me. The absurdity works in a film like Boogie Nights where the entire premise is a little ridiculous to begin with, but when you try to apply a similar tone to a political thriller, it’s a little more difficult to pull off.
Overall, I’m sure that if you like Anderson’s style, you’ll like this movie. I didn’t hate it, but it just didn’t do much for me and the stylization and clownish nature of something that would otherwise be dealing with some serious topics seemed more a distraction than a positive artistic feature.
One Battle After Another is Rated R for language, drug use, violence, and sex. It’s not a family movie.
I really liked it but I agree with all your criticisms. It was almost cartoonish at times.
This was my issue with Anora. I couldn’t figure out what genre it was trying to be, so nothing really lands like it should.
I did. “Schizophrenically overdone” is spot on. Stopped watching about an hour in just as Benicia del Toro’s character was finally introduced.
It’s winning a lot of awards at the Golden Globes tonight. I guess it’s based off the Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland”.
I interpreted it as satirical commentary in many ways. I have not read Vineland from Thomas Pynchon which is what it was adapted from.
I’ve seen every PTA movie. To me, OBAA reused parts of Joaquin’s stoner detective from inherent Vice, and some for the chaos from Philip Seymour Hoffman in Punch Drunk Love.
I’m reading “Vineland” right now and the movie is nowhere near as crazy as that book.
Well Pynchon wrote Inherent Vice also…
It won the Golden Globes in the category of best film, comedy/musical. It was not in the best film, drama category. That was won by Hamnet.
I quite enjoyed it. It was not as clever as they clearly thought it was, but it’s by far and away not the worst two hours I’ve ever spent watching a movie and the ending really made me laugh.
That’s funny, exact moment we threw in the towel too.
Same problem I had with it. I thought the last scene was great but the rest of the movie leading up to it was just not good enough and seemed like a light hearted farce.
I guess I missed the funny bits in the first hour of the movie. I literally need someone to explain to me what was supposed to be funny about it.
It won in other awards shows for best movie , etc…. and that is only because the selection of films last year was miniscule. It should have won nothing….
I was excited when this was filming in san diego and then I found out it had top actors. Then I saw the movie. First 45minutes is vile trash. After that it matured a bit with the story line. But it was just too long of a movie to justify watching. I am disappointed less than 10% of the actual filming was in my area
Adding this clip from Judd Apatow giving out the award for best director. It’s funny. He calls back to being snubbed for The Martian, which is also not a comedy, from director, Ridley Scott, director of scifi such as Alien…
I also connect The Bear winning comedy awards at the golden globes…which, if chaos and anxiety is funny, sure, it wins.
It’s an amazing book. I may need to reread it now 25 years on.
The reason the bear is in the comedy category is it because it’s 30 minutes. Historically the Emmys put anything 30 minutes and under into comedy and anything over that into drama. They may need to rethink that going forward, but that’s the way the categories are set up now. It has nothing to do if it’s fun or not.