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The Case For The Prosecution:
First the prosecution must admit to a lack of knowledge. I have never read a single Thomas Pynchon book. I, therefore, cannot tell if my problem with the film is an inherited vice inherent from the book. I have a suspicion it might be, because my Dad had a collection of Pynchon and he had a terrible fondness for post-modern.
Whatever the reason, the best way I can describe the film is that it feels like Garth Marenghi decided to branch out into 60s-set neo-noir, and then they did it as a proper film with some very good actors wasting their time on this nonsense.
The dialogue was god-awful. We're talking proper 'no human in the history of the world has ever spoken like this' awful. I think that might have been a stylistic thing but it doesn't quite work, for any of the characters. Like they either needed to tone it down slight or ramp it up to maximum, and just go full Lebowski.
A lot of my issues could probably be summed up by that last bit. Because it wasn't just the dialogue, it was the action as well. It seemed like it couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be.
The scene itself: - spoilers underneath
Is not available on Youtube.
Basically, the plot has clarified itself as much as it ever does, and it becomes clear that Bigfoot, the detective, has been following our hero, Doc Sportello, and getting him out of a variety of scrapes because he's been using Sportello as a sort of canary down the mine to find out who killed his partner, a case he has thoroughly banned from investigating (because the villains and the people in power are deeply interlinked).
After this revelation, and the explanation of who did what to who and why, Doc accidentally gets Bigfoot's revenge for him. Bigfoot double-crosses him, sort of, and Sportello gets his way out of that, just, so Sportello rings him up to give him a piece of his mind.
That phone call is the scene I'm going to talk about.
Why the scene is so good:
It's this tiny cameo of a much better movie.
Josh Brolin does that thing he is so good at, where he conveys a lot of information about a character without changing expression. Bigfoot is a frustrated man, hen-pecked, forced into a life he doesn't particularly want, has frustrated dreams of stardom and dearly loved his deceased partner (the film thinks its being clever, funny and subtle in its attempts at making it clear that he's a closet case, but as with everything else in the film, it is none of the three).
I can tell you more about him and *who* he is than any other character in the film, because everyone else is a cartoonish cipher, part of why the film is so frustrating, and Brolin is doing all the heavy lifting, because goodness knows, the script gives no one any help.
First the prosecution must admit to a lack of knowledge. I have never read a single Thomas Pynchon book. I, therefore, cannot tell if my problem with the film is an inherited vice inherent from the book. I have a suspicion it might be, because my Dad had a collection of Pynchon and he had a terrible fondness for post-modern.
Whatever the reason, the best way I can describe the film is that it feels like Garth Marenghi decided to branch out into 60s-set neo-noir, and then they did it as a proper film with some very good actors wasting their time on this nonsense.
The dialogue was god-awful. We're talking proper 'no human in the history of the world has ever spoken like this' awful. I think that might have been a stylistic thing but it doesn't quite work, for any of the characters. Like they either needed to tone it down slight or ramp it up to maximum, and just go full Lebowski.
A lot of my issues could probably be summed up by that last bit. Because it wasn't just the dialogue, it was the action as well. It seemed like it couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be.
The scene itself: - spoilers underneath
Is not available on Youtube.
Basically, the plot has clarified itself as much as it ever does, and it becomes clear that Bigfoot, the detective, has been following our hero, Doc Sportello, and getting him out of a variety of scrapes because he's been using Sportello as a sort of canary down the mine to find out who killed his partner, a case he has thoroughly banned from investigating (because the villains and the people in power are deeply interlinked).
After this revelation, and the explanation of who did what to who and why, Doc accidentally gets Bigfoot's revenge for him. Bigfoot double-crosses him, sort of, and Sportello gets his way out of that, just, so Sportello rings him up to give him a piece of his mind.
That phone call is the scene I'm going to talk about.
Why the scene is so good:
It's this tiny cameo of a much better movie.
Josh Brolin does that thing he is so good at, where he conveys a lot of information about a character without changing expression. Bigfoot is a frustrated man, hen-pecked, forced into a life he doesn't particularly want, has frustrated dreams of stardom and dearly loved his deceased partner (the film thinks its being clever, funny and subtle in its attempts at making it clear that he's a closet case, but as with everything else in the film, it is none of the three).
I can tell you more about him and *who* he is than any other character in the film, because everyone else is a cartoonish cipher, part of why the film is so frustrating, and Brolin is doing all the heavy lifting, because goodness knows, the script gives no one any help.
