Wednesday, December 31, 2008

"The Spirit" Gets Slammed

As you can gather from this review, "The Spirit" isn't holding up to inspection very well:
It's one of those painfully, jaw-droppingly, call-your-lawyer bad movie experiences -- the sort of flick where pretty much every scene is a complete misfire, and not in that so-bad-it's-funny way. The timing's all off. The actors look confused and embarrassed. And if you care at all about the source material, the movie feels like punishment, or the final act of revenge in some long-simmering Miller/Eisner feud you never knew existed.
Ouch.

So, this movie is off the "must see" list. So are they going to rerelease "The Dark Knight" to theaters, or not? I'll be waiting. (I don't know about you, but the Christmas movie releases haven't inspired me. The only one I am remotely interested in is "Gran Turino.")

As for The Spirit, well, rats. I bought a couple of the "Best of The Spirit" collections that DC brought out this past year, and after reading them I found I did care for the source material. For example, in the movie posters, it announces "Samuel L. Jackson is... THE OCTOPUS." The Octopus being the #1 arch-criminal mastermind in the Spirit's sphere. But in the comic, the Octopus is always hidden - all you ever see are his gloved hands. So the movie butchered one of the signature villains of the comic, before you ever see the movie. And apparently it goes downhill from there.

What could have been...