Cinematic challenge conclusions

Finally had a chance to sift through my own thoughts and write some little notelets about the OCD-induced Filmfest I went through last week:

Here’s my first thought – The World Of Entertainment Is Running Out Of Original Ideas Or Is Scared To Try New Things. Why do I say this? Because I went to our local multiplex on Friday night and EVERY FILM ON AT THE CINEMA WAS A SEQUEL!!!

Namely - Incredibles 2, MI:Fallout, Hotel Transylvania 3, Mamma Mia 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp.

I’m sure they are all worthy of a watch, but are we approaching a point where each and every new release will have a title that ends with a number?

My second conclusion: People look at you weirdly if you go to watch a film on your own…. Especially on a Friday night.  The ticket sellers look at you as if you might be a rapist. The concessions staff look at you as if you might be about to suck their eyes out of their head with a vacuum pump, and no-one (but no-one) wants to sit next to you in the screening.

And finally I would like to try and answer a question that has been bothering me ever since Philippa dragged me to watch a showing of a film I wasn’t interested in. That question is “Why has ‘The Greatest Showman’ been SO successful?” It’s the second musical film I’ve had to watch in the last month and it made me cringe and want to choke on my own nipple hairs. Yet other people were on their feet, weeping tears of joy, and unashamedly shouting about how many times they’d spent their hard-earned cash to watch the singalong tripefest on screen. WHY????

I think the answer is in the (admittedly admirable) message at the heart of the film – whoever you are, whatever you look like, you are a worthwhile person and you deserve to be as happy as you can be. But it’s layered on SO thick it’s being weighed down by its own optimism. Instead of taking the opportunity of being an inspiring, feelgood movie it drowns itself in oversentimentality and UNBELIEVABLE plotting.

Me being me, I found it very hard not to explode with cynicism and the need to spread my intellectually-aloof realisations. There were lots of young girls dancing around happily and I wanted to stand up and shout “THIS FILM IS GIVING YOU FALSE HOPE!! YOUR LIFE WILL BE MOSTLY PAINFUL AND EVERYONE WILL MOCK YOUR DIFFERENCES NOT APPLAUD THEM!!” But I didn’t. I sat and watched, and felt my soul being crushed into a tiny speck of nothingness that it will probably never evolve from.

The film made me want to vomit until I was dry-retching nothing but air.

It should have been called “The Greatest Shitpile”

RC 22-8-18