On Sunday Jami and I went to see
PAN'S LABYRINTH at the
Arclight. My only opinion of Guillermo
del Toro up until this point was "
eh". I hated the BLADE movies (I think he only did the second one) and thought
HELLBOY was a C-, but not terrible. It's the absolute bottom mark of the "doesn't suck" on the Charles Moore Scale of Quality.
LABYRINTH was excellent. I enjoyed it; it was entertaining, it looked great and you cry at the end. I don't know how much the filmmakers were inspired by HEAVENLY CREATURES, but the influence is undeniable. It's not just the fully-involved fantasy world...it's a lot more. I'll let those of you who've seen both make up
their own minds...and let Big call me a smarty-pants or whatever for even making the comparison.
So the same day that I watch this really well-made and sensitive movie, I see something with a polar opposite sensibility.
I was writing Sunday night and the TV was on for background noise. The new episode of "24" came on. I've never seen a single episode of 24, but I didn't want something on that would actually draw my attention away from writing, so it was perfect.
Three minutes into the show I was away from my computer, standing in front of the television giggling like a schoolgirl. The first 10 minutes of "24" was the most shamefully unabashed, head-
explodingly hilarious political commentary/criticism I've ever seen. And I remember "Meet the Millers".
I was over it in about 5 or 6 minutes and went back to writing. I still giggled every now and then for the next hour. Basically, every word uttered in the White House was pure comedy gold.
The sensibility thing comes in here; While PAN'S is partially about
Fascists and Communists fighting for control in Spain in 1944, the movie is not terribly concerned with making any obtuse or allegorical political points...even thought the movie is
about clashing ideas, at least a little bit. It concerns itself with the silly notion of the story coming first. If crazy goes on sale, these guys wouldn't even have to show up.
In "24", a show ostensibly about a
super spy/agent of some sort doing cool spy crap and saving the US, the creators decided to spend the
opening five minutes basically calling the Bush Administration stupid. I'm not defending a lot of the choices made by Bush in the past couple years, but is the first few minutes of your lagging hit show the
best place for that soapbox?
What about trying to make the viewer give half a shit?
I understand that this is the first season of "24" that uses Islamic terrorists as the bad guys instead of
neo-Nazis, Basque Nationalists, the gingerbread man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon as the evil masterminds that want to blow up the west. Don't get me wrong, God knows the gingerbread man has killed thousands, but I think the fanatic Muslims get all the press just because they talk funny.
So maybe "24" was trying to cover
their ass. They were starting out with "OK, we suck. We TOTALLY deserve the attack on the
Embassy in Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole, the 93 attack on the World Trade Center, 911, and all the attacks on the west dating back to 1783. BUT you guys do keep trying to blow us up, so we're going to show you...
is that OK?"
The writers and producers of 24 are monumental cowards. They're either deluded beyond all repair or intellectually dishonest to a fault.
If a super spy/secret agent is out there saving the world right now, we know what part of the world he's in and which bad guys he's killing.
The next season, I'm sure they'll reveal that the Islamists were really doing all this because they can't offord the cancer medication for thier sick mother.
