Waste of a soul
Swift shot: I don’t care. It was boring, full of cliches and hack writing. Jeff Bridges can act, and clearly taking on a terrible script and making it “shine” is what passes for Academy gold these days. Based on that caveat alone, Bridges should get the Oscar, but to quote Metallica, “So Fucking What?” Yes, Metallica is more my speed, but I can appreciate a good film regardless of genre. Crazy Heart is one of those movies that everyone is telling you that you are supposed to like, so, if you don’t what the hell is your problem?
It’s about a loser, a sell-out, a drunk and an overall boring washed up country music singer (and I use that term loosely). It starts off with little promise and only gets worse from there. Tepid, like the piss he transports with him in his Silverado, or was it a Suburban, yea, who cares? Nothing remotely interesting happens in this film! And, if you think it does, god-damned, you are an incredibly boring person, go live a little.
No one is really ever challenged in any significant (believable) way, and when there are challenges, all the characters conveniently solve them within one montage – if only life were so damned simple. Hey, I have fucked up my whole life, guess I just need to fish with Robert Duvall and join the happy tree friends for an AA meeting and voila, no more problems – AWESOME!
This character has the soul of a sociopath sans the whimsy and cutting up of coeds. Yes, again, I wanted a lot more out of this script. It was like being God and randomly flipping through your rollodex to check on one of your creations, and instead of having mercy on him and dropping a stage-light on his head, you keep him alive for some sick amusement – which even you don’t understand. In fact, it was very much like watching bad Mexican TV in a dilapidated hotel room, so damned uninteresting it becomes like a laxative for your mind. So, you are God, and just sitting there watching this loser’s life and thinking, man I should turn this off, but then I would have to get up and readjust my nads.
I get this a lot, but, Rick, you didn’t tell me what the movie was about . . . so, go read a synopsis! Fine, it was about a washed up has been, who sells out his integrity and is so selfish he can’t do one thing without regard to his immediate gratification. He meets a young philly who happens to be smitten with him for some reason that I will never understand. He has some cliche lines about being on the road, living the life of a traveler, regrets not seeing his son for twenty-four years (sound familiar, The Wrestler) returns home, fishes, and does the one thing his love-interest (Maggie Gyllenhaal) asks him not to do.
Let’s talk about “demographic” here, shall we? My detractors will say, “well, that just wasn’t Rick Swift’s scene daddy-o” (because that is how I imagine my detractors talk, like hepcats). Bullshit, I find myself watching all manner of film in my life, and appreciating a vast variety of the cornucopia of the industry. In Norway I taught myself how to leser Norsk (read Norwegian) by watching Swedish movies with Norwegian subtitles, after several hours of Major Dad marathons with Norwegian subtitles, whilst hearing English. I love Swedish films, Danish films, German, French, you name it, I like films about angst, drama, passion, deceit, conflict, you know INTERESTING themes.
But, dear reader, Crazy Heart was vapidly exhausting and mind-numbing rubbish, void of anything worthwhile, except that Bridges really does (dry heave) BECOME Bad Blake – and . . . who cares?
I am starting to sound like H-Man when he rips into a Bin Bilger here, but, my level of detestation for this film knows no bounds. See, that was kind of a cliche, you could make a whiskey shot drinking game out of every cliche in Crazy Heart – in fact, DO IT, maybe something REMOTELY interesting will happen to you during the game.! You know that Navy commercial, “If someone wrote a story about your life . . . would anybody read it?” Life is short, please don’t waste 112 minutes watching this crap.
thanks !! very helpful post!
Maggie Gyllenhaal was also terribly cast. And I love how Bad Blake is supposed to hate the singer played by Colin Farrell, and then when we meet Farrell's character, he's really nice, and there's absolutely no payoff for Blake's feelings toward him. The major conflict in the film is when he loses Gyellenhaal's boy, during an episode in which he is not in the least bit to blame. Nevertheless, this is supposed to serve as some kind of condemnation of the character. Right on — this is not a good movie.
I attacked it so much without spoiling stuff, but in my comments, I let the spoilers fly. Yea, I thought at the end it would have been MUCH better if he had died, when Farrel is all choked up, "my mentor and friend wrote this song, I hope you like it" I was thinking, oh, ok, he died, maybe this movie doesn't suck – but then they showed him talking to the incredibly horribly cast MG. I think Susan Sarandon is more his speed, not the young and spirited Gyllenhaal. Right off the bat I was thinking, this is crap, why is she falling for him so quickly? His "charm" – then all the potential for real drama was snuffed out, her kid is found, he doesn't die, his AA meeting was all of two minutes long then flash forward 16 months later and he is hunky dory. Also, they NEVER explained WHY he didn't like Farrell, which irked me to no end. The movie was a bad cliche, only Ishtar could make me more irked . . .
Great, refreshing review! So nice to read something from someone who tells it like it is. I haven't seen Crazy Heart…and now I won't, unless it is, as Rick suggests, to parley into a drinking game.
As always, what makes a movie is the screenplay…and, as always, Hollywood holds any writing talent on the outside of their hallowed walls, never letting in new, fresh, TALENT.
Not to mention that I laughed more than 3 times, giving this review a 5 stars on the Q-meter.
Keep up the good work, daddy-o…even your non-detractors need ya.