Letterboxd
A bottom quartile script paired to incredible visuals.
As a piece of art, this film is incredible. The sheer weight of attention to detail is staggering. There are many scenes where (in theater) I genuinely wished to be able to pause the scene just so I could look at the pieces, characters, and framing. Some of the camera motion is absurdly deft.
You also need to internalize that this is not just great art but genuinely represents a level of human perseverance that is order's of magnitude greater than most films get. It represents a vision that survives much longer than the attention of most other studios.
It makes you want to support it so badly... And I do, but mostly because I want to support anyone who is trying to do something genuinely different, who is trying to take the less safe path. I support it independently of whether I personally enjoyed it, because I want to see more of this type of risk taking in film.
But the script is bad. The plot is kind of just a bunch of cliches pasted together. The humor always felt off; I think I only laughed at sight gags and never at spoken words. The characters are unremarkable. The dialog is probably the worst attribute, with some lines that I thought must be translations errors (I assumed the source material might have been in a different language).
Most of the above issues were just my own issues with the film. Despite this, I might have still given it 4 stars were it not for the simple matter of Prue's parents.
I was deeply, deeply bothered by the parents. I just genuinely hated the parents. I indirectly hated the film for eliding over just how terrible the parents really were. I spent the second half of the film trying to understand the film's whitewashing of the parents. I kept assuming some sort of reckoning with the parents at the end of the film, but instead we had reconciliation? I was pretty angry by the time the credits rolled. It was such a cheap, don't-trust-your-audience-at-all ending that I felt almost insulted.
To spell it out: sacrificing one child to have another child is monstrous. Doing awful things is not justified by "wanting a baby". I genuinely wonder if this is going to be one of those movies like "Revenge of the Nerds" that lives in infamy due to the completely insane way that it sidesteps morally repulsive behavior? Were they trying to go for a sort of symmetry between Alexandra and Prue's parents, both of whom were willing to sacrifice one child in order to have another? We seem to be on board that Alexandra was in the wrong, but the parents basically did the exact same thing and we have maybe a few minutes of distaste for their actions (quickly forgiven)?
It really bothered me that the parent's didn't even ask, "What happens to the second child?" The fact that you don't ask implies to me that you don't want to even hear what it is, because you know it is bad and that makes it more real, which makes it harder to justify your own wants.
There was some tiny bullshit cop-out where they said "we just won't have a second child". To which:
- You are talking to a literal witch, who told you explicitly that the first child is yours and the second is hers. And you somehow hear that you have a choice in having a second child? WHAAAT?
- Even If you believe that you can choose not to have a second child, then why didn't you ask what that child's fate would be? It could only strengthen your resolve to not have it if it is a terrible fate. The fact that you don't ask makes me think you knew it was bad and just didn't want to know (which also implies you knew you would actually have a second child).
- I guess adoption, foster care, surrogacy, more "Western Medicine" just aren't palatable to you? No, you are going to literally sacrifice another human being (of your own loins) in order to keep 1 of 2 of them. I.. I mean I just don't get it.
- Ok, how did you NOT think you could get pregnant when you literally had a witch make you pregnant the first time? How is that even mentally possible? You literally did not think it was possible? Like, you just got magicked, and you think pregnancy is impossible?
- When you are pregnant the second time, there is an obvious solution to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy. I would say "having the child stolen by an evil witch" is a extenuating circumstance even in pro-life states.
I'm sorry. I know I am getting worked up about this. But literally, the very best possible reading is that these are willfully ignorant people who are incapable of handling actual reality and perhaps mentally incapable of understanding their own actions. That is the best case. The worst case is that they are self-serving psychopaths who are willing to sacrifice their own children to reach their wants.
I just can't stop thinking about her parents.