I can't decide if it was written by a horny 12-year-old boy or a brilliant storyteller.

Rating: 10/10 (21 January 2009)

People always say it's impossible not to have an overt opinion on this film100% negative or 100% positivedue to the supposed graphic content. I'm sorry to break the norm, but I really fail to see it as horrid, disgusting cinema, and I also fail to see it as a brilliant masterpiece. In some ways, I just find A Clockwork Orange an average movie that was very well directed.
The first hour or so seems to have been written by a teenage boy just starting to go through puberty. I fail to see anything mature whatsoever in parading infinite numbers of topless women across screen. It just seems a whole lot like a middle-aged manKubrick and/or Burgessfantasizing about all the sex he wished he could have. The prevalent penis imagery is borderline self-parody. It's something you see in American Pie and laugh at, not something you watch in "fine cinema" and give deep thought to. The entire first hour of A Clockwork Orange honestly had me laughing out loud because I can't understand how this could be taken as mature whatsoever.
This is why I failed to find anything about A Clockwork Orange even mildly perverse or upsetting. The rape scenes are all generic rape scenes that seem to happen in EVERY last 70s movie, and not one of them went into graphic detail. A Clockwork Orange didn't do anything "perverse" that hundreds of other movies hadn't done before it. If anything, I found the supposed sexual perversity to be very mild, even for its time. As I said, parading nude women around and having a prevalent penis aesthetic is just downright humorous when you think about it, not gruesome. It doesn't rub your face in the dirt of humanity, it's worthy of a grin.
The violent content is even less perverse. I don't even remember any of the hyped-up violent content whatsoever. A few old men get hit with a clubthat's literally it. There is no more blood than Star Wars (rated PG), and when there is blood it looks so unrealistic it was laughable, not disturbing. There is NOTHING even mildly violent in A Clockwork Orange at all. How did this get falsely labeled as one of the most violent films of all time? Honestly, how? If it had been made today, it would easily get a PG or PG-13 without any protest. Compared to any and every R-rated movie I've seen this year, A Clockwork Orange looks downright family friendly. If you have not seen A Clockwork Orange, take my word: this is not even a mildly violent film. At all.
The directing is godlike. I see no need to elaborate further, because people have done so in every single review on here. I will say, however, that, as well-done as the surrealist imagery is, it sometimes gets silly quick. More than once during the film I felt like I was watching Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory gone terribly wrong, and with less creativity. While it's fun to look at, there is nothing original about the imagery by any means. I found a lot of it bland and predictable.
But despite all that, the one major flaw I have with A Clockwork Orange is the pathetic liner storyline. A Clockwork Orange only gets boring a few times because Kubrick's directing and use of music is so great, but that can't make up for the hollow story. Alex himself is basically a one-dimensional idea that gets thrown around into a predicable formula according to the idealistic plot. I'm not saying I disagree with Burgess's ideology in any wayI don'tbut that doesn't make the story any less hollow and unimaginative. It always annoys me like none other when an author can think of some of the most original details for a story (like the milk bar and the slang), but the story itself is painfully unoriginal. It's the same problem most surrealist fiction suffers from, and it's still a problem here.
So, do I have anything positive to say whatsoever? Not really, except that A Clockwork Orange is still enjoyable purely at the entertainment level. Though I just trashed most every aspect of it, I did have a lot of fun. It's certainly nothing special, but it's not bad either. If you don't take it as a ultra-serious, die-hard-classic, then you may have as much fun watching it as you had watching your favorite Disney movie as a kid. Sweet nostalgia.
4/10