Too Fuzzy

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2007)

I'm recommending that you give this a pass unless you are studying narrative introspection.
"Shaun of the Dead" was quirky enough that it carried a presumption of cleverness in the small, so minor twists seemed funny and we were therefore amused. This doesn't have that character, at least not in the film itself  merely the idea. I wasn't amused, however lots of people seem to have been.
What is worth remarking on is this business of embedded introspection, a sort of a movie about movie-watching.
Of course all movies are about other movies in the sense that they rely on the past cinematic vocabulary for effect. And this type of movie, which spoofs others depends directly on us recalling the movies they quote to make fun of. We inherit narrative.
But there are further, deeper tricks that have become common now and this is prime example. The setup is that a supercop, the kind that only exists in movies, is sent to a small town. Some trouble is expended to tell us that the town represents reality, being closer to the audience than the world of the supercop.
The running joke is that he is teamed with a dolt who is obsessed by supercop movies. They watch some of these as well as talk about them (too much I think), and at the end, they enter that world of the supercop buddy movie. The trick is that we introspectively enjoy the original form (action, editing) and the layer above which is poking fun at them.
Okay, so far so good. Guess who the bad guys are? Well, we are introduced to the townspeople as a bunch of watchers. And an elite group in the town who more literally ARE watchers. they have the town covered with cameras and watch from a command center. As the movie segues into the supercop-world sequences at the end, the watchers engage in a battle to determine just what sort of a movie it needs to be. They are fighting for a sort of Frank Capra small town Stepford perfection.
Its "Blue Velvet," which was a battle of two movies for dummies. "Blue Velvet" in turn was a cinematic battle based on the battle for narrative control in "2001" and Kubrick's "Lolita." (Which in run was perfected by Nabokov.)
So, its worth watching if you are a lucid viewer.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.