Me vs. Cynical money-spinning exercise in audience manipulation.

Rating: 1/10 (22 October 2010)

The one star rating isn't something to be dispensed lightly; there are very few films that have so little in the way of entertainment value that they deserve such a critical pasting. Most flicks I've seen that fit comfortably into the category of 'awful' have some redeeming feature, even if it's the dreaded 'unintentional comedy' factor. That being said, when the movie in question is already being marketed as a comedy, a person can really find themselves reaching. So it is with SPVTW, a movie that manages to not only be thoroughly unentertaining and an ordeal to sit through, but one that doesn't even have the decency to let you laugh at it. This is that rare beast: a film that actually makes the rational audience member seethe and froth with rage at how shallow and calculating it is, how utterly empty and devoid of any soul or any artistic sensibility.
Of the actual plot, there isn't much to say. Blah, blah, urban ennui, blah, blah, cardboard existential angst, blah, blah, the theme tune from Legend Of Zelda? Blah. Michael Cera once again sleepwalks through a part he seems to be playing via satellite link-up. His philosophy, behaviour, fashion sense and interests are all carefully delineated in order to make him the ultimate hipster composite, an icon for trend-whores everywhere. Will he get the girl of his dreams, whose quirks are equally well chosen to make her his ideal match? Will his tedious garage band make it big? Will this movie try and challenge its audience in any way? Seems to me the mark of a good film is to start from more or less a neutral position, then to actively make you enjoy it via good writing, acting and direction. This is the emo equivalent of one of those dreadful Christian Bible films, where quality is pretty much irrelevant since the faithful will always defend it on the grounds that it's Jesus-friendly. Here the target audience will be so enthralled to see it's own interests acknowledged in 35mm that normal standards won't apply.
Hollywood has always made its money by tailoring genre films to demographic expectations - so it really shouldn't be any surprise that a movie so resolutely targeted at 20-something hipster/slacker/poseurs should be as blandly plastic and artificial as any Disney puke-athon. But for those of us who quite like things like old 8-bit video games and anime, it's hugely irritating to find them hijacked and press-ganged into service as garnish for some smarmy indie manifesto. And it's even more annoying that someone like Edgar Wright, who up to now I rather respected for his subversive take on sitcoms (Spaced), Zombie horror (Shaun of the Dead) and crass action flicks (Hot Fuzz), is basically pandering to a ready made market with something as utterly conventional as this. Because ultimately, though it might seem superficially to be a fresh and original product, this movie is total formulaic sludge, full of low-budget indie tropes, jacked up on a hundred million dollar budget.
Had it been made by a genuine independent company, with a cast of unknowns and utilising the whole retro gaming aesthetic more authentically, it might actually have been a lot better. Because it is kind of cute and fun to see some old Super Mario graphics crop up in-film, and sometimes the use of sound FX is clever enough to justify the exercise. But then it would probably have won a bunch of awards at Sundance and been remade as precisely the film we have now. So Edgar Wright has thoughtfully cut out the middleman. Indie cinema nowadays is generic enough in it's attempt to be the 'anti-Hollywood', but once mainstream studios have finished co-opting its clichés and CGI-ing the crap out of it, this is the result.
Terrible, terrible film.