It's Worth a Look for the Dog

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2012)

What I liked about this movie was the dog's performance as well as the performances from the two main leads. The Black and white use was perfect, the sound and music score was dead on, and it was a decent little story. Now, to what I didn't like about this film.
1. The film is mediocre at best for a silent film. There have been much better silent films, I know my silent films very well, this film is a mediocre one.
2. A huge historical inaccuracy is the studio letting Valentin go, the studio firing him. No studio in their right mind would let their cash cow star go just like that. It just wouldn't happen 'Oh you make us tons of money, buh-bye now. We're getting rid of all of our big stars because people want to see unknowns' Not!! The studio would try to make a transition with him(Valentin) into talking films and if not that studio, another one would have tried. Valentin was basically playing a Douglas FairbanksSr. here. That was very inaccurate and quite stupid on the writers part for The Artist. A simple solution to making this part believable is just have Valentin simply refuse to do talking films as the studio keeps begging him to do them, he keeps refusing until the very end. That would have tied in much better to the ending and it wouldn't have been inaccurate either. And so what if Valentin had an accent. Lots of actors transitioned over from Silents to Talkies with accents such as Charlie Chaplin, Maurice Chevalier(who was french by the way), Greta Garbo, just to name a few. 'In with the new, out with the old story' was so ridiculous, but people in this modern day would believe it because they no nothing about silent films, and unfortunately if they actually had seen some much better silent films, they would realize this film isn't really all that great.
3. In Silent films, the actors over do it with everything, expressions, mannerisms, and for the most part this movie hits that on target, but James Cromwell's performance and part of John Goodman's performance can't really ever decide which movie they are in, which is 'are we acting in a silent film or a modern talking film, I just don't know'. The Artist can't seem to decide what it's identity is. Although I really did like both Cromwell and Goodman in this movie, it's just their choices are off and wrong for what The Artist is going for.
4. The young man at the door says 'My dad liked you'. It's been 3 years and Valentin is a Douglas Fairbanks type. This young man would still adore Valentin, not know who he is. It's only been 3 years, not 30.(I also get that it's a metaphor that everyone in Hollywood forgets you quick. But when you're playing a Fairbanks type Idol, they don't forget you that quick, and it's an insulting scene, making this movie more dumb and inaccurate by every minute. That's like Brad Pitt disappearing for 3 years and then some 21 year old girl seeing Pitt 3 years later saying "Oh my Grandfather liked you").
In Conclusion, I'm not usually a person who cares about the accuracy as I always see each movie as a metaphor as most are anyway, and most films have countless metaphors within the story, put there on purpose and sometimes just accidentally.
The problem I have with The Artist is it's paying homage to Silent Films and that era, the last silent film was made over 75 years ago, and when a movie is paying homage to such a significant era, an era which is the backbone of films and movie making, it better get the facts straight. The Artist is a movie that clearly wants and intended to get the facts straight but didn't get the facts straight, not one bit, and it played off the ignorance of it's audience and insulting the intelligence of die hard film buffs like myself as well as probably many film historians out there. You have to get everything right with a movie like this.
The politics and the ignorance is what won this movie it's academy award for best picture. I'd like to believe the academy was paying tribute, to the likes of Chaplin, Keaton, D.W. Griffith, Garbo, Fairbanks, for all the awards they never won and also for Singin' in the Rain for not even being nominated for best film, by giving The Artist the best picture Oscar. But the truth is that Harvey Weinstein really backed The Artist and he has the Academy voters so far up his pie hole that they're almost up to the inside of his chest at this point. Weinstein is the current lobbyist with the academy voters. The academy voters play ball and support his constituencies as he then supports theirs as well. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, just as in office politics, just as in the presidency and everything else pretty much. You go with the heavy hitters and Weinstein is one of the heaviest hitters right now. As humans, we'll buy into everything, we don't run the media, the media runs us, and they choose what we like. But for the ones that want to get it right, at least in this case, see all the Charles Chaplin films you can see, do some hands on research about the era in which this movie takes place.
Much better films about a career going sour are Chaplin's Limelight and an accurate film about the Silent films transitioning to Talkies, and much better too is Singin'in the Rain(which really is smart in the Family Guy type humor it brings to the transition of Silents to Talkies and is fun and accurate in the surface topic of the transition at least).