Were phones really ever THAT big??

Rating: 3/10 (9 March 2008)

I have an unwritten list of movies I've always wanted to see, just not bad enough to put any effort into watching. They'll usually pop up on television some night when I've got nothing better to do and I'll finally sit and watch. Sometimes this turns out well, like FIGHT CLUB, when I kick myself for not seeing the movie sooner. And sometimes it doesn't work out well at all for anyone involved.
Turner Classic Movies was doing a Hitchcock thing yesterday, and I'm the sort of person for whom Hitchcock films can go either way. I love PSYCHO, I had no strong feelings either way on REAR WINDOW, and I honestly don't even remember 99% if NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Anyway, I'd never seen THE BIRDS, so I sat down and watched it last night.
THE BIRDS has officially joined THE VILLAGE and WEST SIDE STORY as one of the most monumentally STUPID movies I've ever had the 'joy' of sitting the entire way through.
Film blasphemy? Maybe. But what's Hitchcock gonna do about it? Come back from the dead to give me a slight backhand slap in the face? Maybe. I'll keep you posted.
Anyway, I am of the opinion that there is a fine line between building suspense and boring the living crap out of me. Sometimes a movie can be boring but still entertain with cinematography, like BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. I waited that entire movie for some sort of story or plot line that never happened, but at least it was pretty to look at.
I spent so much of THE BIRDS waiting for something to actually happen that when it did, and by 'it' I'm referring to the guy standing in the puddle of gas who dropped his match and burst into flames, I honestly laughed out loud. It's just, 85% of this movie was just filler drudge I didn't need to see. Like people driving, parking, getting out of the car and walking to the next scene. Was there an editor shortage in 1963? That's not suspense, that's tedium.
And you know, I'm fine with the fact that there's never an explanation offered for why the birds go nuts, that was okay. What I can't buy is how dang dumb every single character had to be about it. Hey look, a flock of birds is going to attack us. What should we do? Oh, I know, let's go outside and run around. Come on. I mean, come on. They're BIRDS. Just swat 'em down and step on 'em. They've got hollow bones and weigh less than a pound.
And when the main character thinks she hears birds in the house, after everything that's just happened, and goes off on her own to investigate, and then finds a room that sounds like there's birds in it, so she manages to shut herself inside and then get attacked by birds... Frankly, she deserved to die. Though I really don't buy that you can be pecked to death instantly by birds.
And how do we make our harrowing escape? Uh, the birds that just tried pretty darn hard to kill everyone are gonna just sit and watch while the movie's hero spends twenty minutes pulling the car up and walking everyone out the front door in slow motion, and then we'll just drive away. The end.
Wait, what?
I will say one thing for THE BIRDS, it has the absolutely most GIGANTIC telephones I've ever seen on film. And they paid for the phones, so darn it, they were gonna use 'em. This movie would've been shortened by 35-40 minutes if you eliminated the pointless phone conversations. It would've been over an hour shorter if touch-tone phones had replaced rotary dials by then.
So anyway, yeah, THE BIRDS. Incredibly retarded movie.