Backlash, boring, prejudiced

Rating: 2/10 (12 December 2004)

Stunning graphics! New ways to portray animated figures in cinema! Yep, Pixar have done it again. It's really amazing to see.
But. We have to see the very boring parts of the film, of which there are many.
Apart from this film containing part of the biggest backlash drabness since reading snippets from reality in Susan Faludi's "Backlash", I must say this: everything in this film has been done before.
The story and everything in it is plain "Our Man Flint" and James Bond. Everything that's shown in the film has been shown before, in non-animated films. And I find that a bit boring, don't you agree? "We are Pixar! We have the ability to make any kind of film now, that we can do anything with computers, which means we don't have to spend a lot of money for props, expensive actors and film in impossible locations!" So why, kind Madams/Sirs, are we brought re-hashed spy-stories? Pixar has the ability to give the audience the most fascinating computer generated graphics ever, so why not do that AND an interesting story with great characters? I think I know why. Money walks. What? Here: the crowd is obviously loving something they've seen big parts of before, just framed in another way, even more graphic than ever. It's true, I'm sorry. It's easier to mash something like this together than make a new "The Godfather", "Fight Club" or "Seven Samurai".
With "backlash" I mean the following, which is the worst about this film: female characters aren't allowed to be active individuals in this film. Read that sentence again, then move on. The males are the ones who make the decisions, apart from a couple of instances when the women do, instead of being passive, second rate characters. And this simply isn't acceptable. Why? Because I like films that are realistic, not thoroughly anti-feministic and prejudiced. And I will tell you why I feel this film represents just that.
When the darkly dressed, fringe-covering-most-of-her-face, shy and introverted daughter of the family is "turned to the better", this means she meets a boy who's so far shown her no interest at all, merely by suddenly wearing her hair in a pink tiara and dressing in "girly clothes", i.e. pink colours and a skirt. She's also passive, as is her mother: while the males in the family are the ones making the decisions, the strong, fast and moving ones, the women are merely stretchy, able to become invisible, able to protect themselves - not to attack. The little boy in the family can hit people, and kill them. Yeay! His big sister just turns...more girly. She hits a few bad guys, sure, but doesn't kill them. Her assailants fall unconscious as she turns invisible and hits them, while the little boy hits the living daylights out of a bad guy, finding out he actually likes to hit them, before his victim flies into a stone wall, dying in an explosion.
The men even lie and the women don't, but that's OK, because it's all good family fun. Of course.
I am not making the above up. See the film (without paying for it, preferably) and spew yourselves.
This is very much reminding me of the myth about lions. People think the male is the King Of The Jungle, when, in fact, the lionesses are the predators, catching the prey and making sure the families progress in every way. The males don't even hunt, as they cannot: the mane prevents them from running much. Still, the myth about them prevails. They're displayed as the Kings Of The Jungle while the female tends the cubs.
Sadly, this shows in a lot of ways in this film. The mom works at home. The man DOES work in a very boring environment, but, without spoiling a bit of the film, doesn't exactly do anything about the family situation except lie to his wife. For two months. And this is the "woman of my life", as he later calls her? This film reeks of disorder. I'm sorry, but of course women and men aren't exactly made out of merely two molds. It's just that this film, no matter how immensely important computer graphics-wise it may be, tries to put through that gibberish. Sad. It could have been immense. Will The Movie Machine churn out more of this garbage? Think critically.