Dull stereotypes aren't worth waiting for

Rating: 7/10 (5 August 2011)

This is a poor movie by any definition, but there are a few saving graces. The graces are part of why it is a poor movie. The few saving graces are two very funny scenes, maybe a few more if you are being overly generous in assessing this movie. And the hugest problem is that you have to sit through too much boredom for the set up.
Writer Director Paul Thomas Anderson does a slipshod job of writing and directing. He is clearly writing with more emotion than brains, as he obviously wants to make a name for himself by being way too politically correct in his story of an insane oil man and a stereotypical religious fanatic just after the turn of the twentieth century.
The trouble with trying to fit in too much is that you are easily recognized. This is where the term "dork" came in, to describe the TV characters like Ted Baxter of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and Herb of "WKRP in Cincinnati", men who tried so hard to be "cool" that they looked ...dorky.
Daniel Day Lewis does what he is always stereotyped to do, play a control freak. One can't say it's a good acting job, because any person, anyone who has any experience at all in Theater, knows that playing the control freak is simple. The real acting comes from those who react and allow the control freak to speak his lines and get away with it. That's nothing against Daniel Day. It isn't his fault that he is stereotyped into roles that require no more acting than a walk on can do.
It does give credit to the acting talents of the rest of the cast, and clearly Daniel Day did his job, too.
If one is simply wanting to see theatrical work done by actors, one will be rewarded. If one wants to see a clever story, one will be very disappointed. If one wants to be amused, one will be disappointed for most of the movie.
We're never sure what is going on, due to the poor directing. It looks like the character of Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day Lewis), begins as a gold miner, switches to oil when he finds it, and lucks into being a huge success. It is also clear from the start that he is going to be another of the cliché psychopaths we are expected to like, but only other psychopaths could possibly care about.
We see a character betray his family and townspeople, selling out like a quisling to Plainview, and he never resurfaces, but all through the movie we wonder where he is. We know he'll be important at the end. We wonder why he is a quisling, and more on that later.
Meanwhile, Plainview is another of the control freaks we are constantly bludgeoned with by hack writers. Yes, it does make him the most stereotypical of dull clichés, and we have a hard time staying awake. The background characters are clearly more interesting, if only because they aren't as stereotypical as the leads.
The other main character is the religious fanatic that hack writers want to believe exist, but which you never meet in real life, and in fact are so easy to spot and so easy for journalists to capitalize on, that every single one who has existed since the printing press has been headline news. Their very nature makes them too easy to find and reveal. Yet, by some miracle, we only find a handful. And by an even bigger miracle, hack writers have sold this handful to the public as a believable stereotype. Real religious leaders have to watch every single word they utter. Even a cough condemns them because of hate mongering hack writers like Anderson. "Easy target" is what dorks like Anderson look for, and he humiliated himself to any intelligent viewer.
The movie is probably a comedy, but if so, it is very slow in building up jokes. It is a very dull, dry comedy. Anderson continues in his "dork" persona by trying for the most acceptable of dark comedy. Again, he is too obvious.
The entire movie looks to be written out of rabid hatred. The object of the hatred here is a cliché that only exists in feeble hate filled minds.
Back to the quisling, whom Anderson seems to want to justify. He fails miserably. Anderson seems to have lived a remarkably sheltered life if he thinks this quisling character suffered persecution from family and committee. If Anderson ever met with persecution, he'd know this.
Anderson is not subtle one bit, and it's sad that scripts and ideas of better writers are passed over to produce such one dimensional drivel of a man who thinks of nothing but hate, who worships nothing but hate, and who makes movies that can only be enjoyed by fellow control freaks filled with hate. Pathetic.