The Perfect Yawn

Rating: 4/10 (15 February 2008)

Let's start with an understatement. Overstatements enough all around. This wont be the first you read about this film - this will be comment 124453. Unfortunately you probably spent some money, and more importantly, a good deal of time to see what's all the fuss about.
Your reaction will be one of the three possible reactions to this film:
1) Everyone thinks this is excellent! So I officially think this is excellent too! Especially since I am into art-house, I can not afford to call this boring piece of sh*t a boring piece of sh*t.. I will just give it a 10 on IMDb and next get something Spanish with tits in it to cheer me up.
2) What's the fuss about?? This is a well done, well acted period piece that is worth my time if I would stumble upon it on a Wednesday night on TV.. It might make me go to bed late just to see where it goes. It has some freaky and unrealistic stuff in it (DDL stuffing the priests face with mud for no apparent reason? among others) but hey, they took the money and effort to re-enact the time period and set a slightly boring drama. 3 drops of blood will be involved in the very last scene. Ow sorry, spoilered anything there? :P The DDL that we knew from Gangs Of New York was asked to change nothing except costume and give it a go, gang leader and oil baron is basically the same ballpark anyway.
3) The world has gone mad. DDL does an OK job, yeah alright, but does he save this little paper ship filled with heavy pretensions not to sink? No way! WTF is this film trying to tell us (me) ? It has NO character development AT ALL, which is pretty amazing for a piece that stretches over decades. Characters are defined from the beginning, and from there on static. Not exciting to watch them go around their unpleasant business for a few hours. (If they were even more unpleasant that might be the case, but it's all within limits, very decent middle-of-the-road unpleasantness) The few interesting bits are far apart, and exactly those are far-fetched. We have the "healing priest" guy, having those Texan (or what are they) farmers believe whatever he wants.. Farmers are usually the "wanna see first believe you then" type. Ah well I dunno, in Texas they might be like that :P But then the bit where DDL stuffs mud in the priests mouth for no reason at all! And slaps him around a bit! Interesting scene, maybe the best, but again.. WTF? There is no notion in the film that would explain this or whatever leads to it.
And then we have the ending.. OK it IS nice, and well acted and all.. But it is f*cking ridiculous! I would welcome it in any film with a comical undertone.. But for this film that has been taken /taking itself so very serious, it makes no sense at all! DDL is victorious in the end, and confronts his longtime enemy with his victory.. and then instead of savouring it, he kills him off in (again) a mad unprovoked rage! well i can go on but i wont, bless you all :) i liked magnolia though.. that wasn't realistic, but didn't pretend to be either. and it managed to convey the sentiment it tried to.
god i hope this will plummet some more in the ratings... but i am afraid that generations to come will check the IMDb top 250, see this scoring a 9, download it, and then decide that us "oldies" have no taste whatso-ever and just go get the newest pulp crap.
thank you all pretentious farts for acting like you actually enjoyed this film. my children will benefit huge improvements in reaction speed for playing more games and watching less movies.