There Will Be (SLAP) Accolades (SLAP) for this Unworthy (SLAP) Pile of ...

Rating: 2/10 (22 May 2008)

*SPOILERS* ahead (naturally, this is a spoiled film)
This is one of those films that draws a clear dividing line between those who have taste and those who don't. It also paints in a neon glow the pretentious artsy fartsy types - who invariably gush all over a film like this. If you love man-on-man slapping, this movie is for you.
Paul Thomas Anderson is an extraordinarily pretentious filmmaker. I've only liked one of his films - Hard Eight - and that's because someone else cut the film and got rid of that extra hour PTA always feels the need to weight his films down with.
In There Will Be Blood we once again get Daniel Day Lewis doing his self-absorbed "I'm so intense and committed an actor-I-LIVE-the-part, everyone else must play on my level." Other actors must hate working with this guy - he is so selfish it shows on screen.
I will get laughs for years and years with that stupid "My BOOOOY!!" line ... thank you for that PTA.
Don't worry about spoilers, I'm not gonna really pick apart the story in a linear way - just give you atmospheric impressions - for the story is rendered lame by PTA. Maybe he should've had a 12 inch penis or raining frogs to jazz it up.
As for the boy, DLL's character only "adopted" the boy to help him with his business. In an early mine accident (in which we got a great lingering shot of DDL's left foot (Get it? Get it???) the boy is orphaned because the unsafe mine kills his father who works for DDL's character. Daniel Plainview, finally remembered the character name for DDL, is always touching and groping the boy in a too intense kind of protectiveness and love in a way that was not the norm in that era (parents hardly showed any expression of emotion toward their children then) - yet it's not sexual - it is not portrayed as such and offers no subtext for abuse that will factor later. So it's just plain weird. Was it DDL's choice? PTA's? It sticks out but offers nothing. His character is supposed to be a nihilist who hates people (SLAP) and who is tightly wound and angry to his core (SLAP), so maybe the boy is his only conduit to human expression (who cares!? - because it's done badly if that's the case).
Plainview is tipped off to an amazing oil field by a young man we never see again, and comes to loggerheads with a young ambitious and equally morally corrupt preacher (the brother of the young man - played by the same actor), and (SLAP) we're off to the who-will-dominate races (SLAP) ... but it doesn't pay off. There is no particular point at which the film pivots on their conflict. It was intended to, but the preacher is pathetic and the conflict contrived. PTA would have you think it works and the legion of this film's fans with their bad taste bought it, but it doesn't catch gear ... it's all pretense and phoniness. There's even a scene where Plainview SLAPS down our annoying preacher into the mud *SLAP*SLAP*SLAP* And the finale, where his grown boy (My BOOOOY!!) faces down daddy and says he wants to open his own oil business is met with a petulant - nya nya you were never my son retort "just a bastard in a basket", and the son leaves with a whimper not a bang. I would much prefer hearing Rip Taylor deliver that line, I'm sure it would have been better.
There is an interlude where a drifter pretending to be Plainview's brother comes into the story and Plainview ends up killing him, yet no one thinks to ask Plainview what happened to that brother of his. Pathetic.
The last scene is of the corrupt preacher now begging for a financial windfall from Plainview - but they've jumped the story ahead many years and never showed the evolution of these two enemies' relationship - like all GenX directors PTA merely sketched it - and badly - and that's supposed to be enough ... and another (SLAP) beatdown ensues - this time for keeps ... but all I could do was laugh. It was just STUPID! Unbelievably stupid, as in unbelievable.
What a ridiculous film.