Product: Gods and Monsters (1998)
Rating: 2.0
Slow Paced Bio of a Dirty Old Man
OK, there's a lot I didn't like about this movie. Number 1, the subject, James Whale of Frankenstein fame, is not portrayed very sympathetically. In fact, I found the character (played by McKlellan) quite displeasing, with his raunchy and egotistical appetites. There is a term, "growing old gracefully." Mr. Whale in this portrayal does not seem to have become wiser with age and experience, but to have become a sad, pathetic old coot.Secondly, the film goes nowhere in the first 45 minutes. The narrative merely circles around the central facts of Whale's celebrity, his main films, a possible scandal, all of which are planted in the dialog just so the audience can be informed, for instance, that James Whale made Frankenstein, that he helped create the horror genre, that he is gay, etc. It just seemed jarring to hear these facts trotted out for narrative purposes, when they could have been revealed in a more timely and less obvious manner in the course of the film. But as the director wanted to set up the drama early, we are given a crash course on James Whale via the conversations of bar patrons, the gardener and the maid. Puleeeze!Thirdly, I thought the screenplay forced it's points too much. To take one instance, Fraser's gardener character is first shown coming out of a broken down trailer and stepping into a broken down pickup truck. OK, he's white trash; got it. In another scene, following one in which he is offended by James Whales' fliratious manner, he has sex with a girl he picks up in a bar. Okayyy...feeling a bit unmasculine, are we? I mean, almost every point of the movie is telegraphed, so the audience is smashed over the head with each point the director wishes to bring home.I guess, I just wish the movie's producers had been more subtle and cunning in how they portrayed people and their emotions. I wish they had taken the audience's intelligence for granted. Who did they think would go see Gods and Monsters anyway? Joe Sixpack? If you're going to make a small independent film, one thing you can take for granted is that those going to see it are going because they have an interest in the film and in the subject matter of the film. You can dispense with the *setup* and just get into the meat of what you want to say with the film.