Product: Run, Lola, Run [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 2.0
Hip and stupid.
Another superhip, irritatingly kitschy, loud, fast, music-video of a movie, which obviously hopes to inspire the ever-so profound reaction: "Deep, man," -- or maybe, in some its more gratingly self-conscious attempts to portray a strong (and hiply alternative!) female character: "You go, gRRL!"The charm of this movie is completely lost on me. A dynamic visual style doesn't make a good movie. Run Lola Run could pass for a 90 minute Nike commercial, targeted towards today's alternayouth (TM). It's aesthetic sensibilities are (incidentally) very much that of a late-90s commercial, as are its themes. The exploration of the delicate nature of circumstance is vaguely thought-provoking, but that's all. I was reminded of that stupid watch commercial where the guy's watch is off by 1 second, and he consequently doesn't bump into the woman of his dreams on his way to work. If only he'd had a Rolex! (Or Timex, or whatever brand it was for.)If you watched this movie and thought it was really deep, then my advice to you is to start watching less movies and to start reading more books. To worry less about what crazy new color your hair is going to be dyed today, or what super-obscure local band you're going to add to your list of "crappy music I pretend to like so I'll look cool and unique," -- and to sit down with some Nietzche or something.Run Lola Run rubs me the wrong way in this fashion, I admit. Like other loud, superhip, wanna-be-art-movies of the past decade, it strikes me as a soulless, obnoxious byproduct of an increasingly narcissistic and mindless subculture, more concerned with cheap thematic gimmicks and cliche sociological statements than creating a complex and high-quality story. The characters in Run Lola Run are soul-wrenchingly annoying, so much flash and so little flare. Obviously the director, writer, and actors all hope to compensate for Lola and Manni's (?) inherent dullness and shallowness by loading on the style, making sure that everything looks and sounds cool enough to keep an already mentally stunted audience from thinking too hard (except about the one or two unsophisticated, done-so-many-times-before things it wants you to think about.)All in all, a flashy waste of time. The only moment in the film I whole-heartedly enjoyed was when Lola's rake-on-the-nerves dopey boyfriend gets plowed down by a bus. Although generally a stupid scene, the pure joy of seeing that whiney little idiot (along with every gelled and bleached hair on his ugly little head) get run over by a large vehicle is indeed worth an entire star.