(no subject)
Oh, my god, did Boondock Saints II suck. This isn't a "wait for the DVD" movie or a "no redeeming value but it was a lot of fun" movie; it's a "you will never get those two plus painful hours of your life back" movie--straight-up suckage, from the first scene until it finally blazes off the screen in a final flood of testosterone.
Let's be honest, it's not like the first movie was particularly great outside of the barely subtextual gay incest, but it was very funny in parts, it was generally coherent (if very frequently ridiculous), and it was never boring. The sequel has none of these things going for it, making up for the lack by lacing bonus homophobia and racism and sexism liberally--and smugly--throughout (the screening I saw was followed by a Q&A with Troy Duffy, Sean Patrick Flannery, David Della Rocco and--I think--Brian Mahoney, and practically the first thing out of Duffy's mouth was how the movie was not "PC," but he had made for us, the real Boondock Saints fans).
It was, indeed, pretty far from "PC," as much as I fucking hate that term, and I say that not even counting the painful and protesting-way-too much fantasy sequence in the middle in which the characters scream things like, "We are men, and men don't have feelings! We are men, and men don't cry!" or the "THE GUNS ARE THEIR PENISES! DO YOU GET IT? THE GUNS ARE THEIR PENISES!" scene. The entire movie was one long (white) MRA fantasyland, and the addition of Julie Benz, whom I have no doubt Duffy would consider a "feminist" (or whatever word he'd used; I suspect he's the type of guy who uses the word "feminazi" a lot) character, as Willem Dafoe's replacement doesn't help. I loved Benz on Angel and I love her on Dexter, so I know the woman can act, but she was just bad here, helped along by the horrible writing and an inexplicable and truly dreadful attempt at a southern accent.
But even leaving aside issues of race, gender, and homophobia, it was just bloated and dull. It attempted to re-create the first movie by taking everything that worked and doing it bigger and louder and over and over again, because obviously that's a winning recipe for EVEN MORE AWESOME. The original was cartoony in parts, sometimes painfully so, and the stylized violence tipped over into ridiculous more often than not, but it looks like high art in comparison to the sequel. Boondock Saints was, in the end, fun in ludicrous ways; Boondock Saints II was just ludicrous. And boring... oh, so mind-numbingly boring. The backstory for Connor and Murphy's father made no sense, but made no sense in a particularly yawn-worth fashion, and the hyper-stylization of the shootout scenes--of which there were many--made them funny in that "No, really, I'm not laughing with you" sort of way.
Even the gay incest was spread pretty thin, though that was the least of the film's flaws. We opened with a ridiculous Brokeback Mountain-esque scene that I couldn't really enjoy because the boys both looked like Grizzly Adams, and while there was a lovely shirtless tattooing scene and some fun brotherly bickering, one of the very few moments they chose not to re-create was the gorgeous h/c bullet removal scene (they did do the mutual orgasm scene, but it was a lot less mutual orgasm-y), which I'd really hoped we would get as some honey to make the pill go down. But no. I could have forgiven the film a lot if they'd given us some good slash content, but I was not so lucky.
It's worth noting, however, that I (and Snoo, who is going to get so much mileage out of me dragging her to this) seemed to be alone in not enjoying it. The audience cheered ecstatically for the dumbass action scenes and laughed like loons at the stupid (and racist, sexist, homophobic, or some amalgam of the three) jokes (hey, you know what's really funny? Rape!). Every question asked at the Q&A was preceded by at least a paragraph on what an important movie it was, and how it (and the original) had changed the viewer's life and opened their eyes, and oh, my god, when can we expect the third movie (they ended it in a way that begs for a third, which I am thankful for simply because I was afraid I was going to have it the theatre for another hour while they resolved the issue), and Duffy preened and strutted and generally made clear that he thought he deserved every bit of praise thrown his way (he also called on people by referring to the men as "sir" and the women as "dear," and I'm sure you can imagine how much I appreciated that).
Someone asked a question about Overnight, and Duffy understandably talked about how one-sided it had been, but then basically destroyed his own point by more or less admitting that, yes, he'd been a huge douche (he said working in Hollywood is like having to eat shit sandwiches, and he hadn't yet learned how to do that, but now he can do it much better. Given that the "message" of the film, if it could be said to have one, was all about living up to your principles and being a MAN who doesn't take shit from anyway, I found that particularly amusing). But for the most part, the audience stroked Duffy's dick and he seriously got off on it. There were a few questions for the actors (Sean Patrick Flannery seemed to think they've made a serious piece of art), but the bulk of it was Duffy posturing, and the audience eating it up.
The whole thing was just bad. And embarrassing. And bad. If you were thinking about seeing it, my advice is don't, and if you're being bitter that it isn't playing anywhere near you, start being thankful you were able to avoid it. Though I still totally grabbed one of the free posters and had Duffy and SPF sign it (there wasn't an autograph table, just kind of a free-for-all outside the theatre we were in), because, hey, it was a pretty poster, and Connor and Murphy are and will forever be totally in love, no matter how much this movie sucked.
Let's be honest, it's not like the first movie was particularly great outside of the barely subtextual gay incest, but it was very funny in parts, it was generally coherent (if very frequently ridiculous), and it was never boring. The sequel has none of these things going for it, making up for the lack by lacing bonus homophobia and racism and sexism liberally--and smugly--throughout (the screening I saw was followed by a Q&A with Troy Duffy, Sean Patrick Flannery, David Della Rocco and--I think--Brian Mahoney, and practically the first thing out of Duffy's mouth was how the movie was not "PC," but he had made for us, the real Boondock Saints fans).
It was, indeed, pretty far from "PC," as much as I fucking hate that term, and I say that not even counting the painful and protesting-way-too much fantasy sequence in the middle in which the characters scream things like, "We are men, and men don't have feelings! We are men, and men don't cry!" or the "THE GUNS ARE THEIR PENISES! DO YOU GET IT? THE GUNS ARE THEIR PENISES!" scene. The entire movie was one long (white) MRA fantasyland, and the addition of Julie Benz, whom I have no doubt Duffy would consider a "feminist" (or whatever word he'd used; I suspect he's the type of guy who uses the word "feminazi" a lot) character, as Willem Dafoe's replacement doesn't help. I loved Benz on Angel and I love her on Dexter, so I know the woman can act, but she was just bad here, helped along by the horrible writing and an inexplicable and truly dreadful attempt at a southern accent.
But even leaving aside issues of race, gender, and homophobia, it was just bloated and dull. It attempted to re-create the first movie by taking everything that worked and doing it bigger and louder and over and over again, because obviously that's a winning recipe for EVEN MORE AWESOME. The original was cartoony in parts, sometimes painfully so, and the stylized violence tipped over into ridiculous more often than not, but it looks like high art in comparison to the sequel. Boondock Saints was, in the end, fun in ludicrous ways; Boondock Saints II was just ludicrous. And boring... oh, so mind-numbingly boring. The backstory for Connor and Murphy's father made no sense, but made no sense in a particularly yawn-worth fashion, and the hyper-stylization of the shootout scenes--of which there were many--made them funny in that "No, really, I'm not laughing with you" sort of way.
Even the gay incest was spread pretty thin, though that was the least of the film's flaws. We opened with a ridiculous Brokeback Mountain-esque scene that I couldn't really enjoy because the boys both looked like Grizzly Adams, and while there was a lovely shirtless tattooing scene and some fun brotherly bickering, one of the very few moments they chose not to re-create was the gorgeous h/c bullet removal scene (they did do the mutual orgasm scene, but it was a lot less mutual orgasm-y), which I'd really hoped we would get as some honey to make the pill go down. But no. I could have forgiven the film a lot if they'd given us some good slash content, but I was not so lucky.
It's worth noting, however, that I (and Snoo, who is going to get so much mileage out of me dragging her to this) seemed to be alone in not enjoying it. The audience cheered ecstatically for the dumbass action scenes and laughed like loons at the stupid (and racist, sexist, homophobic, or some amalgam of the three) jokes (hey, you know what's really funny? Rape!). Every question asked at the Q&A was preceded by at least a paragraph on what an important movie it was, and how it (and the original) had changed the viewer's life and opened their eyes, and oh, my god, when can we expect the third movie (they ended it in a way that begs for a third, which I am thankful for simply because I was afraid I was going to have it the theatre for another hour while they resolved the issue), and Duffy preened and strutted and generally made clear that he thought he deserved every bit of praise thrown his way (he also called on people by referring to the men as "sir" and the women as "dear," and I'm sure you can imagine how much I appreciated that).
Someone asked a question about Overnight, and Duffy understandably talked about how one-sided it had been, but then basically destroyed his own point by more or less admitting that, yes, he'd been a huge douche (he said working in Hollywood is like having to eat shit sandwiches, and he hadn't yet learned how to do that, but now he can do it much better. Given that the "message" of the film, if it could be said to have one, was all about living up to your principles and being a MAN who doesn't take shit from anyway, I found that particularly amusing). But for the most part, the audience stroked Duffy's dick and he seriously got off on it. There were a few questions for the actors (Sean Patrick Flannery seemed to think they've made a serious piece of art), but the bulk of it was Duffy posturing, and the audience eating it up.
The whole thing was just bad. And embarrassing. And bad. If you were thinking about seeing it, my advice is don't, and if you're being bitter that it isn't playing anywhere near you, start being thankful you were able to avoid it. Though I still totally grabbed one of the free posters and had Duffy and SPF sign it (there wasn't an autograph table, just kind of a free-for-all outside the theatre we were in), because, hey, it was a pretty poster, and Connor and Murphy are and will forever be totally in love, no matter how much this movie sucked.