Doubt Review

Let’s get it out of the way quickly, of the films I saw that came out in 2008 Doubt is the best, by far.  The Dark Knight is still my favorite but not in a Oscar-Winning Best Picture kind of way.  I suppose Doubt can snuggle in as a comfy second.

The film was shot  with a budget of $20 million, most of it probably being spent on getting Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, etc. into it and, from a cinematic standpoint, it shows.  But that’s not what the film is about, and this is why it deserves the Oscar and Slumdog Millionaire does not, it’s about making you think.  Doubt is a cerebral experience while Slumdog Millionaire is a modern day adventure movie.  Interestingly, the former is rated “PG-13” and the latter “R” but Doubt is so much more mature.

The plot follows two nuns and a priest.  Amy Adams plays, I thought humorously, the lamb, while Meryl Streep has more of a “fun granny” thing going.  There are times, notably the early dinner scene, when, for some reason or other, I felt she was channeling the Joker.  I don’t know who plays the priest but he did a fine enough job.  No one was exceptional, other than Viola Davis, who deserved the Oscar for supporting actress, but they didn’t screw up the script, the real star here, so it’s all good.  But I feel I’ve gone out on a tangent here so, yes, the plot.  I saw the film right after watching the biography on Michael Jackson’s life that CNN seems to have on loop and certainly there are interesting parallels.  When the priest character gave the toy to the boy (ha, ha) I thought, “Dammit, it’s one of THOSE guys.”  Actually it was. 

I’ve heard a lot of people say the film’s great because you doubt (excuse me, I’m trying to use this word as little as possible during the review) whether or not the guy’s a pedophile.  Noooooooooooo.  No, no, no.  It’s obvious he is.  Everyone knows it (minus Amy Adams), the question is whether or not to kick him out.  As an Atheist the answer was fairly simple: Yes.  The guy’s sexually abusing children, after all.  The whole situation serves as an analogy for Religion, at least to me.  There are positive effects (the boy feels accepted) but it’s nothing that couldn’t be solved using, say, different means such as trying to help him fit in with other people who, for some reason or other, are his age and don’t want his penis in their mouths.

3.5/4 stars

Slumdog Millionaire: Review

Well, I finally got around to watching it, the second 2008 Best Picture nominee I’ve seen so far (the first being Benjamin Button), and, admittedly, perhaps my standards were just a tad too high.  I guess that, since this movie WON and all, everyone ranting and raving about how great it was, it’d be, at the very least, a few notches above a story about an old guy turning into a baby.  I suppose I was expecting, say, Schindler’s List and, instead, I got something I’d more readily compare to a “Bring It On” spin-off (perhaps more because of the credits than anything else).

My problem is, very probably, the fact that I think masterpieces aren’t supposed to make you happy, an opinion birthed not from my utter hatred for the particular emotion but rather because I believe art should make you think and, unfortunately, thinking tends to make me, and possibly others, very gloomy because only then do I realize how bloody useless anything I do is.  But let’s talk about the film.

The plot is revealed largely in flashbacks, a device which does have a nasty tendency to eliminate any and all suspense, but it’s interesting enough to see how the quiz seems to have been created with the chronology of the main character’s life in mind.  How this works is beyond me.  Perhaps God is real and has a strange obsession with little Indian boys winning lots of money in quiz shows.  It’s no spoiler to reveal that, yes, Jamal wins the frigging money.  For the one of you out there cussing at your computer right now, fuddle duddle.  It’s in the bloody title.  Go be thick somewhere else.  This blog is only for hollow people.

In the film’s defense, I probably would’ve enjoyed it more had people not let it win an Oscar.  It’s the kind of movie I might sit down and watch with friends at a party while we’re all talking about something else, like me for instance, and might occasionally watch.  This movie is, quite frankly, not art, it’s a popcorn movie.  The thing is, we’ve all seen it before, probably on Disney Channel only, instead of Indian kids, we get Zac Efron singing about “What Time It Is.”

3 stars out of 4