Thu, February 1, 2007

Recently, in the context of his mounting disdain for Little Miss Sunshine, Andy invoked the English Patient Effect, which is when one's appreciation for a movie plummets in proportion to the crazed adulation being heaped upon it by film critics, awards shows, or regular moviegoers.

When we originally went to see The English Patient, we liked it quite a bit. Or at the very least, we were unoffended by it. By the time the film swept the Oscars (11 years ago – yikes!), we hated it. It now shares with Affliction the ignominious distinction of being invoked whenever we want to describe how utterly terrible a movie is.

Which is not to say that the phenomenon which bears its name should be interpreted as the ultimate insult. Little Miss Sunshine is a far better movie than The English Patient – whether Andy thinks so or not – and so is my EPE Movie of the Year: Pan's Labyrinth. I certainly didn't dislike Pan's Labyrinth. It was imaginative and creatively realized, with some very fine performances and themes. However, its narrative unfolded with a sort of metronomic regularity which diluted the impact of the fantasy sequences. Tick – Ofelia is mistreated by her fascist military stepfather; tock – she plunges through the looking glass of yet another weirdo fantasy encounter. Film reviewers are recommending that young children skip the movie because of the bad words in the subtitles and the explicit gore in a few scenes, but the story's framework has been crafted to their sensibilities, with the accompanying lack of credible peril for Ofelia and the shallow, episodic feel of her adventures – perfect for bedtime reading, drop a bookmark anywhere and pick up where you left off tomorrow night.

I enjoyed the movie and I'm glad I saw it, but it fell far short of capturing my imagination. And as engaged as I was in the grown-up half of the story (Ofelia's stepfather and his thugs of the newly implanted Franco regime, beset by wily hillside insurgents whose last throes stubbornly refuse to end), it always seemed like a distraction from Ofelia's story. The bloodbaths are raw and visceral, but the characters are starkly painted black-hat villains and white-hat freedom fighters, and it doesn't really affect Ofelia aside from the extremely inopportune timing of her half-brother's birth.

Pan's Labyrinth is a clever look at the power of imagination and the timelessness of fairy tales, but it's hardly the best picture of the year, a masterpiece, or the seminal work of a generation. To be fair, I expected none of these things when I went to see it. I just thought it would be interesting and have some fun visuals. (Sadly, aside from the new Bob Odenkirk and a ton of grasshopper footage, the visuals aren't much to speak of. It's nice, but it's nothing you couldn't find at Military Re-enactment Day on the set of Edward Scissorhands.) It could have been a nice little mid-range movie. I'm still without my Worthwhile Serious Film of 2006, but that's okay.

But, I like to read through the review blurbs on Metacritic whenever its scores are markedly different from my own. (It happens from time to time, though rarely to such a staggering extent.*) And that's where the English Patient Effect kicked in. These people are insane! They go on and on about "masterpiece" this and "transcendent work of art" that. It "leaves us shaken to our souls." It does? My soul just needed to pee.

So, congratulations, Guillermo del Toro, on a fine little movie. Very nice and perfectly entertaining. I'm sorry I didn't like it more, but considering the staggering curve set by the movie critics, I'm just glad I got out alive.

*42 points! That's a whole The Gift! Or Silent Running plus Freddy Got Fingered!

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