Thursday, October 6, 2011

You Know You’re in Trouble with “Dreamhouse”

      You know you’re in trouble when every fifteen minutes or so in a movie such as Dreamhouse, you’re thinking ‘oh, this is going to be a retread of The Amityville Horror’ or ‘this is that whole protagonist self-referential thing like Shutter Island or Secret Window or Oedipus Rex’ or it’s that ‘who’s the ghost? ghost story thing like Carnival of Souls or The Sixth Sense or The Others’ but then it finally doesn’t commit to any of those types of subgenres and, instead, glops it all together and turns sort of sappy.

      Daniel Craig doesn’t bother with an American accent and there’s no explanation for why he’s vaguely English so it seems like he’s James Bond in the suburbia of Westchester County or Connecticut.  Actually, James Bond stuck in this film would probably display the same identity problems.  Rachel Weisz pretty much plays a sweet wife and Naomi Watts has about twenty lines as a somewhat conflicted neighbor.  What’s happening with female roles when Naomi Watts, frightening and brilliant in Mulholland Drive, luminous in King Kong, and the star of real horror movies like The Ring, chooses something like this?  Did she need to make her rent?  There is nothing she could have played instead?  There’s no possible multi-week guest shot on The Good Wife, which has some of the best contemporary work by female actors?  Can’t HBO or Showtime give her a chance at a series?

      Afterwards, my Mother, who rarely badmouths a movie, said “well it was an okay semi-entertaining choice,” and then we calculated how long Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz will stay married to each other.  We wish them the best and though they have great chemistry in real life, it’s not up there on the screen.

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