Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Hollywoodland (Stormy Pinkness)

“That was all right,” was my first thought upon leaving after my viewing of Hollywoodland. Hollywoodland revolves around the death of George Reeves, TV’s Superman, and explores several theories about what caused the death of the actor—from suicide to several different scenarios of murder, each with their own motives.
Ben Affleck leads the cast as George Reeves, the aforementioned Superman. He is joined by fellow big names (pretty much all bigger than his) Diane Lane and Adrien Brody. Brody plays Louis Simo, the investigator hired by Reeves’ mother to prove that her son’s death was not a suicide. Diane Lane portrays Toni Mannix , the wife of Eddie Mannix, the head of MGM studios, and Affleck’s love interest. The movie portrays the intermingling and investigation of these and many more lives.
I had heard a lot of buzz about this movie. Some good, some bad. According to early reports, Ben Affleck was apparently back to his pre-J.Lo. form, yet Adrien Brody fell short of what we have come to expect from him. I went to the movie with that in mind but I don’t really get where those critics got that idea. All of the acting in the movie seemed to be on the same level to me. It was good, but nothing amazing. I did not see any glaring differences between Ben Affleck’s performance and Adrien Brody’s, aside from the fact that they were playing different characters. The acting was good, but there is more to a movie than acting. The plot was well done. It was intriguing to the viewer and did not have any glaring gaps. Of course that could have been helped by the fact that it was based on actual events. Everything in this movie was around B level for me. This would seem to lead up to an extremely positive rating.
However, all this movie left me was a feeling of “it was all right,” “not a complete waste of money,” and “so what’s going on now?” The last thought alerted me to how mediocre I found the movie. Usually I am processing a movie for up to about 20-30 minutes after leaving the theater or turning the TV off. In this case, my thoughts were straying 30 seconds after the film. Now I am not saying that it was a horrible movie, cuz it wasn’t. It was an all right movie. Or, to translate that into a rating, it’s a 3. I was just slightly over apathetic about it. It was better than just mediocre, but only slightly.

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