Monday, October 23, 2006

It's SHOCKING how this movie went from "highly anticipated" to "greatly disappointing" to "complete piece of rat turd."

The movie "The Prestige" has three acts.

The first is called The Pledge. The trailer shows you clips that are fantastic, and make the movie seem mysterious, dangerous, intriguing, and full of suspense.

The second act is called The Turn. This is when you show up to actually watch the movie, and realize that the trailer completely misled you, and it's completely different than what you thought. Disappointment is inevitable. You keep waiting and looking for the cool stuff you were expecting, but you won't find it.

That's why there's a third act called The Prestige. This is the part where the movie, not content to just mislead you and steal your money, kicks you in the balls with an absolutely ludicrous and pathetic "twist" ending.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The opening scene of The Prestige is a forest floor littered with top hats. Enjoy the strange, amusing scene, because it's all downhill after that.

Shaun and I went to see this travesty of a movie over the weekend. The trailer for this movie was incredible. Full of mystery and suspense. Hugh Jackman (a stage magician) desperately trying to find out how Christian Bale does his tricks, only to discover the chilling discover that it was real magic. Bale looking sinister and dark, Jackman helplessly outmatched against Bale's unknown mystical powers. What price did Bale pay for these powers? How is he able to do the tricks he does? Whoa, how did he make all those lights in the field turn on at once?! And of course, the definitive line "he does REAL! MAGIC!" It had awesome potential.

And then the movie takes all that and throws it out the window. There was no real magic. The "real magic" quote was a totally insignificant part of the movie. The lights in the field turning on, that wasn't even Bale! It was completely cheap and manipulative, and honestly, quite infuriating.

It wasn't just our anger and disappointment that made us hate the movie, though. The movie itself was lackluster at best, but had the absolute WORST ending I have seen in a movie in ages. Right about halfway through it starts to fall apart. Jackman is trying to figure out how Bale does a "teleporting" trick, so what does he do? Enlist Nikola Tesla to build a...I don't even know what it is. Some kind of electricity-shooting...box...that somehow both teleports and clones whatever is placed inside.

.........yep. It was pretty much as retarded as it sounds.

So not only does that just kill any believablility the movie had (I mean, Nikola Tesla was inventing STAR TREK TECHNOLOGY, why didn't he just build Jackman a freaking laser gun or spaceship or something?), but then The Prestige goes the extra mile and drops one of the laziest, mediocre "twist" endings I've ever seen. You know the plot device where tons of dramatic, major-ramification things happen, and then it's revealed that - surprise! It was all just a dream! None of that really happened! Well, you know that sickened, cheated feeling you get in your stomach when that happens? Well, this is just as bad. (What happens isn't actually the "it was all just a dream" but it's just as irritating.)

Know what would have been better? If during the final scene, Jackman suddenly popped six adamantium claws, and Bale started throwing batarangs and driving his tank-bat-mobile around. Not only would this have been just as believable, (CLONING TELEPORTING ELECTRICITY MACHINE!) but it would have been far more entertaining.

Finally, to add insult to injury, we actually drove to Kelowna just to watch it. For some reason the Vernon theater wasn't playing it. In retrospect, we now know why.

Skip this movie! Go see The Illusionist instead.

Rating: If you skipped the last ten minutes, I'd say 5/10 as an average movie. But that awful ending is at least -2. And the cheap, bastard trailer earns it another -2. It doesn't quite deserve a 0 or a 1; there was some interesting special effects, and the actual stage magic scenes were decent. And David Bowie as Tesla was cool. Overall: 1.5 out of 10.

IF YOU LIKED THE PRESTIGE, YOU'D PROBABLY ALSO LIKE:
- A History of Violence (another "great trailer, horrible film" movie)
- Dreamcatcher (a movie where the mysterious character really DOES have crazy, mysterious powers)
- Paying someone for a guided tour of the Grand Canyon, and instead they take you to a ditch they dug in their backyard. And then they push you in.


[posted by Rades at 11:24 AM] LINK ||