Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Just a quick note to say that, yes, I did indeed see "Forbidden Kingdom" two weeks ago, and then forgot to write a review (it's surprisingly interesting and entertaining, though no earth-shattering surprises for anyone who's familiar with the genre -- still, seeing Jet Li as "The Monkey King" with all that mischief and glee reminded me of one of the many reasons I'm so fond of watching his movies: not only can he kick butt, but he can be awfully darn charming and endearing while he's doing it!).

Meanwhile, I found time to see "Iron Man" this past weekend, and I can add a hearty recommendation to the chorus already sounding the praises of this particularly successful treatment of a Marvel property on the big screen. Robert Downey, Jr. manages to make Tony Stark so intriguing (even when he's giving the impression of being a shallow jerk, early on) that everything else falls into place: I really cared about what became of Stark and his all-too-human alter ego Iron Man.

But having gone to see the supposed romantic comedy "Made of Honor" mainly because I'm fond of some of the supporting actors (Kevin McKidd of "Rome" and "Journeyman" as the ducal and very hot Scot whom the female lead plans to marry, and Kadeem Hardison of "A Different World" as one of the male lead's best buddies/members of the male chorus, urging him on to submarine his best female friend's wedding so he can have her for himself), I suppose I was doomed to spend an unsatisfactory hour and a half, right from the start.

( spoiler alert for anyone still ardently yearning to see Patrick Dempsey and be 'surprised' by the ending of this film )

However, what really annoyed me in the end was that EVERY TIME the movie had a choice to make -- every time the script could go for the obvious, cliched, CHEAP joke, or else choose to try to surprise me and give me something deeper, something more interesting, or to examine some of its own underlying assumptions -- it took the cheap and easy route, without fail.

( a few more spoilers )

There was one moment when I thought, just for a second, that there might be more going on than met the eye, and that the heroine would turn out to be more than just the object of male desire and the prize in a contest for possession and would actually have something deep (or at least clever and pro-active) up her sleeve. Just a second when I thought she might turn out to be a full person in her own right, and an active agent in her own life. But nope. She's just the object of the male gaze, after all, and nothing much that happens to her outside of Dempsey's sight is really worth including in the story. It's all about what the man wants, and thinks, and needs, and plans.

How very sad for me, then, that I decided two minutes into the film that I didn't care a rat's behind for the male lead or anything that he thought or said, and that he'd have to undergo a major personality transplant/transformation in order for this film to entertain me at all. But no such interest-saving operation took place, apparently, and so the ending of this film was doomed to be D.O.A., as far as I was concerned.

Of course, I could be just a bit biased. I really didn't like the guy this movie expected me to root for, when you come right down to it, and I really didn't like the fact that the script seemed determined to leave no cheap shot un-taken.