Anybody Else Miss Lloyd Dobler?
Posted by Cinematically-Correct.com on May 1, 2008
“I’m shocked at how much good reaction we’re getting.” That is the quote from John Cusack in this Reuters article about “War Inc.”.
This is yet another Iraq War movie. Well, it’s kind of an Iraq War movie. Co-writer/co-producer/Lloyd Dobler/star Cusack goes the “Syriana” route and creates a country (Turaqistan…isn’t that offensive to Arabs?) and a war to fit his movie needs. Cusack obviously hasn’t seen the Rotten Tomatoes reviews of this flick so far because they are hardly saying good things about it. These aren’t right-wing bloggers or anything like that. These are critics that Rotten Tomatoes identifies as “Top Critics”. Here are a few of the quotes from reviews:
“If Harold & Kumar feels deliberately dumbed down, War, Inc. tries too desperately to show off its intelligence.” - Liam Lacey, Globe & Mail
“I love John Cusack, but I can’t imagine what he was thinking as the star, producer and co-writer of the mind-boggling Iraq satire War, Inc.” - Lou Lumenick, New York Post
My thoughts exactly Lou.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: these protest movies don’t work. You cannot make a 90 to 120 minute feature film from how pissed off you are about the War. Most of the time, your ideals are going to cloud your judgment and you will force your agenda into the movie, even if it causes the movies wheels to completely fly off. If a group of people who supported the War full-tilt made a fictional movie about it, the exact same thing would happen. There are movies like “Platoon”, “Born On The Fourth Of July”, and “Apocalypse Now” that effectively show what happens during a troubling War. The thing is, at least when I watch those movies, I don’t feel an agenda being jammed down my throat.
May 1, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I miss Say Anything Cusack too. He’s obviously a bright guy, and he is obviously anti-war, but you’re right, it’s hard to make an anti-war movie that is good, and even harder to make one that will have any sort of success at the box office. Since the country still is at war, no one wants to go see a movie about it. They can just turn on CNN or the Daily Show or whatever.
May 1, 2008 at 4:21 pm
All you need to know is that second billing (or any billing, for that matter) went to HILLARY DUFF.
May 2, 2008 at 10:00 am
I miss Lloyd a little, but I truly miss Hoops McCann and Lane Meyer.