Picture this scene. It’s the Olympic games in China and we’re at the diving competition. A German diver stands majestically at the base of the diving board as cameras flash around him in a dance of light like an indoors arora borealis. The crowd starts to quite down and the flashes die off. The arena is now calm and quite and the German diver extends up onto his toes, bounces, and then quickly strides up the diving board… gives one giant bounce… flies up into the air…. and then when in the air he inexplicably starts flailing around like an injured bird with his arms and legs kicking everywhere and eventually comes crashing down onto the water in a smaking belly flop. The majestic diver looked more like an 8 year old fat kid making his very first jump off a board than a world class olympic diver and the results were horrible. The judges show their scores that average out to be about 0.5 out of 10. The German finishes in last place.
The German diver and his coach angrily run up to the judges podium and protest! “Why did you give me such a low score?” the German demands. “Because your dive was terrible with no form, no grace, no technique and it all resulted in a terrible belly flop. That’s why.” respond the judges. “But…” the German shoots back at them, “That’s exactly what I was TRYING to do. That’s what I was going for!”
So the question is… since a horrible, graceless, ugly and awful dive is exactly what the diver was going for… should the judges re-evaluate their scores and give him a 10? Or should the judges stick with their score because regardless of intent, a bad dive is a bad dive and should be scored as such?
To me, the answer to that question is obvious. If a dive was ugly and awful to watch with little to no merit to it, then regardless of intent, it was still an ugly, awful to watch dive with little to no merit. Period.
Yet some people in an attempt to defend movies they like will pull out this card. “You don’t understand” they’ll say. “That’s what they were trying to do”.
Now before I go on any further, let me say once again that all film is subjective. Like any piece of art we can all see different things, we can all have different emotional responses and we can all have different impressions when looking at the exact same thing. That’s the most beautiful thing about film. I have no problem saying I appreciated a movie that others thought sucked, and no problems when others enjoyed a movie that I thought was horrible. That’s the formula for good discussion. What I DON’T like is when people (and I confess I do this myself sometimes) make excuses by trying to make it look like faults with the movie are actually YOUR faults.
Let’s look at a movie like “Meet The Spartans”. The film was nothing but an orgy of poorly delivered pop culture spoofs that had little no zero comedic merit, a cesspool of incoherent dialog, no story, no plot, no sense, no humor garbage. It’s totally 100% ok for someone to look at that film and say to me “I disagree, for whatever reason it resonated with me, made me laugh and I was entertained”. That’s totally fine… I’ll think they’re nuts… but no problem. But I actually had a couple of people say this to me:
“But John, I just think you didn’t get it. The movie is supposed to be that way. They meant to make it a collection of pop culture jokes. I think if you watch it again and kept that in mind, you might like it a lot more”
Just because a director MEANT to do something, doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do… nor does it mean they did it well.
Let’s stick with the “Meet the Spartans” example for a moment. I understand they were going for spoof pop culture jokes. I get it. But a few other films did that too, with the only difference being that they did it well! Films like “Top Secret”, “Hot Shots Part Deux” and the king of them all “Airplane” all did what “Meet the Spartans” was going for… but they did it, and Spartans failed.
Let’s bring this up to “Speed Racer”. One of my biggest complaints about that film was the dialog. To me, it was beyond horrible. It was cheesy, lame and simply indigestible. I wrote in my review that I completely understood it wasn’t supposed to be Shakespeare. They weren’t going for Oscars on this one. I understand this. But that’s no excuse for not still making the dialog “good”. Make it silly, make it tongue in cheek… but you can do that and still make it GOOD. Many other films have done that.
Once again, it’s totally fine for someone to say to me “I disagree John, I thought the dialog was fine and it worked”. Fantastic! Just don’t make the excuse “That’s what they were trying to do” because that just simply doesn’t hold up.
– How would a cop respond if you told him you MEANT to park in the passing lane?
– How would your girlfriend respond to you blowing your load in your pants before she even got them off you if you told her you MEANT to do that?
– How would your College professors respond to you saying you should be given a pass because you MEANT to get an “F”?
– How would we respond to Brett Ratner claiming he should be anointed the next Francis Ford Coppola because he MEANT to disappoint so many people with X-Men 3?
Obviously you don’t criticize a film for having not enough laughs when it’s not a comedy. Obviously you don’t criticize a film for not having enough action when it’s a love story. Obviously you don’t criticize a film for not having good animation when it’s not an animated film. You do have to look at a film in relation to its genre and adjust your expectations from there. HOWEVER you can’t just take a flaw in a film and slap the “They meant to do that” band-aid on it. Bad dialog is bad dialog regardless of genre or target audience. Bad acting is bad acting regardless of genre or target audience. Unfunny jokes are unfunny jokes. Bad action is bad action. So on and so on.
There is certainly a place for understanding a director’s intent. But intent does not replace the result. The German diver’s intent does not change the fact that the end result was a poor, terrible dive that deserved a last place finish. In the end, the label “The Meant To Do That” can be slapped on absolutely anything regardless of how truly bad or awful something is, and thus it’s pretty much a meaningless argument.
Let’s just enjoy the movies we enjoy and express the reasons they worked for us without feeling the need to make excuses for what other people see as flaws. We don’t need to “defend” then things we enjoy, rather just express what, how and why we enjoyed them. Ultimately I think that leads to better discussion anyway.
Just my two cents on a grey Monday morning/afternoon.
