Tuesday, August 18, 2009

I wish Nora Ephron would quit wasting everybody's time

All her movies kinda suck. Not completely suck -- there'd be a camp value in that -- but kinda suck in that you always leave the theater thinking how much better it could have been. A film version of My Life In France could have had so much magic. Instead Julie & Julia is sappy and dumb. And I would hardly say that Ephron "wisely included" Dan Aykroyd's 30-year-old SNL skit. It was actually a pretty cynical decision. Did it move the story along? Did the characters' reactions to it reveal anything about any of them? No. It only provided a laugh where Ephron's own writing couldn't.

Oh! And another thing: doesn't Ephron's movie sorta belittle 9/11 victims? All those people, with their dead relatives and their damaged lungs, seemed like Julie's two-dimensional self-obsessed friends -- they merely existed to make our heroine sad! See? Ephron really does kinda suck.

3 comments:

Mr. Middlebrow said...

So true. She seems to put way more effort into convincing the audience that her work is smart and clever and sharply observed than she does actually making the work itself, y'know, smart or clever or sharply observed.

Anonymous said...

I’d pay to see that review on the Today Show.

Irene Done said...

And don't even get me started on Amy Adams.