Isn’t it interesting how our opinions change concerning the particulars when we like a movie as opposed to when we don’t? When we like a movie we are more willing to forgive plot holes, effects issues, bad acting, poor endings, etc. Yet, when we dislike a movie we begin picking apart all of the things we find ourselves forgiving in other films.
I got to thinking about this as I was preparing a reply to a comment a reader by the name of “Natrix” left on my review of Hot Tub Time Machine. He wrote:
Brad, I saw this a couple weeks ago and while I almost always agree with you, I think you’re way off base on this one. Maybe it’s generational, but having been born in ’84 I didn’t find this all that funny. I smirked a couple times, but I don’t remember ever truly laughing. Some of the movie was laughably bad, so maybe that counts for something? The scenes using green screen we’re poorly chroma-keyed as well, big pet peeve of mine.
First off, comedies are always subjective so it’s pretty much pointless to argue how funny or unfunny a film is. So when “Natrix” says he didn’t find Hot Tub Time Machine funny who am I to argue? However, I wonder if he would have been so quick to point out the green screen work if he had found the film funnier.
Certainly the green screen work is bad, but it’s no worse visually than a lot of the rear projection work used in any countless number of scenes from classic Hollywood films syncing pre-filmed backgrounds with studio staged sequences. Yet, those are easily forgiven due to the fact they were forced to shoot on studio sets, the budgetary constraints and the lack of digital effects.
Obvious or not, it was occasionally used to perfection such as in North by Northwest with Cary Grant’s drunk driving scene and the excellent crop dusting scene. Yet, it was obvious. Check out the clip from Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man to the right, one of my favorite Hitch films, and it’s rather clear they aren’t driving down a real street, or check out a green screen example followed by an obvious matte painting in Marnie.
I was also thinking about this recently as I watched Collateral on Blu-ray. Definitely one of my modern day favorites, I still think Collateral has a bit of a letdown ending considering everything that comes before it. While the execution of the finale is top notch (with excellent green screen work mind you), the dead cellphone battery and the random chase through the subway just doesn’t live up to the rest of the film in my opinion. Yet, I still love it, and looking back at my 2004 review of the film not a word of the ending is mentioned. I loved the film and was willing to forgive such a slight misstep.
It’s only natural we do this, we don’t want the other 95% of a film spoiled by the 5% we didn’t necessarily like so we tend to let it slide without comment. We rationalize, and it isn’t necessarily making excuses as much as it’s just a means of looking over certain elements of a film and focusing on the parts we did like. It’s only when there isn’t enough to hold on to that we seem to shift into nitpick mode.
I’m not saying “Natrix” is nitpicking with his comments on Hot Tub Time Machine, it’s more to the fact I was ready to excuse the poor green screen work and had a reply ready for him even though I knew he was right. I felt the same way about the green screen work in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, which was really quite bad. However, when I mentioned it to a friend of mine he told me he believed Scorsese did it intentionally to mimic films from the ’50s. True or not, it’s just another rationalization made by someone that enjoyed the movie. No harm, no foul.
The truth of the matter is that while Hot Tub Time Machine has its faults, I was able to overlook them due to the enjoyment I found in the rest of the film and they weren’t detrimental to the story, which made it that much easier to forget about them. I could say the green screen looked bad due to a lack of budget as they blew their load on the film’s finale, but it’s probably best to say, “Yeah, it looked bad, but it didn’t really bother me because I enjoyed the rest of the film so much.” It’s not exactly the most professional of film criticisms, but it’s the truth.
