So there's this movie coming out called "War Horse" directed by Steven Spielberg. You may have heard of him, but have you seen the trailer? It's gotta win the award for hokiest looking piece of schmaltzy Oscar-bait drama I've ever seen. It's just completely unreal. The first time the trailer came on TV me and the wife totally thought we were being set up for a joke, half expecting Jim Carrey to pop out with a reveal for Ace Ventura 3. It would at least be more appropriate.
I delved into the dangerous waters of the IMDB message boards to see if anyone else agreed with me and I came back with the title of this post, ripped straight from a thread made by someone else with a bit of sense. I mean, C'MON, this has got to be parody, right, right?!?
There's just too many awful cliches to count. Luckily, someone on IMDB started counting for me:
- The girl standing up in her car dumbfounded at a horse walking past her like it's the first creature of it's kind to ever walk on earth.
- The single teardrop trailing down the girls face.
- "That's my 'orse!"
- The general sepia tone.
- That shot of the countryside.
- A STEVEN SPIELBERG FILM and the rest of them embarrassing title cards.
I'll add quickly:
- Includes the 'untameable horse' cliche.
- Gratuitous glamor shots of a horse riding in some idyllic countryside.
- Includes British people fighting in war to give everything more gravitas.
- Old man/Werner Herzog lookalike spouting off old-timey wisdom.
By the time the words "This Christmas" appear near the end I just can't take it anymore and double, nay, triple over in laughing. "Stop it, stop it!", I say like when you're being tickled and you can't breathe anymore. It's just SO bad that it's HILARIOUS. The sad part though is that I found more than one thread on IMDB with people saying the trailer brought them to tears. These must be the same people who shop at Wal-Mart and get excited to see Shrek 7: Back in the Shrek. I, for one, will not be seeing this movie, no matter how much praise it may get. Also - HORSES!
2 comments:
Zrbo, don't your arms ever get tired from always hitting the nail on the head?
Who even greenlit this thing? Did Spielberg's agent give him some phone call where he said, "Yeah, Schindler's List and Munich, they were OK, but what you really need to do is a HORSE movie!"
Forget the fact that the film looks so cliched. Who even wants to watch a movie about a horse? As Roger Ebert said his his review of Seabiscuit, "although I can easily feel love for dogs I have never bonded much with horses."
Maybe the full-length movie isn't as bad as the trailer makes it seem. God I hope so. Not that I was eagerly awaiting another Spielberg movie, but to think that the man can make any movie he damn well pleases, and he chooses this?
I posted a link to this on facebook and a good friend replied "It's like Black Beauty meets Saving Private Ryan". It reminds me of those fake movie trailers they showed at the beginning of Tropic Thunder, I really want Ben Stiller to be the one riding the horse.
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