Thursday, December 07, 2006

When Leading Ladies Need Throttling


I hate how negative I can sometimes be. I really really hate it, you know. But how else is a critic meant to carry on when his week's viewing has included this vicious and wrong but infuriatingly well-executed genocidal rumble in the jungle, this sad, stunted and waddling half-stab at a genuinely ambitious children's 'toon, this slice of pure Yuletide cheese, so pornily predictable as to defeat criticism altogether, and this other slice of pure Yuletide cheese fermented at source 2006 years, 11 months and about 18 days ago?

Enough for one week, you'd hope. But there I was, all but ready to pronounce Cameron Diaz's excruciating performance in The Holiday the worst by a leading actress in 2006, and I had to go and blunder like a complete idiot into this shit: courtesy of a wretchedly uninteresting "literary romance" and its puckered-up little Renée doll, so winsome you could drown her in the village pond, we suddenly have a tie on our hands. I will make the admittedly extreme claim that I'd happily not see either of these actresses in another film again for about a decade, or five years if they behave themselves. Consider this a public health warning, and be very, very afraid.

8 comments:

NicksFlickPicks said...

Is it true that you work with Kate Winslet?

If all that's required is you switching from the Film to the Wedding dept., do you think we could arrange a house-swap sometime, so that I could enjoy your fabulous country cottage?

StinkyLulu said...

But thank you, dearest Tim.

Your negativity has brought a giddy brightness to my otherwise dreary morning...

Yaseen Ali said...

My, my. And I was hoping Zellweger's work would be a return to form. What a disappointment.

And Cameron Diaz is the only thing I am dreading in The Holiday.

qta said...

Tim, I adore you and your basket full of negative goodness. After seeing Bobby and For You Consideration, I am feeling a bit snarky myself.

Emma said...

Lol. Agreed on The Nativity story, though. Shit.

T said...

Sometimes I envy your job, and then there are the other times...

Frankly I'd rather roast and eat my own dog than see The Holiday, having had the nasty suspicion that all the best bits were in the trailer. All the rest look equally ghastly. You have my sympathies.

On the other hand, I nearly wet myself laughing just then. The description of Miss Potter as "this shit" is just sublime.

T said...

Best bits of The Holiday, that is, not my dog. I'll go now.

NATHANIEL R said...

i had a similar eye gouged out reaction to Renée's 'work' (and i used the term uncomfortably) in Miss Fugly too.