Shoova loved it. I only kinda liked it. Christie didn’t like it and Bean thought it was alright: yup, we’re talking Cloverfield.
Shot nearly entirely with a digital hand-held (pass the dramamine, please), it’s allegedly like an updated, Americanized version of Godzilla. Only, if the actual monster was seldom seen and all the Japanese people around him were totally self-involved scenesters.
On the night of Rob’s going away party (ironically – he is going to Japan) a giant monster attacks Manhattan and the events are captured on videotape, first seen as a DoD evidentiary exhibit. We get snippets of video from Rob’s one torrid night with friend Beth, taken a month before the goodbye party and stupidly taped-over by Rob’s friend “Hud.” In between we get footage of mini-monsters flying from the feet of the giant monster (reminiscent of the ‘face sucking’ aliens from the far-superior Alien, which we watched last night), people being attacked and, the coolest thing about Cloverfield, Lady Liberty’s statuesque head careening through the sky and landing somewhere downtown.
So, the action is something like this: sex, party, fun, fun, stupidity, fun, fun, drinking, gossip, giant monster collisions, implausibility, gore, stupid rescue twist as plot device, fun, fun (well, for the audience anyway), rescue, salvation, oh crap,monster, not so fun, not over, monster again, drawn-out final scenes — and CUT. The moral (I think) was something about love conquering everything.
Whatever. That’s fine and all, but kind of self-defeating when you consider the actual ending – where the alien actually conquered everything.
Cloverfield earned a whopping two whisks out of five from my ratings system. Which is as follows:
Five whisks means it’s a great movie that I couldn’t bear to walk away from, even if whatever’s cooking on the stove should burn — or, better yet, I’m not even cooking/talking on the phone/pulling weeds/carrying on a conversation/’net surfing/cutting hairballs off my cat —because I’m actually giving a movie my full attention.
Four whisks means it’s a decent movie, decent enough for me to watch and only engage in one of the other aforementioned activities.
Three means it’s fair, and it’s a fair bet I’m probably spending half the time in the kitchen creating something good to eat while talking on the phone.
Two is…well, two whisks is Cloverfield. Think I made chili, crescent rolls and deviled eggs while watching this movie — and then we ate them in the last 30 minutes.
One whisk is usually a movie someone else loves that is totally not my thing, like anything starring Will Ferrell.
Cloverfield, however, did have a perfect ending. Too bad it came about 15 minutes before the movie was over.
