Over my dead body

So if I hadn't have already seen Transformers 2 this past summer, Jennifer's Body would have been a lock for the worst movie of the year. Instead I have to live with the sad, sad knowledge that I have wasted perfectly good money on two extraordinarily shitty movies. I mean, truly vile.

Ordinarily I don't review movies often on the blog. By the time they reach Iqaluit they've normally been reviewed to death by others, so who cares what I think. But I like to think of this as a Public Service Announcement. Perhaps you're reading the blog and visiting Iqaluit and it's been a long time since you've seen a movie in a theatre. So you're thinking "Hey, let's go see Jennifer's Body. Well, it would be a shame to waste what might be your only cinematic experience in months on such crap. Or perhaps you're thinking it might be alright as a rental. But it's not. And so, I write this in the hopes of sparing you the loss of time and money I experienced last evening.

Now, you may notice a similarity between Jennifer's Body and Transformers 2 in that they both feature Megan Fox. These movies do not suck because of Fox, I should make that clear right up front. It may call into question her judgment, but I think anyone who has ever read an interview with her can pretty much figure that out on their own.

Transformers 2 sucked for a whole host of reasons. First of all, someone paid writers an obscene amount of money to turn in a script that is an affrontage to anyone who has ever used the English language. I would suggest finding them and beating them to the point that they suffered enough brain damage so they can't write anymore, but it's pretty clear someone did that to them after the first Transformers movie and they still paid them to write the script. And we all suffered for that. Awful dialogue, stupid plot point, idiotic and unlikeable characters, God, it's hard to find a single redeeming thing about the movie.

Then there's director Michael Bay, who if he wasn't taking large amounts of drugs when he was directing the movie, well, he should consider doing them for his next one. Choppy, quick edited action sequences featuring animated robots of which we don't know who or what 99% of them are. Horrible.

Plus the movie is too long. As one wag suggested, they could have easily clipped 20 minutes from the movie's length if only they had not done so many slow motion scenes of Megan Fox's tits bouncing up and down.

So, Transformers 2 written by the brain damaged, featuring a lunatic director and a sightly crazy actress. I think I know where most of the blame lies.

But with Jennifer's Body, there's actually some pedigree involved in the production. Diablo Cody wrote the script, and she wrote the tremendously fun Juno. Karyn Kusama directed and she did Girlfight a few years ago, which got lots of good reviews. But this is just....awful.

If you're going to do a high school movie about a demonic sacrifice gone wrong and turning a cheerleader into a succubus, then you better bring some of the following - genuine scares, lots of gore, humour, social commentary, black humour or just be so awful you come out the other side and land into the campy fun category.

I honestly don't know what Coady was trying to do here. It feels like after Juno she dug through some high school notebooks and threw them at the director and said, "here, make a movie out of this. Oh, and get Megan Fox. People will be too busy drooling over her to notice what a piece of shit this is."

It's not funny. There's the occasional sparkle that reminds you that Coady is supposed to be a good writer, but it's so rare and fleeting that it makes you mad when it shows up. I wondered why the rest of the writing wasn't up to that level. It's badly paced. It's not scary, sexy, gory, if there's social commentary about high school in there anywhere I can't find it. It's just a turgid lump. It's not even bad enough to be camp fun. It's just boring.

When I glanced at my watch and noticed only 45 minutes had passed, when I assumed it had been hours, I nearly did something I never do...I nearly got up and walked out.

Oh, and for the record, Megan Fox was fine. I'm not saying she's going to win an Oscar for this. Let's not be crazy. But she wasn't the problem in the movie. Only so much you can do when your writer and director hang you out to dry.

So yes, very bad. Avoid like plague. It's not empowering towards women or anything else. It's just bad. Anyone telling you differently probably thought Transformers 2 was a good time at the movies.

Last Five
1. Red hill mining town - U2
2. Weapon (live) - Matthew Good*
3. Hungry like the wolf - Reel Big Fish
4. Jacob's ladder - Bruce Springsteen
5. The levee's gonna break - Bob Dylan