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random fluffy escapisms
Wednesday, 20 September 2006 03:56 pmIn the Department of Self-Indulgent Morning Movies On My Own (a very significant pleasure in my life), I took myself off yesterday to see Monster House, muttering justifications under my breath about my academic interest in both animation and children's gothic*. Monster House is computer-animated, with a slightly plastic texture, but it works very well on a visual level: it's fun to watch the self-conscious horror atmosphere created artificially with creative camera angles, shadows and pans. The house itself is a marvellous, crouching monster, clearly the work of demented obsessives with a suitably paranoid visual imagination.
The story is told very much from the perpective of the three kids who are the protagonists, and I think the evocation of their world view works very well indeed, with moments of lovely humour and insight. Nonetheless, in its central theme and story this is not a kids' movie. Apart from its investigation of a very adult notion of emotional entrapment and obsessive relationships, the film is overall a rather despairing indictment of human prejudice and cruelty towards the abnormal: the grotesque is rendered monstrous solely through the sadistic and alienating responses it receives. The theme is carried on in subtext throughout the film, including a rather entertaining comic-con geek caricature. In the final analysis I'm not sure the film is entirely successful: it has the usual climactic-explosion-plus-feel-good-reconciliation ending, but it feels rather uneasily pasted over the seething gothic angsts which motivate the film.
Fluffy Escapism 2 was motivated by the fact that the Evil Landlord, who has been snuffling around the house for the last couple of days, has apparently infected me with his Evil Germanic Germs - I'm coming down with something bronchial, in spades. Miffed, and spurred on by the discovery of a couple of Exclusive vouchers in the bottom of my Handbag Of Doom, I went forth and acquired Ella Enchanted, the book, not the film.
I'm not mad about Gail Carson Levine's writing style, which is flat and awkward at times, but the reading experience has done that retroactive thing where I now like the movie less having seen what it could have been. The book is a rather attractive and at times subtle reworking of "Cinderella": its characters are a good deal more real and rounded than in the film, and definitely less inclined to political excess and overstatement. It was something of a shock to realise that the film created the evil uncle out of whole cloth: while I would have lamented the loss of Cary Elwes, his concentration of campy evil is exceptionally superficial compared to the novel's far more subtle exploration of power and difference. So, warning to everymoment, in particular: if you see the film, it's probably more enjoyable if you pretend it doesn't have anything to do with the book.
* The definitive paper on Lemony Snicket is still rootling around somewhere in my back brain, although I think it needs to await the advent of the last book, next month.
The story is told very much from the perpective of the three kids who are the protagonists, and I think the evocation of their world view works very well indeed, with moments of lovely humour and insight. Nonetheless, in its central theme and story this is not a kids' movie. Apart from its investigation of a very adult notion of emotional entrapment and obsessive relationships, the film is overall a rather despairing indictment of human prejudice and cruelty towards the abnormal: the grotesque is rendered monstrous solely through the sadistic and alienating responses it receives. The theme is carried on in subtext throughout the film, including a rather entertaining comic-con geek caricature. In the final analysis I'm not sure the film is entirely successful: it has the usual climactic-explosion-plus-feel-good-reconciliation ending, but it feels rather uneasily pasted over the seething gothic angsts which motivate the film.
Fluffy Escapism 2 was motivated by the fact that the Evil Landlord, who has been snuffling around the house for the last couple of days, has apparently infected me with his Evil Germanic Germs - I'm coming down with something bronchial, in spades. Miffed, and spurred on by the discovery of a couple of Exclusive vouchers in the bottom of my Handbag Of Doom, I went forth and acquired Ella Enchanted, the book, not the film.
I'm not mad about Gail Carson Levine's writing style, which is flat and awkward at times, but the reading experience has done that retroactive thing where I now like the movie less having seen what it could have been. The book is a rather attractive and at times subtle reworking of "Cinderella": its characters are a good deal more real and rounded than in the film, and definitely less inclined to political excess and overstatement. It was something of a shock to realise that the film created the evil uncle out of whole cloth: while I would have lamented the loss of Cary Elwes, his concentration of campy evil is exceptionally superficial compared to the novel's far more subtle exploration of power and difference. So, warning to everymoment, in particular: if you see the film, it's probably more enjoyable if you pretend it doesn't have anything to do with the book.
* The definitive paper on Lemony Snicket is still rootling around somewhere in my back brain, although I think it needs to await the advent of the last book, next month.
