Away!

Gore Verbinski's The Lone Ranger is, I think, a much genuinely weirder movie than many of its Extremely Indignant Detractors are crediting it as. I argue this a bit in my review of the picture for MSN Movies. 

At least the thing gave me some stuff to mull over. Aside from a few engaging performances, The Way Way Back doesn't have nearly as much Stuff To Intellectualize. 

Comments

[Kurzleg]

Trailer looked good, so I'm interested to experience "ping pong with basketballs" effect you describe. The "stunts" in the trailer - all CGI, I assume - look fun, so at least there's that.

[Christopher]

Just a heads-up: Faxon and Rash's first names are switched in the TWWB review.

[Phil Freeman]

Two and a half hours is an hour too long for a Lone Ranger movie.

[Tom Carson]

Even allowing that TLR's weirdness is "interesting" -- and I think it's just an overstuffed train wreck of multiple agendas, myself -- there is such a thing as a movie's implied compact with its audience, particularly when it's a supposed kiddie flick. I've read about droves of parents exiting with their tykes as soon as [SPOILER ALERT] one character cuts out and eats another one's heart. I'm with them, and remember: that's one hefty chunk of change for parents to burn off at the multiplex all of 1/2 hour in.

[Glenn Kenny]

I'm actually not unsympathetic to the "think of the children" complaints of some reviewers, and maybe I should have addressed the issue more explicitly in my own notice, but I figure maybe (hopefully?) I implicitly took care of that with the description of Gatling-gun slaughter...aw, who knows.

[mw]

Seems to me the MPAA should think of the children. Guess there was no unclothed T & or A or in the movie or it no doubt would have gotten an R.

[Oliver_C]

No Klinton Spilsbury cameo? Fuggedaboutit.

[Kurzleg]

@Tom Carson -

Saw TLR yesterday. Some couple brought a six-year-old, and while he didn't react to the "heart" scene, [SPOILER ALERT] he did ask what happened after the scalping at farm.

I enjoyed the film for what it was: an entertainment. I guess I just endured the scenes Glenn talks about in the review in order to see where they'd go with the Lone Ranger/Tonto partnership or the stunt/action sequences. I found those genuinely fun and entertaining. But the other scenes were a distraction.

[Shawn Stone]

Parents apparently see "PG-13" as "Not R." Especially if they're taking 5 and 6 year olds.

Hell, nothing for me will ever top seeing SCARFACE at a matinee the day after Christmas, and noting that a guy had brought a couple of 8 or 9 year old kids with him.

[Harry K.]

As to that particular issue, my personal issue with that was going to see Soul Men and having a woman with a six year old girl sit next to me. I refused to look over during the scene where Bernie Mac was having graphic sex on a porch.

[jbryant]

Tom: I haven't seen the film, but from everything I've heard and read, the event you refer to in your spoiler alert actually takes place off-screen. So does this mean just HEARING about the event is enough to cause parents to drag their kids to the exit?

[Gari S. R.]

TLR was great and you must have had your anti human mask on when you reviewed this movie. Zimmer did a fab job on the music and the movie was terrific. I will add this movie to my library and view it often.

[Thomas]

"your anti human mask"

Ok, that right there is kind of awesome.

[george]

It flopped big-time, earning less than $10M on opening day. This should surprise no one. The last LR movie, in 1981, was a major box-office failure. Did Disney really think there was an audience for this concept 32 years later? Or were they just trying to indulge Johnny Depp?

Coming on the heels of Depp's Dark Shadows flop, he may have trouble getting a $20M paycheck for anything but Pirates sequels.

[LondonLee]

I remember going to see Fight Club and in the silence of the movie theater right after Norton had very graphically shot himself in the head a little voice piped up behind me, "Is he dead, mommy?"

Turned around and there was a woman with a little boy who couldn't have been much more than 7 or 8.

[jbryant]

george: I'm guessing the studio was confident that Depp would be a bigger draw than Klinton Spilsbury.

While it's certainly looking as if the b.o. total will be disappointing, I hope it will grow some legs. I hate to see the rare Western release fail. As of yesterday, it's at about $30 million. Supposedly it would need to make it to about 70 by Sunday to qualify as anything less than a flop. CinemaScore is a B+, which suggests word-of-mouth might not be as terrible as the reviews.

[Tom Carson]

jbryant: it ain't offscreen. Fancily photographed as a reflection in another character's eye,but visualized nonetheless.

[Oliver_C]

The modern summer blockbuster is becoming a genre unto itself, akin to a theme park ride: you can sit in the rollercoaster wearing a stetson, a spacesuit or a superhero costume but it's still going to follow essentially the same frenzied loops and lurches.

Besides, if the Western is ailing to the extent where we need the success of 'The Lone Ranger' to sustain it, then it may truly be time for the Western to cut to black.

I mean, I love the sports movies of Michael Ritchie and I miss the classic Looney Tunes, but I still sure as hell wasn't going to see 'Space Jam'.

[jbryant]

Tom: Thanks for the clarification. Some people just aren't very observant. Probably watching-while-texting. :)

[Joel]

This discussion reminds me of how pissed off my father was, back in '85 or so, when I begged and begged him to take me to Temple of Doom, and then begged and begged for him to take me home when that guy ripped that other guy's still-beating heart out. He did not take me home. The whole thing made me the man I am today (i.e. not much of one).

[george]

LondonLee: I was stunned by the number of very young children at the matinee screening of "World War Z" I attended last week. I know it's "only" PG-13, but seriously ... did their parents really think this was a suitable movie for 5-year-olds? The kids just sat there silently, looking too terrified to move or speak.

[george]

Oliver C said: "The modern summer blockbuster is becoming a genre unto itself, akin to a theme park ride: you can sit in the rollercoaster wearing a stetson, a spacesuit or a superhero costume but it's still going to follow essentially the same frenzied loops and lurches."

After taking in the scenes of massive destruction in Iron Man 3, Man of Steel and World War Z, I'm afraid this is where mainstream American movies are headed:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-michael-bay-romantic-comedy-to-focus-on-love-s,33010/

[Kurzleg]

From the review: "This is a movie that meticulously recreates a Gatling-gun slaughter of Native Americans, asking for empathy and tears and a sense of indignation at injustice, and then, as the simulated dead bodies are still steaming from the hot lead that's been pumped into them, cuts to a theoretically side-splitting gag involving a large animal poised in an incongruous location."

This is a little inaccurate since I don't think it was a direct cut from the one scene to the other. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember several scenes in between. Now, you can make the case that the predicament that's mitigated by the large animal's appearance greatly diminishes the massacre's import, but it's not as jarring as you suggest.