Well, ol John Robie is beginning to really cook, hopefully he can lay his hands on to some real cool projects soon, because so far he's been doing a dang fine job. As for the movie GO... well, it's a confused film, a troubled movie, a floundering flick... (yes, I have seen it, but wasn't motivated to even write a review. That happens more often than not) So I'll leave it to the cat like skills of a one John Robie -for-hire to detail the car wreck for ya...
I should have stayed at home. I should never have put on my stealthy cloth, never have donned my whisper-quiet shoes, never have pulled the shadowy mask over my face. I should have kept my ass in bed with Grace. But no, I had to go out and steal a flick. I'm pissed that I did. On this night it wasn't I who did the stealing my friends. It was the movie GO that stole close to two precious hours from my life. I'd like those two hours back, please.
The thing plays out like a teen/twenty-something Pulpish-Ficionish look into life in LA, with the rave scene being the backdrop for a lot of the action. Doug Liman (spelling) did Swingers, which was a pretty charming flick. Go, his follow-up, is without a doubt in my mind the most boring, stale, staid, stupid, non-emotionally involving piece of garbage I have set my eyes upon in a long, long time. The rave stuff is boring, the Las Vegas stuff is weak, and the only thing that garners anything resembling involvement is the Jay Mohr/Scott Wolf storyline. The only good thing I can say about the movie is, well, at least it wasn't a two hour whine-fest.
Listen, if you're gonna do a movie about youth and if you're gonna go so far as to examine a subculture, at least have the sense to give the thing some balls and some passion. There is neither here. It's not that the actors give bad performances. Hardly. It's just that everyone here is very, very good at being very, very boring. It' s like hanging out with a bunch of glue sniffers for two hours. "What……oh…….uh-huh……………oh……." The writing has this smarmy, look-at-our-cool-scene feeling to it that's so indicative of 90% of writers that want to expound upon the hipness of LA life. Number one, I fucking hate the word hip.
Number two, I got a big beef with techno, and techno plays a big big part in the movie. You want to know where I'm coming from? Gimme a punk band in a tiny club with a hundred sweaty, mad souls and I'm happy as hell. Passion is kids living out of a fucking van, playing their hearts out on stage every night to a crowd that's traveled from all over just to see them, to sing along, to breath a little more life into the music that makes them feel like there ain't nothing ever that's ever gonna stop them. Electronica is an asshole pushing a button on stage and is an escape, not a confrontation. I appreciate the hell out of DJ's mixing live on stage, there's some talent there, but the stuff in Go aint' that. As much as my preconceived notions weighed me down, I cleared my head and went into Go with an open mind. "Please," I said, "show me why I should care, show me the error of my ways." I came out hating the music, and the culture, even more. Go is passionless, cold, and pointless. Take your words like hip and edgy and cram 'em. No amount of hype about this movie is can save it from the sad fact that it's an overly long, boring look into a bunch of idiot's lives. And don't let anyone tell you that it's funny.
Yeah, Katie Holmes is hot. She' s boring as all hell here. If you're the kinda guy who actually likes watching Dawson's Creek YOU probably won't even like the movie because the girl is in the thing for all of ten minutes. It's never, ever a good thing when the screenwriter resorts to having two characters use codenames of characters on 90210. Is that supposed to be funny? What, he's referencing a piece of shit television show, that's supposed to make me smile? Come the hell on….
This thing just drags on and on. There is nothing engaging about most any of these characters. I'm all for showing people how they really are, and I hate it when films resort to crafting the character perfectly so we know when to feel for him or her and we know when to hate him or her. Here, though, the writer has just come up with a bunch of boring assholes who listen to boring music and do boring things. Some sell drugs. Is that supposed to be subversive or something? So what they sell drugs. They go to fucking lame ass raves populated with mindless morons. You filmmakers, you didn't show ANYTHING at all about what makes this stuff so good, you didn't do any kind of exploration into the scene, you didn't make any effort to establish this as something important. I'm not saying that there has to be a banner-like message going across the top of the screen saying "Electronica is important and good because…" That would be supremely moronic. What should have been shown here, though, is a little of the passion that fans of the music will tell you it exudes. A little of the excitement that the music has for so many people. You made the music look like boring trite crap that only acts as an accompaniment to drugs. Why the hell should anyone care?
There is one decent storyline. It's got Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr helping in a drug bust and later going to a freaky cop's house for Christmas dinner. Their storyline is okay but there are so many missed opportunities for humor at the cop's house that it's maddening. There is exactly one funny scene, concerning a cat, in the other parts of the movie. The Vegas stuff-a bunch of guys go to Vegas to tear the town up, geez, where have I seen this before-is real forgettable. They drink, there's the kid from Dancer, Texas as an annoying as hell white-G-boy poser, there's the screen's all-time most annoying kid actor, and there are some topless dancers. Man, this thing has topless dancers and I couldn't stand it. Topless dancers, man! Having a little kid ask for drugs. Ha ha, that is so novel and amusing, ha ha, I never could have though of that joke. Ha ho oh it sucks so bad.
Drug humor, man. It's without a doubt the easiest thing to do in film. Get a kid stoned, have him ramble on a little bit. At least it's kind of funny sometimes. Here I wanted to pull a reverse Purple Rose of Cairo (or Buster Keaton), walk into the screen, and punch the numskulls in the face. You can't imagine how idiotic and completely unfunny the drug kids are here.
Congratulations filmmakers. You've effectively played into the hands off all the damn parents and arrogant authority figures who say that the whole rave scene is a joke. Instead of really doing something cool and proving their asses wrong, you made a testament to their argument. God, I hate this movie.
