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Self-explanatory title there: films you once thought were great but which, you now realise, suck. And why. I'll start the ball rolling with...
Easy Rider
I can't believe I used to love this film. I know why: it was because me and my mates had just got into dope and hey, whaddaya know, people smoke dope in this film, it must be cool! But it isn't! It's one of the most smug films in the history of the cinema. The protagonists aren't existential pilgrims: they're idiots. 'Oh, look, those rednecks are looking funny at us and Jack Nicholson. Oh, I know what we'll do, we'll set up camp just down the road from the nasty rednecks. What? They're attacking us? Damn, who could have predicted that?' Except everyone watching the film, you pricks!
It's not just that, though, it's that the characters just sort of stumble through the film in this half-retarded trance state and never try to make any connection with society, or even try to improve it, instead concentrating on somehow 'finding themselves' in their pompous drug oddysey. They're like gap year students on bikes, basically. Even the Hell's Angels formed some kind of rudimentary social force. But we're invited to view these two cockheads as heroes and to laugh at the hippies on the commune where they hang out, because, y'know, they're not cool, they don't look like Peter Fonda in his leathers and they sing stupid songs instead of standing around looking enigmatic...On the other hand, though, they are at least trying to create some alternative society, rather than just selling some drugs and taking an awayday to New Orleans off the profits. Much is made of the fact that they've sown their crops in sand, but at least they've tried. And then, of course, you see, they drive Fonda and Hopper out because, like, the counterculture is just as bad as the man, dig? But of course they drive them out, what have they done except hang about and make sarky comments or just look cool while the hippies are doing all the hard work? You'll notice that neither of the protagonists thinks to go up to the hippies and say 'Look, sorry about this, but I can't help but notice you've sown your crops in sand, and that isn't going to work. Tell you what, I've got some cash on me at the moment, why don't I pop into town, get us some decent agricultural supplies, then we'll find some better land and sort out a proper system of growing this stuff?' But noooooooooo. That wouldn't be cool, would it? You wind up feeling sorry for any of the poor hippies if they've tried to ask Fonda for help. 'No, man, I'm sorry, can't help pull your plough, I have to stand here and look deep.' In fact, he wouldn't even say anything, would he? Just stand there and look at them, to make it look like there was something wrong with them...
It's just such a boatload of wank, really, when you think about it. The main thrust of the film only comes from the ending, where both characters get shot just for being different, and to be fair this is wrong, and good on the film-makers for daring to confront prejudice in their film in which there are no black characters and all the women are placed in subservient roles where their only job is to placate or cause trouble for the boyz. But really, if they'd survived and carried on with their pathetic, boring, soulless proto-Thatcherite existence, people would have came out of the cinema wishing the characters had been shot. Once you've had a think about how stupid and shallow the 'heroes' actually are, it's hard not to feel a bit of sympathy with those stupid rednecks in the truck.
So anyway, Easy Rider there, a film I once thought coolest of the cool but now cannot stand. What lumps of celluloid gold from your past have now turned to dross in the harsh light of now? |
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