Sunday, September 24, 2017

King for a Day

The reward of receiving an Oscar® might not be as prestigious as one might think.

Take the movie, Kingsman: the Golden Circle......please!

First off, way to incorporate the name of a failed mid-70s to mid-80's discount retailer into a multi-million dollar movie title.

Secondly, there are four - count 'em, FOUR - Oscar® winners in this film.   Four!

Granted, one of them is Halle Berry, so I guess you have like 3.15 winners here. And while Berry is stilted at best, Julianne Moore proves that doing Todd Haynes movies don't pay the rent, so she needed a franchise movie to make bank...........and. she. sucks. in this.  Just horrible.

I should back up. Our friend James (of David & James) texted to ask us to the movie. Granted, the selection was a better choice than It, but so would have Shoah.  I gracefully tried to change the option, saying we'd never seen the first one, but he came back with "neither have we".  So I'm all like, "it's like trying to catch up on Police Academy 3 when you haven't seen 1 or 2.  The Academy plots are so intricate, you'd never catch on.   (insert your mental eye-roll emoji now.)

So - we went to see the Kingsman. For the record, David was also not on board with the selection. This is one of those marriage compromises I keep hearing about.

Our local paper gave it a D rating. Knowing that David & James never read the local, I opted not to tell them until after the movie, which made them ROR!  D might be strong, but C- would be the very highest grade it should get.

That higher grade mostly goes to the quasi-lead played by Taron Egerton (pictured). He's cute, good accent, and isn't too hammy in a movie with the over-the-top effects, stunts and cgi that plague this movie.

Yes, I get it originated from a comic book or graphic novel or something. I have no affinity for those. But there holes in the story wherein Sherman tanks could drive through that could have been tightened, and they were just all over the place in terms of story anyways.....including a portion where Moore's character was keeping Elton John captive (or as the Plain Dealer said: he was a "parody of an old fat queen".  Nailed it!).

(There are spoiler alerts here, so turn away if you plan on purchasing a ticket for a C- movie.)


Soooooo much going on in the movie....and most of it not really relevant. Afterwards, I realized the premise for actual plot didn't even truly exist.

Let's pretend that, say, Moore's character ran an illicit, illegal organization for which the Kingsman weren't even looking, yet, said organization takes out all but three in the spy folk, which then now has to come looking for Moore's group.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to not bring attention on yourself and your ultimate demise? But then I suppose the movie wouldn't have existed.

And......and.......then we would have missed the scene where Egerton's character fingers a woman a Glastonbury.

Yes, you read that right.

Yup the tracking shot of his finger going down her torso down and into her panties. The four gay men were all "ah hahahahaha....and ewwwwww" all at the same time.

Still, the movie was almost worth it for Edward Holcroft (whom I only know from BBC's British Spy)


I can take or leave Tatum Channing....or is it Channing Tatum (?), but he's ok in this (and he knows how to wear a pair of dungarees). Jeff Bridges is not. It is one of the weaker performances in which I've seen Mark Strong  (see what I did there?).

The stunts and effects are over the top and super unrealistic, most notably the ability to find a parking space on a London street right in front of your haberdashery shoppe, without even the need to parallel park.  I can only suspend my disbelief so far.

Oh - and they blow up a dog, so I was totally not down with that.

With all the action, I can say my resting heart rate never went up one itoa. That's gotta same something, no?    (ok...ok....maybe when Holcroft was on screen. And as sexy as Mark Strong can be....he wasn't here.)

So in short: Edward Holcroft and a somewhat appealing Taron Egerton (how many managers did it take to come up with that name?) were not enough to save this movie.

I'd say 'maybe if we had seen the original'...... but I'm going out on a limb to say, if I saw the first one, it's doubtful I would have watched the second.

James and David laughed the entire way through at the absurdity of it all. James felt so bad for dragging us, he paid for dinner.



2017 Movie Count / Goal:  06 of 24


Song by: Thompson Twins

5 comments:

Raybeard said...

Majority opinion here is that it's a bit of a stinker and, worse luck, I'll be going to see it on Tues. Don't exactly fancy having to sit through the depiction of a dog's violent demise either. Oh dear - but win some, lose some.

Fearsome Beard said...

Oh I’ll happily take Channing Tatum with or without the dungarees.

The Cool Cookie said...

We couldn't get through the first movie. It was weak on plot and just an excuse to show violence on an unreasonably epic scale. A movie that advertises violence isn't a movie, just like a cake without eggs isn't really a cake. It's something. But it isn't anything that you want very much of.

Jeffrey said...

Chatum Tanning.

rebecca said...

Tanning Chatum
I hated the first one.