Hey, plenty of people paid to see this contrived, silly bullshit, why tinker with success? That’s like insisting that McDonalds start using fresh ingredients or something.

Yes, they have a word for that, it’s call MEDIOCRE.

And that, ladies in gentlemen, describes exactly why we receive so many sub-par movies like this one.

Well I’ll be goddamned! That’s super interesting, thanks.

Great article. The problem with pointing out this sort of idiocy is that if you say it too stridently, you’ll trigger the MAGRRR internet backlash, and 500 grown-ass white men will show up in the greys arguing against your purported “censorship.”

Was it not? I thought Happy Days was essentially a TV version of the movie, with the Fonz standing in for the cool guy character; etc.

Yes, we do remember all the press reports of how horrible Woodstock 99 was.  Thanks for reminding us that we remember.

You said it best, though I would replace “fame” with “box office draw,” though maybe they’re the same.

No point in getting animated by it. When Blunt can greenlight a movie with her name—as Rock did for Rampage, and that Towering Inferno movie—her salary will go up.

Sure, but she wasn’t the lead, and the movie wasn’t sold on her presence. Indeed, having never seen QP, I had to look up what you were talking about because it wasn’t obvious.

I got up and left a Star is Born right after she joins him onstage for Shallow (I knew where the movie was headed and didn’t want to lose that high), so I never heard this song, and never saw Maine’s distaste for it. Which is to say despite knowing the characters and the movie, I’ve never heard this song before.

Just talking through our different perceptions of the movie, certainly not intended to be aggressive. As for me being “not equipped to comprehend”(now THAT’S pretty aggressive), are you saying your ethnicity makes you less able to spot pretty serious logic problems with the script? Because as I said, I entirely…

That’s a better explanation, but I ask: why would they construct this elaborate fantasy of them working as servants when it’s sure to pique his interest as to whether the parents are racist? I mean, because the only black people around are servants, it makes the parents look racist. If the black people been hanging…

Well, as I said, the first half of the movie was intelligent and scary, but if you were still scared after the whole silly brain transplant bit was rolled out, you must not watch many scary movies.

Agreed. In fact, it wasn’t particularly scary. If you delete the inane “funny” scenes of the friend (which were apparently tacked on to lengthy an otherwise too-short movie, and it shows), you basically have a good, slightly long episode of the Twilight Zone.

A wonderful article! I love the film, but this article gave me new reasons to do so.  Thank you!  Quality criticism.

In the original Times post about this, they interviewed douchebag, and at every turn he offered explanations that confirmed (i) he is a gross misogynistic douchebag, and (ii) he has no idea.

Because recognizing the reality of any cultural power disparity, or any cultural power disparity displayed in a work of art, makes you the “PC Police,” and if we all know one thing, that’s bad.

Yeah, he’s bipolar.  Literally everything gets under his skin.

Well, would you attack a kid in a wheelchair for not being able to run up steps?  The dude is bipolar.  It doesn’t excuse his behavior, but do you want to be the kind of person that dunks on the mentally infirmed?