true romance. it was all right, and there were some delightful small roles (dennis hopper as dad, christopher walken as a sadistic lawyer, gary oldman as a pimp), but overall it was sort of annoying and formulaic, with a veneer of lame tarantino hipsterism laid over the top that failed to make it sparkle. now, i know that this was before the concept of tarantino hipsterism existed (being something he wrote before pulp fiction came out), but he clearly hadn't quite gotten it down yet. the elvis stuff is just pointlessly stuck on. and while the meet-cute-at-kung-fu-movie thing is cute, it sort of is there as a gimmick and then disappears for the rest of the movie. and the sort of endearingly nerdy character christian slater starts with (the kind of guy who will fail at a bar pickup because he tells a woman he wants to take her to a kung fu movie) completely disappears the moment he gets a gun in his hand; for the rest of the movie, he's an annoying asshole (except, briefly, when he's talking about vietnam movies with the producer guy). then there's patricia arquette, who i keep thinking is really hot until i look at her closely. she is sort of hot in this movie, and then you realize it's mostly a matter of jiggly push-up bras (not that i'm complaining). more importantly, she also wears on the nerves, with the screeching and the giggling and the hey-hey. it wasn't awful, i just felt like i could have been doing something else with my time.
May 13, 2004 12:45 PMCategories: movies
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