Cabba's ReviewsPontypool = PontyCrap!
June 18th 2009 05:56
Ok. So, I watched Pontypool at the Sydney Film Festival a couple of days ago. I went in with extremely high expectations mostly derived from raving reviews and the fact that the director had done reasonable work in the past. MAN OH MAN WAS I DISAPPOINTED...It's been a while since I've watched a truly annoying film. I do believe the last really annoying film I watched was 'The House Bunny'. That film just embodied all the wrong messages to give to our younger generation of women in a society that's tried very hard to destroy patriarchal systems. Basically, throughout the film, girls only became popular after a physical makeover of some sort. It was a step back in all that society's achieved.
BUT, back to Pontypool. GAHH! The frustration was climatic! Here's a little about the film:
PLOT *WITHOUT SPOILERS
The entire film is set inside a small radio station, where former hot shot radio announcer, Grant Mazzy, sits in his little soundproof studio, telling the people of Pontypool the daily news. Suddenly, one day, they get a story coming in from their correspondent from the outside, saying there is a riot. Purely from this correspondent, they are told that people are dying from a disease. The trick is how this disease is transmitted. The result turns people into cannibal zombies...
The biggest criticism I can give to the film is that it fails to establish a solid tone. It goes back and forth between black humour and seriousness...leaving me very very confused. There is a certain scene in the film where one of the surviving people kills a zombie. The whole killing scenario was laughable and the characters straight after, made jokes about the whole thing. However, a few minutes after, the person who killed the zombie starts drinking and crying because they felt bad for killing a 'person'. This whole is scene is very serious and contrasts so drastically to the previous 'making fun of' scene, that I am left frustrated at whether they're serious or not.
Another thing that's purely personal is the fact that the entire film relied WAY TOO MUCH on the imagination. Now, normally, I'm a huge fan of not showing, and leaving it up to the audience. But in this case, I found myself getting angry that they couldn't even spare a few thousand from their budget to shoot ONE scene OUTSIDE the damn radio station to give a glimpse of the destruction outside. I realise they might have wanted to create this claustrophobic space to add to the tension, but they needn't have not shown ANY outside activity at all! That was just a bad decision. A shot of the outside would've put so much more in perspective for the audience and would've allowed the stakes to be higher for our characters.
The dialogue between the characters were sometimes laugh out loud funny and quite intelligent, but again, it lacked belief. With the craziness that was going on, the dialogue just didn't match. This again goes back to the retarded tone of the film...if it was trying to be funny, BE FUNNY. Not, write weird funny lines every 10 minutes, then disperse serious tension in between. IT DOESN'T WORK!
I'm probably the only person who really truly didn't like this film. But I really couldn't help it. I tried soooo hard to like it! I mean...zombie films can do not wrong! But this film really sucked.
I give this film 1.5 STARS OUT OF 5.
PEACE OUT.
BUT, back to Pontypool. GAHH! The frustration was climatic! Here's a little about the film:
PLOT *WITHOUT SPOILERS
The entire film is set inside a small radio station, where former hot shot radio announcer, Grant Mazzy, sits in his little soundproof studio, telling the people of Pontypool the daily news. Suddenly, one day, they get a story coming in from their correspondent from the outside, saying there is a riot. Purely from this correspondent, they are told that people are dying from a disease. The trick is how this disease is transmitted. The result turns people into cannibal zombies...
The biggest criticism I can give to the film is that it fails to establish a solid tone. It goes back and forth between black humour and seriousness...leaving me very very confused. There is a certain scene in the film where one of the surviving people kills a zombie. The whole killing scenario was laughable and the characters straight after, made jokes about the whole thing. However, a few minutes after, the person who killed the zombie starts drinking and crying because they felt bad for killing a 'person'. This whole is scene is very serious and contrasts so drastically to the previous 'making fun of' scene, that I am left frustrated at whether they're serious or not.
Another thing that's purely personal is the fact that the entire film relied WAY TOO MUCH on the imagination. Now, normally, I'm a huge fan of not showing, and leaving it up to the audience. But in this case, I found myself getting angry that they couldn't even spare a few thousand from their budget to shoot ONE scene OUTSIDE the damn radio station to give a glimpse of the destruction outside. I realise they might have wanted to create this claustrophobic space to add to the tension, but they needn't have not shown ANY outside activity at all! That was just a bad decision. A shot of the outside would've put so much more in perspective for the audience and would've allowed the stakes to be higher for our characters.
The dialogue between the characters were sometimes laugh out loud funny and quite intelligent, but again, it lacked belief. With the craziness that was going on, the dialogue just didn't match. This again goes back to the retarded tone of the film...if it was trying to be funny, BE FUNNY. Not, write weird funny lines every 10 minutes, then disperse serious tension in between. IT DOESN'T WORK!
I'm probably the only person who really truly didn't like this film. But I really couldn't help it. I tried soooo hard to like it! I mean...zombie films can do not wrong! But this film really sucked.
I give this film 1.5 STARS OUT OF 5.
PEACE OUT.
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