The Spirit

The Spirit (2008)


Director: Frank Miller
Writer: Frank Miller (screenplay) Will Eisner (comic)
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson

**We have decided that this movie cannot be spoiled. (that it's impossible to spoil because there is nothing to spoil. not that we don't want to spoil it for you. you should read between the lines here and never watch this movie)**

Synopsis
Oh, I have to write the synopsis of this?  Gee, OK.

Fairly recently in the land of whatever-Metropolisburgvilleshireton:

This one kid had a "relationship" with this unnecessarily cute girl, but then somebody shot her cop father so she left to become a Mistress Thief.  But the guy was more in love with the city than with her so he decided to stay. (Also she quite rudely declined to ask him.) Instead he fell in love with the law and became a cop.  And then somebody shot him.  And then for some reason to which I wasn't paying attention (see below) he became a vigilante with a new identity: the Spirit of the City.  Also somewhere in here he

a) became invulnerable (see below)
and b) learned that between each pair of female legs there is a distinct vaginal opening.

Anyway, just before the credits roll you learn that--wait for it!--one plus one equals two.


The Woman
this might be the worst movie i've ever seen. worse than "bride wars" worse than my memories of that john goodman movie "matinee" which i actually turned off when i was a pre-teen. this was torture to watch in it's entirety. i did it for you people, and you should appreciate my sacrifice.  i don't know where to begin on the root of where this all went terribly wrong. every choice made was the wrong one. like an infected pussy scab turned gangrenous on a limb. it was just all bad, man. the acting was public access channel bad. and just because the fank miller style worked for frank miller in "sin city" does not mean it can work for every comic turned movie. "sin city" was gritty and violent and written well. this was 40's radio fluffy trying to be tuff enough, and the art direction just made it more unbearable. and there are plenty of movies where this james cagney/ katherine hepurn style of speech worked moderately well. i.e. "the hudsucker proxy", or i'm even willing to go as far as to say "dick tracy" was better than this. if i could give this a zero star rating i would. if there was a time machine where i could go back in time and get my hour and a half back, and erase all knowledge of this movie's viewing, only the hint of a bad taste in my mouth, and the instinct to treat this movie like the plague. i would risk a time paradox.

MOster
I'm tempted to just write "see above" and live with the circular-reference joke, but no.


There were many things wrong with this movie.  Not being the comic book dork in the Intersection (i.e. my marriage) I can't speak to the accuracy of the story porting.  However, being the dork snob that I am I expect it to be pretty close.  With that in mind, I'm opening the gate to this edition of Three... Jump! on the bottom step.

I don't know how much of the acting is the actors' fault.  Scarlett Johansen, for example, plays her role in exactly the opposite way from Happier, With Your Mouth Open and the rookie cop (who, of course, is the eager, extra-super-smart girl from out of town) continually moves her jaw around in a circle while she speaks.  Then there's our Mr. Jackson, who we know is capable of pulling thousands of asses to the edges of their seats

Then there's our Mr. Jackson, who we know is capable of pulling millions of asses to the edges of their seats



but here he can't even keep necks vertical.  The gigantic mastermind-explains-the-plot-to-the-hero scene cuts back and forth between his pontificating and fuzzy flashbacks to Mr. Spirit's history, but it does so in such a history teacher, Ben Stein in Ferris manner that I just couldn't pay attention.  Luckily nothing else about the movie made me give a flying fuck.

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OK.  I've been working on this for three days.  It's not nearly as funny as I'd like it to be and there's no point in continuing. I strongly recommend against watching this movie.