Time's Schickel Out of Date

Every summer you can count on The New Yorker's David Denby to do a rant on how dumb the summer movies are. And in that vein, Time's Richard Schickel recently complained about how Pirates of the Caribbean had too many VFX, which got in the way of Johnny Depp's comedy thesping:

These are ripoffs, not homages, but they are also emblematic of a movie that is essentially a special-effects extravaganza. It is, I think, a universal truth of movie making that effects are never funny. They can sometimes wow you, but they can't make you laugh, and Depp cannot stand up to the hubbub they create. No actor can. He can only serve them, which involves him in derring-do that any actor could do about as well as he can.

Yikes. Like, he entirely missed the point of why Depp's sparring with the movie's ingenious effects might wow enough people to stay number one at the boxoffice for three weeks running. This is not a question of age. It's a question of sensibility. Some people stay tuned in to the zeitgeist and some don't.

Is Schickel feeling the pressure of younger critics nipping at his heels? Check out his latest snit, which appears in his lede to an LAT book review (in which he goes on to praise estimable music critic Gary Giddins):

TO write seriously about topics — movies, jazz, popular fiction — that many people regard as peripheral or totally irrelevant to their lives is among the least gratifying of occupations. That's particularly true now, when the pendulum seems to be permanently stuck at the burbling end of the spectrum, where the bloggers — history-free and sensibility-deprived — weekly blurb the latest Hollywood effulgence and are rewarded by seeing their opinions bannered atop movie display ads in type sizes elsewhere reserved for the outbreak of wars and the demise of presidents.

Enough. If you're too outmoded to understand today's movie aesthetic—or the existence of many blogs that feature excellent film criticism, along with the ones that don't—stop writing about current movies. Schickel is a terrific book writer, documentary filmmaker and voiceover artist. There are plenty of worthwhile activities to keep him busy.

Comments

[T. H. Ung]

He wrote that before Roger Friedman wrote this at the bottom of his column today. Yikes.

"And how bad can 'Miami Vice' be? The Michael Mann movie opens Friday, but the only advance quote Universal could find for its ads came from an obscure movie blog, aka fan page. Even the regular quote-pluggers must have been unavailable for this one. How creepy and sad. Where was the Hollywood Foreign Press on this one? Isn’t this what they’re for?"

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,205235,00.html

[Wallace D]

Well, with a box office take of $300 million and climbing,you can't beat that. Fact is, people like adventure, esapism and that's the genesis of moviemaking.

[Mark Rutland]

I don't think correct, or illuminating, to suggest that if you don't have fun with a summer hit, you are automatically disconnected with "l'air du temps".
If millions (of people) are going to see "Pirates" is because millions (of dollars) were invested in marketing to put them inside the screening rooms. "Nobody" went to see Soderbergh's "Bubble", but in ten years nobody (and I mean: n-o-b-o-d-y) will forget to recognise that "Bubble" is absolute genius. Schickel is not against FX. He is just explaining that technology is not a good excuse to have no narrative ideas and to confuse entertainment with noise and giant monsters that come a thousand times the same (boring) way from the bottom of the ocean.
If you see 2 minutes of glorious Errol Flynn, you'll know how to tell the difference.

[Anne Thompson]

I get your point. I have no problem with reviews that are critical of Pirates of the Caribbean's lack of narrative coherence, etc. What bothered me about this essay in particular was Schickel being so focused on acting and story to the detriment of perceiving the movie's most distinguishing feature, and arguably what made it worth seeing for so many people: its stunning effects. To his credit, Hollywood Elsewhere "blog critic" Jeffrey Wells, for example, immediately picked up on Bill Nighy as Davy Jones, recognizing what an advance that character is. Schickel couldn't see through the FX that marred his ability to appreciate that performance.