Raising Arizona is just plain weird. In a good way. It's a Coen brothers movie, so you should know the kind of weird I mean. Stranger than Fargo, maybe, but not quite as abruptly strange as The Hudsucker Proxy. In fact, were it not for the (I think deliberate) confusion about the bounty-hunter-from-hell-or-is-he, the only real weirdness would have been when the father of the quintuplets walked out of the bedroom as Hi and Ed were... Well, I won't give it away, but it's fun. Don't worry too much about the plot holes, just sit back and enjoy yourself. John Goodman, who has starred in quite a few of the Coen brothers' films, is excellent in this one.
I don't know why Titan A.E. failed miserably in the theaters. I don't understand why I now have to defend the movie against criticism. It is a wonderful movie! I think that the biggest problem with it was marketing. Granted, it's pretty hard to market a "cartoon" to adults, or a PG-rated cartoon to kids, but it should have been done. The quality of the animation is incredible and superb, and I loved watching it. Even on my first time through the movie, I had to repeat a couple of scenes just because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The plot may be a bit simple for hard-core science fiction fans (which I am), but it also isn't so complex that it leaves the next generation of fans out in the cold. This movie's faults all fall into that gap between a kids movie and a grown-up movie, and it is that attempt at a dual nature that keeps this from being a great film beginning to end.
The Bad
First, a movie I didn't finish watching. I usually like accents and cute foreign movies, but I fell asleep during Waking Ned Devine, twice. The third night, as I tried again to start up where I had nodded off the night before, I finally gave up. The movie was just too slow and boring. Sorry.
Article comments