When a movie is bumped from an October release date - a time in which some of the biggest Oscar contenders as well as some fairly effective entries into the horror and thriller genres are released - to January, known as the worst time of year to release a movie, there's something to be said there. When said film, despite boasting a talented cast and crew, is given very little marketing or promotion, that’s another sign that leads to trouble. Yet when this same movie, only a month into the new year, is already being dubbed not just one of the worst movies of the year but one of the absolute strangest movies of the year, it must mean it’s in a league truly all its own. And that is certainly the case with Serenity, which is without a doubt deserving of the title “Most WTF Movie of the Year.”
The trailers for this one were certainly intriguing. In terms of how a trailer should be made, this actually hits all the right marks. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a trailer and it gives away so much that it essentially lays out all its cards before the movie is even released, allowing the audience to almost predict exactly how the movie would go. Yet the trailer for Serenity was done exceptionally well, not really telling us all too much, and effectively giving off an incredible sense of mystery and thrills. The fact that its led by Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, and directed by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, certainly indicated there were signs of potential. And the film certainly seemed ambitious. Despite said ambition, the final result is incredibly scattershot, and we’re instead presented with one of the most bizarre experiences in quite some time.
The film follows Matthew McConaughey as Baker Dill, a fisherman on a remote island who has an obsession with catching this one giant tuna. Baker’s ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway) suddenly shows up and mentions how her current husband Frank (Jason Clarke) has been abusing her and Baker’s son Patrick, and offers Baker money to kill Frank. All the while, there is a mysterious man named Reid (Jeremy Strong), who chases after Baker through most of the movie with an important message, only to narrowly miss him each time as Baker sets out into the ocean just as Reid is about to catch up to him. The setup makes for some delightfully pulpy film noir, harkening back to films like Double Indemnity and Sorry, Wrong Number. However, before the movie can even truly take off, you’re already asking yourself a number of questions that you shouldn’t even need to raise right off the bat.
The film’s acting is truly something else here. While the cast is normally reliable, here they all channel a much different sort of energy. McConaughey is totally bonkers in this film. Here, he takes a page right out of Nicolas Cage’s book in one of his most unhinged performances to date, all the while mixed with the strange, trippy nature of the Lincoln commercials he appears in. McConaughey seems to only know one emotion in this entire movie, and that’s angry. Baker Dill is a man who is constantly on edge, always stand-offish and lashing out at just about anyone and everyone. There are moments where - in what’s supposed to be dramatic effect - he walks away from someone, only to clench both his fists, look up in the air, and scream. Rather than providing any sort of weight, these moments come seemingly out of nowhere, and are actually quite funny at times for just how preposterous and random they are. Even in the very first scene, he’s on a job, contracted out by two brothers, only for him to see the tuna he’s obsessed with and immediately pull a knife and scream at the two brothers, telling them to back away, when they didn’t even get remotely violent with him. This is only five minutes into the movie, and we’re treated to plenty of similar moments throughout the film.
Anne Hathaway is supposed to play the part of the seedy femme fatale, in an attempt to channel a Barbara Stanwyck or a Lauren Bacall type. Yet, for every moment where she seems like she can hold her ground, we’re instead treated to even more scenes in which someone just enters a room and she stats hysterically screaming. While it’s meant to convey someone who’s been so abused that they’re traumatized, her screaming is so melodramatic and so unbelievable that, like McConaughey’s anger, it’s just over-the-top and laughable, not to mention totally contradictory to scenes in which she’s meant to appear a bit stronger.
Jason Clarke seems to be the only one who read the screenplay and caught on to how ridiculous it was, and fittingly hams it up as the movie’s villain. His accent is so bad that one almost senses that he did it on purpose. Though considering how ludicrous some of his dialogue was, it made for a perfect match with his terrible accent, and he comes across more like an old-school cartoon character that channeled the energy of Biff Tannen from Back to the Future. It was almost impossible to view him as any sort of serious threat if you were to ever encounter him in the real world, and the only reason he’s even a fitting antagonist for this movie is due to how detached from reality both McConaughey and Hathaway’s characters are.
The writing is also truly laughable here. As mentioned, a lot of the film’s dialogue is pretty terrible, consisting of overly-dramatic platitudes that are far removed from anything remotely close to believable. Characters have this consistent habit of monologuing out loud, expressing some of their big revelations with no one else around them to hear. It’s ironic, as this sort of thing was mentioned in Vice, released just last month. In Vice, there’s a narration that mentions how in the real world, people don’t express all their inner thoughts out loud like a Shakespeare play, and proceeds to make fun of that concept. However, in Serenity, this concept is consistently done and is meant to be used for big dramatic reveals and plot twists. Yet, each time we see a character just talk to themselves, we’re brought to laughter by just how unrealistic it is.
As mentioned, the film seems like it had a ton of ambition, but introduces so many plot points that the results can sometimes lead to nowhere. There’s a kind of-sort of subplot involving Diane Lane as Baker’s love interest. While Lane is a fine actress - an ironically, one of the only people in this film who plays it completely straight - her character adds literally nothing to the rest of this movie. We have drawn-out sex scenes between her and McConaughey (which include an extreme fixation on McConaughey’s rear end), as well as scenes of McConaughey openly brooding to her, but that’s it. She serves no other purpose other than to just act as another outlet for McConaughey to openly rant to. You could have cut her out completely and the end result would have been no different.
Speaking of the movie’s end result, this leads us to the movie’s twist. There’s a subplot where it seems like Baker has a telepathic connection to his abused son Patrick, which leads us to believe that there is a supernatural element to the film. I won’t spoil how this all ties together, but I will say once the movie’s twist is revealed, you will be absolutely floored by the result. For every other poorly-written moment in the movie up until that point, this twist - while oddly enough does a fine enough job tying everything together - is so out of left field that it’s fairly laughable when you hear it said out loud. What’s interesting enough too is that unlike a lot of movies that rely on plot twists, this is revealed halfway through the film as opposed to the third act. Once the big reveal is made, you still have about 45 minutes of the movie to get through. At this point, as ridiculous as the movie was up until the twist, it’s almost impossible to view the rest of it with anything close to resembling a straight face.
Serenity is without a doubt one of the year’s biggest disasters. But it’s a beautiful disaster, being entertaining all for the wrong reasons. While an ambitious effort with a normally reliable cast and crew, it unfortunately misses its mark. But it contains so many ridiculous plot elements, laughable dialogue, and melodramatic acting - on top of an extremely strange plot twist - that it’s something you have to see to believe. Serenity raises a lot of questions, but the only one it seems to effectively answer is that there is still such a thing for a movie to be so bad it’s good.
Kommentare