It all began like this... Cinema 2011 #1: Love and Other Drugs

I like the cinema. I really like the cinema. That doesn't mean I like the films though...

And that's why I find myself here, to chronicle and critique all the movies I see in 2011.

Now, don't get me wrong, I realise it's currently 36 days into the year. That means roughly 10% of the current solar circuit we so ephemerally cling to has already passed us by as we continue on this non-stop one-way trip to tomb town. But turn those musings-on-mortality-and-crippling-fears-of-the-finality-of-transient-existence frowns upside down, I'm here to help.

Perhaps I'm hopping on the January bandwagon of impulses to change my life through creative outlets a tad late. It's all Facebook's fault; there I was, happily listing all the movies I saw in a year in my About Me box, recording a rom-com here, charting a comedy there. And then those fascists changed the profile layout and low and behold the sweet square-inch of cinematic inventory disappeared under folds of data and code.

But the human spirit is brave, and this cinéaste got off his ass and changed his status. 04 January 14.44, Cinema 2011 #1: Love and Other Drugs.

04 January 14.49. "Any good?", she asked, that siren call to spill forth the opinions brimming up inside me, that movie meniscus that had always threatened to splash over into the unknown. And oh, how it splashed...

*SPOILER ALERT*

Well, if I wrote a review of it, I would literally be the only "critic" in the entire world to give it a bad review, based on anything I've read. And that is because it was shit and disturbing. The pros are simple, Anne and Jake do a fine job at respectively being a free-spirited waitress/aspiring photographic artist with chronic disease and douchey six-pack drug rep with that oh-so-charming personality that just wants to show his "in two scenes" Dad that he can do good yet maintain his bourgeois lifestyle by working in an amoral industry and literally, and repeatedly, dumping a rival prescription anti-depressant into a bin, knowing that a homeless man is there waiting to take said drugs out of the bin. They both can act, kudos to them.

The rest of the film is a mixture of paint by numbers romantic dramedy meets a screen writer who has mistakenly understood that nudity is a synonym for edgy screenwriting. Seriously, some major flaws played off for cheap laughs (a brother, millionaire by the way, who masturbates to his brother's home made sex tape. A doctor who complains that HMOs are destroying his practice and that lawyers are waiting in the long grass to poach his practice's money, yet who takes any number of perks from drug reps, including Jake Gyllenhaal's pimping out of said Doctor's choice of two of this lovable rogue's previous coochular conquests, and then later has his best supporting actor "Oscar goes to..." soliloquy against the backdrop of an orgy.)

I was the only person in the cinema not laughing and gushing forth at the obvious payoff at the end, and thus I was the only person disappointed.

Only worth seeing if you want to see Anne Hathaway's boobs or Jake Gyllenhaal's arse. And if you think that's worth paying €10 for, then it's pretty excellent value for money. If you don't, try Google Images.

Two Likes.

And the comments followed. People, friends granted, liked my rant and distaste. They urged me to go into the blogosphere, but I wasn't biting. Ten more Facebook reviews followed, with me refining my critical riposte, and the comments flowed. The urge to blog continued, and finally, I succumbed.

So that's it, that how this mild-mannered passive-aggressive populist snob finds himself writing here. I'll be posting my reviews and anything else that springs to mind, hoping my criticism is understood as observation rather than gospel.