I like to read Joe Morgenstern’s movie reviews, published in the Wall Street Journal every week. I was interested to see what he had to say this week, since he reviewed John Carter. It seems that many people didn’t share my view that it was a ridiculous movie.
Morgenstern goes even further–he calls it, in his headline, a “Red Dwarf of a Martian Adventure.” Ouch! He goes on to ponder why a previously successful director, Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Finding Nemo), should have done so poorly this time around. He says it might have something to do with the differences in the managing of Disney and Pixar.
Morgenstern also said that while Taylor Kitsch is “buff and handsome,” his performance is one of “snoozifying earnestness.” To him, one of the main weaknesses is that no one in the movie seems to be having any fun, and that as a whole it suffers from a “deadly heaviness.”
One thing I like about Morgenstern’s reviews is that he usually has something positive to say. Not so much this time. I probably didn’t think the movie was as bad as he did, but when one considers how much money Disney spent on John Carter, my opinion starts to agree more with Morgenstern’s.
2 comments
Comment by superchargedhobbit on March 14, 2012 at 2:34 pm
I liked “John Carter”. I’ve been asking others who have watched the movie as they exit the theater how they felt about it, and the majority of them say it was better than they thought it would be. True, it was corny and it was by no means a blockbuster hit, but it was a good story, a short entertaining escape from reality, AND it was pretty to look at (wink, wink). Maybe it’s just me, but I enjoyed it, and I think I would watch it again!
Comment by Laurel on March 14, 2012 at 7:29 pm
It’s a pretty solid B movie, which can be a very enjoyable type of movie. I had a good experience watching it, even though it is not too successful as a story (the plot is muddled and not convincing, to me).
I enjoyed it a lot more than, say, Avatar or The Phantom Menace.