Crash (into me)

All I can think of when I hear the title of this movie is the song by the Dave Mathews Band. I hear Dave singing "crash into me" over and over and over. Which is not at all a bad thing. It goes very well with Don Cheadle's line about us all living such isolated lives that we crash into each other just for the contact.

Anyway, I did not love this movie as a few of my friends did. Nor did I feel an overwhelming sense of hope at the end (just the opposite, actually). To understand why I felt this way, let's start with some comments from the critics.

The director dares us to assume we know these people, and then neatly offers conflicting evidence (Ty Burr, Boston Globe). The missing word that would make me agree with this is tries. The director tries to neatly offer conflicting evidence. The problem was that it didn't work. Everything these people did made them live up to the stereotype that had been assigned to them.

Haggis is telling parables, in which the characters learn the lessons they have earned by their behavior (Roger Ebert). That was his goal, I will agree with that. However, the characters in this movie didn't manage to learn much of anything. One particularly clueless character was Brendan Frasier's DA. The most surprising thing about his character is that there wasn't even a chance for him to learn anything. It's as though that part of the film was left out.

If there is hope in the story, it comes because as the characters crash into one another, they learn things, mostly about themselves. Almost all of them are still alive at the end, and are better people because of what has happened to them (Roger Ebert). Roger Ebert's review seems to be a summary of what the film set out to do. However, quite simply, it failed. These characters don't learn things about themselves. There's little to no growth involved in this film, for any of the varied cast of characters.

I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves (Roger Ebert). Though I do believe that this is one of the very lofty and admirable goals of the movie, I also believe that the film failed on this score. I suspect that what many will get from this movie is that the stereotypes they hold are absolutely true and that the sympathy would therefore be lost on those people who are different from them. And that leaves me much more scared than hopeful.

Don Cheadle as another harried cop forced into corruption… (Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic). Don Cheadle's character was forced into nothing. He had choices available to him. That he took the corrupt path was the easy way out, which, quite frankly, works only to make the character live up to the stereotypes associated with both his race and his profession.

I must admit that the acting was fantastic. I will confess to being a Sandra Bullock fan in order to say that I really disliked her (well, her character) in this movie. She did the yuppy, snobby, white, rich bitch perfectly. The soundtrack added to the movie without being distracting. The characters and the story lines do still manage to be moving. There were tears. Overall, though, I'm just not a big fan of this movie. That so many others are had me confused for a bit, but then I found a theory for that, too (I have lots of theories, as you'll see if I continue writing this blog and you continue reading it): the Oprah Phenomenon.

The Oprah Phenomenon defined: If Oprah loves something, then I do, too! Remember that little thing called Oprah's Book Club (the original one, before she started with the classics)? An Oprah pick was an automatic bestseller. The thing is, a lot of those books are really mediocre books and others are outright bad. But there are many, many people out there who can't see that much less admit it. Because if Oprah likes it, it must be good! Heaven forbid we think for ourselves; heaven forbid we actually act and think and feel and react as individuals. It's like those lit freaks (and no, I'm not saying that everyone who reads literature is a freak; I'm speaking of a certain subsection of the readers of the world) who absolutely refuse to dislike anything labeled a classic. I read pretty much everything. And I read a lot. I'm (over)educated; others claim that I'm intelligent. And I do like some of the classics. But I really, really dislike some of them, too. For instance, I'm not at all ashamed or hesitant to admit that I hate Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. That is an awful book. Horrible. "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and…" I promptly fell asleep.

Yes, I know that's just my opinion. And by rolling your eyes and screaming that at your computer screen, you've just realized my point, so give yourself a pat on the back! This movie has fallen victim to the Oprah Phenomenon. Smart people who know these things (aka movie critics) say it's really good and I should like it and I'll learn to be a better person just by watching it. And therefore, the masses fall in line, do what they're told, and go on to say that the movie's really good, they like it, and they learned to be a better person by watching it.

I say, think it over. Really think about it. Do you really believe Sandra is all warm and fuzzy at the end? Do you really believe she's going to start hanging at the mall with her new buddy? Or do you believe, as I do, that not too long after that ankle heals, she'll be back to griping about the lazy maid not emptying the dishwasher of the clean dishes before dawn every morning?

I'll give you a break and not walk you through every character. If you've already seen this movie, do yourself a favor and think about it again. If you haven't seen it, go ahead and go. Just keep a really open mind. Try not to be influenced by what you've been told (by the critics who liked it or by me) and just see what your gut reaction to the movie really is. And remember, a movie's just not the same without popcorn.