This is a comedy, I guess. A crime/caper/comedy thing. In a lot of ways it is very similar to a movie like The Informant! (the Soderbergh film with Matt Damon) and especially I Love You Phillip Morris (that sort of gay prison/crime comedy with Jim Carrey).
The idea is kind of like a long-form narrative version of the Darwin Awards: let's watch these total idiots do something we can't believe the cops were stupid enough not to notice for so long. Bay's film is told in the most smug tone you can possibly imagine.
Whatever. I mean, who cares. Late in act two there is a ridiculous joke about a bathroom covered in feces and the entire audience I was with laughed. So apparently Pain & Gain is connecting with some people.
But this was not for me. As much as Dwayne Johnson is a hilarious performer and as much as I love Mark Wahlberg and Anthony Mackie.
Michael Bay. What the hell.
Also, anyone casting Ken Jeong in something is a jackass. The single joke at which he excels stopped being funny in 2009 at the latest.
The pube joke and the explosive shit joke were the only two things featured here that made me groan. Other than that, I thought everything was so outlandish, it was hysterical, akin to something like Fargo meeting Horrible Bosses. And I thought that Michael Bay was well aware of the story he was telling and made more than appropriate self-deprecating jabs at himself as a filmmaker, to the point that I was completely on board, and this is coming from somebody that hates those stupid Transformers movies as much as any self-respecting critic does. This is honestly one of my favorite movies of the year, and the fact that this is based on a true story only adds to the effect. Only in Florida...
ReplyDeleteOh you're definitely correct to say that Michael Bay knew what he was doing. My complaint was how much he hated all of his characters. He hated ALL of the characters in the movie. And that reads to me as smugness and superiority. And I find it a real turnoff in a movie.
DeleteAnd that is something that I read into and accepted within the opening fifteen minutes. There's a line that Wahlberg has that is something along the lines of "I know what I'm doing. I've seen a lot of movies." I think these are all detestable characters, and the sooner you accept that you're not supposed to like anybody featured here, the sooner you can be in on the joke.
DeleteThe fact that these muscle heads are such morons makes it so easy to see their character motivations. From what I've heard, the survivor that is portrayed by Tony Shalhoub has criticized this film by saying that it glamorizes the actions of these characters. I did not find that to be the case, as it is like watching the Darwinism awards in full effect.
Of course, if you didn't like it, you didn't like it. For me, I just couldn't help but be surprised by a director whose frat boy-isms have consistently irked me.
I think you are missing my point a bit. It isn't that I didn't like the characters. I DID like the characters. I don't like Michael Bay's attitude toward the characters. I like for a director to like his characters more than Bay does with this film. I feel this way about lots of Alexander Payne's work, too.
DeleteAh, I see what you're saying. That is not something I've ever had problems getting past in a film, which makes total sense, as I have loved everything I have seen from Alexander Payne so far (still have yet to see About Schmidt and Citizen Ruth). If it's to the benefit of the story, I can get on board with the director if he chooses to walk all over his characters. I can understand completely if it irks you, though, as I think it only natural for people to have pet peeves in film.
DeleteBy that rationale, I take it you aren't a fan of one of my other favorite movies, A Serious Man?
I can't say that it's my favorite. Maybe that is why I didn't like it that much!
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