A Review of The Spirit

Holy crap.

I've made a few posts about how The Spirit was going to be really bad. However, no bad review could have prepared me for what I saw a few hours ago.

The first thing I said upon leaving my screening of The Spirit was, "I feel like I just saw Frank Miller have a mental breakdown on film."

This was not exaggeration. No words can capture how truly awful, insane, and nonsensical this movie is. It's not even really a movie when you think about it. The tone is nonexistent. The acting is emotionless, stiff, stale, and just plain terrible. There is no plot. The humor is some of the most painful stuff I've ever had to sit through. 

Upon leaving, my friend Caleb said that he felt disillusioned. I kind of feel the same. I don't know if The Spirit was the worst film I've ever seen (Manos, Hands of Fate kind of takes that crown) but it was definitely up there (or down there depending on how you look at it). It was definitely one of the least entertaining films I've seen. I was hoping it was going to be in the "so bad it's good" section of bad cinema. Well, it wasn't it. It was just so bad that it was terribly uncomfortable. Our screening was filled up. I felt bad for everyone else in the theater. Everyone was silent for the whole thing. The scenes where Miller attempted humor were so hard to watch, especially since no one ever laughed or even made a chuckle. I tried to laugh at just how bad the film was but even I couldn't do that.

I honestly feel shell shocked. What the hell did I just watch?

I don't even know if I can write a review for this thing. It really doesn't have a structure. It's just all over the place. It's the least enjoyable thing I've seen in ages. It is the definition of self-indulgent filmmaking. How did this even get made? I feel like someone had to be there thinking, "Hey, this doesn't make any sense." Someone had to know. Someone had to know that none of this was working. Still, it all got finished. Lots of money was spent. It shows: the visuals are pretty amazing. I'll give the movie that: Bill Pope's (a talented man who should have had nothing to do with this crap) cinematography was wonderful. All the graphic novel-like visual effects looked pretty great. But everything else was so awful it just didn't matter.

Everyone was bad in this movie. Everyone knows that Sam Jackson has just become a caricature of himself in recent years but he's even worse in this. Scarlett Johansson (one of my dream girls) is so painfully awful and awkward. Eva Mendes is bad. Everyone is so bad. 

However, Louis Lombardi takes the cake for the worst actor in the movie. I've seen Lombardi before as a small role in the Second Season of The Sopranos and he really wasn't that bad. Under Miller's direction, however, Lombardi fails in every way. Lombardi plays a bunch clones that The Octopus (Sam Jackson) has created. Most of these clones are brainless and are annoying in a way that I think was supposed to be funny but instead is just painfully awkward. 

Did I mention that this movie has a scene where Jackson creates a Lombardi clone that is a foot with Lombardi's head attached to the top that hops around while Jackson comments on how "damn weird" it is a thousand times? How many drugs was Miller doing while writing / making this movie?

The humor in this movie is terrible. What was with the Octopus's fixation with eggs? He keeps talking about having egg on his face and how he hates brown eggs from a certain chicken (a piece of dialogue so bizarre that Caleb started to laugh at its insane nature... I think we were all starting to lose our minds by this point). Once again, I think this was all supposed to be funny but I truly cannot tell you why.

Miller's script is simply atrocious. The dialogue is flat, doesn't make sense, and is without any emotion. His attempt at hard-boiled noir dialogue is ludicrous and overdone. Miller pulled off this kind of dialogue perfectly in all the Sin City books but he just went way too far here to the point of self-parody. His characterizations were terrible. His attempt at writing and directing a scene that was supposed to be emotional failed so bad that it had me putting my head in my hands. 

If you haven't figured it out yet, this movie was terrible. Will Eisner must be rolling in his grave.

I have a lot of respect for Frank Miller for what he did in the realm of comics and graphic novels in the 1980's and 1990's but he should never, never be allowed to write and direct a movie by himself again. He obviously has no idea what he is doing. None once so ever. This was inexcusable and unforgivable. Much like Sam Jackson, I feel like Miller became a parody of himself with this movie. All of his usual elements were there: the black and white style, the hard boiled dialogue, the fixation with beautiful, irresistible women but it was all taken to a point that it was just damn ridiculous and unenjoyable to experience. I feel like he injected something into each scene to make it uncomfortable and awkward. There wasn't one scene in this movie that didn't feel really off. I just don't know what he was thinking. And I don't know what Lionsgate was thinking letting him go through with this. Someone had to know how this was gonna turn out. All they had to do was read the script. 

I know this review has been loose and all over the place but, considering what I just watched, it is all justifiable. Personally, I feel like I have spent way too much of my time on this "movie" already. 

Please, someone keep Frank Miller far away from a film camera for the rest of his life.

1/10