10 Recent Movies That Tried Way Too Hard To Be Clever
So many smart ideas wasted.
Every now and then, a piece of cinematic entertainment can not just be a ninety minute romp, but a thought-provoking piece of art that leaves us questioning our day-to-day lives and maybe even changing our perspectives on issues.
Great debates and hot takes about the world don't have to be settled on an episode of Newsnight; sometimes with the right amount of writing and a convincing enough plot, any case can be made coherent by a film maker with the right amount of knowledge on a subject matter.
Sometimes the films are a metaphor for historical periods like District 9, others hold a mirror up to perceptions of toxic masculine and feminine attributes like The Art of Self Defense. And while these are a just a whisper of an example of films making a point about something, sometimes we get films that try to be clever and fail.
Once a film establishes itself with an ulterior message we look at them through a different lens. And when that message is lost on us it can seriously harm the movie's performance. A metaphor can be lost, an argument can be unjust, or hypocrisy can rear its ugly head. Even worse, when a film has a great idea or a concept, but fails to land that message to the audience.
On that note, here are ten films that thought they were being clever, but missed their own point completely.
10. Bright
Netflix's magical crime drama Bright, had already exited the gate with preemptive bias given that the film was written by the grotesque and problematic Max Landis; but if you were able to separate art from artist, and tried to enjoy the supernatural romp, you'd still be disappointed.
The premise of Bright is a superb idea; a buddy-cop movie set in a world filled with fantasy creatures and mythology entwined. Where the movie fails is the misinformed arguments made about racial tensions between humans and orcs (substituting a real world racial upset).
This idea is double-fisted by the friend-foe relationship between Will Smith and Joel Edgerton's characters; the former sharing dislike for orcs, while the latter is part of an affirmative action initiated to invite orcs into the LA Police.
Maybe Bright would have been better if it were a TV series? At least that way the relationship and tensions between humans and elves, pixies or orcs could have been thought out more. But instead, the film tries earnestly to comment about police violence, gang culture and internal police affairs with childish and lazy arguments.
Either make a serious film about corruption and police brutality, or a film about magical nonsense. But never both.