SnakeoilSage said:
Okay I'm sorry, but for someone who spends the length of this review acknowledging that something like I, Frankenstein is a B-movie, Bob (and a lot of other reviewers I'm watching today) seems to be under the impression that because people have started to embrace said B-movie silliness (either honestly or "ironically" which is just another way of saying "I love them but I have the insecurity of a Batman fan who refused to come out of the closet about it until Frank Miller turned him into a psychotic jock i.e. something that appeals to the mainstream") then that movie should be some kind of fantasy mix of B-quality yet A-quality?
There is not one singular way of "loving" a movie. People don't enjoy The Room for the same reason they enjoy Citizen Kane, and yes, contrary to the imposed Hollywood notion of fixed single-interest marketing demographics there are people who enjoy both. Ironic enjoyment is not an insecure or closeted enjoyment, it can be extremely passionate and overt. I spend far more time ranting to people about the quality of movies I've enjoyed ironically than those which genuinely gripped me. Ironic enjoyment is an enjoyment which is based on a sense of dissociation from the events which occur on screen which would
kill a more serious dramatic movie, because said dramatic movie wants you to feel something and if you aren't then it's failing. You mention MST3K, which is the
epitome of ironic enjoyment. The basic format of the show is about breaking immersion for comic effect.
This isn't a straight B movie, it's a movie with a B-movie premise but it's getting a theatrical release. It clearly has a serious budget and competent people making it. It's not an Ed Wood movie, it's not going to fail that badly because everyone involved kind of knows the basics. They aren't going to make the kind of obvious or hilarious mistake, the absolute worst they can do is to be boring.
Annd something geek and cult cinema really needs to learn is that merely having a cool or outrageous premise does not mean you have a good movie by default. The problem with not asking very much of the audience is that it's very easy to bore them, particularly if the movie you make does not actually live up to its ridiculous premise in execution. This is why people like Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen were such gold for the Underworld series. I mean, fuck.. Sheen almost single handedly made
Twilight: New Moon worth watching. Watching someone put their heart and soul into a premise which the rational part of your brain knows is so silly, or at least having a hell of a time with it, is incredibly engaging in a way which goes beyond irony. Watching competent (or "competent") but bored actors phone in their lines or bluster over everything with generic grizzle is just dull. It doesn't matter how good the premise is, it's still dull.
A premise doesn't make a movie. The people who make a movie make a movie. If they don't buy into the premise and follow it through, then the premise is a failure no matter how cool it might sound. It's all very well to watch Frankenstein fighting Demons, or Autobots fighting Decepticons, but none of it means a damn if the end result is boring.
The idea that you cannot comment on the quality of geek movies because they're not "high art", or that doing so is somehow intellectual snobbery is actually kind of insulting. It perpetuates a view of the world in which there is only one measure of quality, where only an elite group of film consumers can have any kind of meaningful appreciation of films and everyone else will be fine as long as you jangle some keys in their face for an hour and a half and call it a wrap. What is actually poisoning the film industry right now is the assumption that mainstream audiences (which now includes geek audiences) are stupid, that they have no appreciation of quality, that the only thing that matters is whether your marketing department can trick the bovine masses into seeing your film, not whether your film is actually worth seeing.