Guest Reviewer: Ammon Chase
My bro-in-law, Ammon Chase, offered an unsolicited and very welcome review of "Proof" with Gwyneth Paltrow. I have to admit that his review intrigued me; my thoughts follow in the "comments" section.
Overall, "Proof" was really engaging and for the most part the time passed quickly. There is a lot of plot structure but not a lot of building, meaning they lay the foundation for about an hour or so and then they start presenting a conflict. The conflict was pretty subtle and I wasn't sure until about 20 minutes before the end that what I thought might be a possible conflict turned out to be the main and only conflict.
The last thing is after laying so much foundation and finally illustrating the conflict, the resolution is only inferred at the end so when you're done you feel like maybe your DVD was corrupted and they accidentally deleted the last 15 minutes. The creator of inferred or imaginary endings is my least favorite director M. Night Shyamalan who in "Unbreakable" did the same thing only one hundred times worse by moving what would have been an exceptional plot like a tugboat moving a continent and then right when it was about to get good he stopped the movie and left all the creative and supernormal adventures Bruce Willis would have had to our imaginations. In short, this movie's ending wasn't nearly as bad as "Unbreakable," mostly because "Unbreakable" had so much more potential, although it was somewhat Shyamalan-esque.
Paltrow did a great job. It was fun trying to determine whether her character was really crazy which I think was one of the main points. Sometime there was no doubt she was, and then other times she was almost normal--so that dynamic was engaging. Spiderman (Jake Gylenhall) was also good, although I couldn't figure out why he was in love with Poultry other than that she is attractive because her character is really spastic. Hannibal Lecter also did a great job.
I give it three stars because it was engaging and if you could simulate a power outage just before the end so instead of actually knowing that the resolution is imaginary, you could just imagine your own ending and think that the movie probably would have ended that way but for the power outage, then I would give it three and a half stars.
5 comments:
First of all, Jake Gyllenhal is not Spider-man; Tobey Maguire is. Second of all, I didn't hate the ending of the movie. Third, I agree with most everything else Ammon said: Gwyneth was great, the story was interesting and engaging. It was one of those rare, slow-moving, talky-thinky movies that don't come around that often. Not a perfect movie, but still worth a rent. I'd give it three stars as well. Way to go, Ammon!
Oh, I love this movie. Is it embarrassing to admit that I cried the first time I saw it? I think I was relating way too much to the crazies of Gweneth. Anyway, then I rented it again. Then I bought it on DVD. And then I checked the play out from the library. Dave calls this obsessive behavior. I call it an affinity for the arts. I give it four stars.
I'm glad you clarified that Spiderman was Tobey Maguire b/c I got to that point in his review and was really wondering if I had lost my mind.
Clarification on the Spiderman issue. As my 4 year old stated yesterday, "if sounds like you said it then you did say it" (trying to argue that it sounded like we assented to letting her have another after-dinner treat and therefore should be allowed to have another one). So although some actors go by different names like "Jake Gyllenhal" and "Tobey Maguire" if they look the same then they are the same.
Why you didn't go into Philosophy is beyond me, Amoncito!
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