 |
| A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012) |
I think it's probably worth saying that of all the movies I've reviewed, this is the one you should take with a grain of salt the most. In my brief search at looking up reviews for this movie and general opinions, I've come across a lot of differing standpoints. I mentioned the 33% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and the average viewer rating is around 4.2, but it has an average iMDB rating of 5.9, and I read one review on the same website that gave it an 8 out of 10. One thing I will say about the movie is that it knows what it wants to be and just does it, and if you're not a fan of what that thing is, you won't enjoy it as much. Me, I liked it fine, but there is a lot of stuff in here I thought could have been done better. I've done this in the past, but I feel like I need to take this movie act by act. I'll be bringing up spoilers throughout, especially in the third act, but I'll still be trying to keep things as vague as I can. Do with that information what you will.
 |
| Simon Pegg as Jack |
So, the movie opens with Simon Pegg as a children's book writer attempting to make a change and do a series of scripts on serial killers, with his extensive research basically driving him paranoid that everything is out to kill him. I really like this premise. Paranoia is a fascinating subject matter, and it's something I feel isn't explored nearly enough. Simon Pegg also does a fantastic job throughout the entire movie, and he nails every scene and what he needs to do in it. Not an awful lot happens in the first act, it's basically just Simon Pegg being paranoid, and while it is interesting to watch, I feel like we missed a bit. The film essentially skips Jack's slow descent into full-blown paranoia, and I feel like we really needed to see that. We basically don't get enough of who Jack was before he drove himself crazy, and we kind of need that comparison for when he's insane later. The fact that we miss that feels like a huge chunk of the story is gone. Also, and this is a small issue, but it did bug me: the first act uses a lot of narration to explain a lot of the backstory (which, again, I'd rather have seen), but when Jack's up in his own head and being paranoid, he mostly voices his concerns and fears out loud to himself. This is where I feel the narration could have been better utilised. I've been paranoid in the past (I used to be a f***ing wimp), and I can tell you that the minute you start voicing your paranoid fears out loud, you notice pretty quickly what an idiot you're being. Keeping those fear internalised in Jack's head through the narration not only would have been more realistic, but also just more interesting. I'll mention this here as well, since I don't know where to mention it later, but the film occasionally experiments with different mediums. The opening credits are animated, there's a small animated section towards the end of the first act, a stop-motion sequence, stuff like that. Those are all beautiful to watch, and for where they're placed, they fit in well enough.
 |
| Simon Pegg as Jack and Clare Higgins as Clair |
In the second act, Jack calls his psychiatrist, and we learn about Jack's true trauma. He's basically afraid of laundromats. Saying that sounds hilarious, but it's treated more serious than that, which honestly works for the story they tell with it. That said, I feel like the movie could have been funnier overall. There are some good laughs here and there, but I feel like the bulk of the comedy comes from bad things happening to Jack in the second act. The problem is that, for the most part, a lot of what happens to him is really unjustified. Like, he gets a s*** on for the bulk of the second act, but his actions never really warranted it. I wasn't laughing, I just felt sorry for him. It's the 'Funniest Home Videos' problem. When they bring it on themselves by being stupid or mean, it's funny. When it's unwarranted, it's not. The movie also has a few occasions of using music that doesn't fit the current mood, at least on the surface. On some occasions, this really works. Other times, it's really out of place. If we can just remove Simon Pegg rapping from my brain, that would be swell. I can forgive the movie for that, though, as we also get Amara Karan in the film. I really like her in this movie. I've been a fan of her as an actress since she was the best part of a mediocre episode of Doctor Who, and I really want her to be in more stuff. She's really relatable, funny when she needs to be, and she plays off Simon Pegg really well.
 |
| Amara Karan as Sangeet |
The final act of the movie is basically a complete departure from what came before it, or at least, it does something completely different than what you think it's going to. I'm not going to lie, I wasn't super on board with this twist. When you're telling a story about paranoia, you want the character to get over their fears, not have them all confirmed for him. It's not that I hated the final act by the end, since what they ended up doing with it was really good. It was tense, heartfelt, probably the funniest part of the movie for me, and it surprisingly tied up a lot of the loose ends from earlier in the movie. I say 'surprisingly', since I do think this final act belongs in a different movie. It focuses a lot more on Jack's laundromat fear, which isn't really all that connected to the paranoia stuff. The problem is that I found the paranoia stuff far more interesting, and wanted to see that resolved. The result of that is the paranoia story is left open by the end, but not in a super satisfying way. I don't know, I just feel like there were two different stories being told: the paranoia story and the laundromat story. The laundromat story was nice and heartfelt and whatever, but I connected more with the paranoia stuff, and seeing the movie basically drop it altogether around halfway through was a little disappointing. But, like I said, what they do with the laundromat is nice, so I can't really hate it all that much. Actually, you know what, that's a good way to sum up my feelings towards this movie: it's messy and flawed, but I can't hate it all that much.
 |
| Paul Freeman as Dr. Friedman |
A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012) is one of those movies where you love it or you hate it, and I can see both sides of the coin. I guess I land somewhere in the middle. I like it fine, and now that I know what kind of movie it is, I probably would see it again. Objectively speaking, however, it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. 6.5/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment