First in "The Godfather 3", now with "The Virgin Suicides". What was the point of this movie? Was it:
(a) To engage the viewer in the trauma of suicide? I hope not, because we never got to know the girls well enough to care about them -- they came across like zombie-chicks in a Palmolive commercial, always smiling gently but vapidly.
(b) To share in the experience of those who cared about the deceased? Again, I cannot imagine so. The boys across the street cared about them, for sure, but did anyone believe in their passion? They seemed to like the girls simply because the script told them so, not because they were acting like real teenagers act. For example, what actual teen boys would subscribe to travel magazines in order to fantasize about going abroad with the objects of their crushes? Teen boys may fantasize about a lot of things, but picturing girls as Taj Mahal princesses is not one of them.
(c) To show the horror of modern American suburban life? Haven't we seen this before, and better? James Woods played a math teacher who caved into his wife's demands while sporting short-sleeve collared shirts. How unoriginal. Same for Kathleen Turner, who burned her daughter's records and couldn't imagine she didn't love her daughters enough. Been there, seen all that before -- only in non-cliche form.
Coppola's direction was amateurish, as well. The Danny DeVito scenes, for example, should have been placed further apart, and the shot of the boys holding a lighter came across not as the homage of real humans, but more like the encore of a 1984 Night Ranger concert.
(a) To engage the viewer in the trauma of suicide? I hope not, because we never got to know the girls well enough to care about them -- they came across like zombie-chicks in a Palmolive commercial, always smiling gently but vapidly.
(b) To share in the experience of those who cared about the deceased? Again, I cannot imagine so. The boys across the street cared about them, for sure, but did anyone believe in their passion? They seemed to like the girls simply because the script told them so, not because they were acting like real teenagers act. For example, what actual teen boys would subscribe to travel magazines in order to fantasize about going abroad with the objects of their crushes? Teen boys may fantasize about a lot of things, but picturing girls as Taj Mahal princesses is not one of them.
(c) To show the horror of modern American suburban life? Haven't we seen this before, and better? James Woods played a math teacher who caved into his wife's demands while sporting short-sleeve collared shirts. How unoriginal. Same for Kathleen Turner, who burned her daughter's records and couldn't imagine she didn't love her daughters enough. Been there, seen all that before -- only in non-cliche form.
Coppola's direction was amateurish, as well. The Danny DeVito scenes, for example, should have been placed further apart, and the shot of the boys holding a lighter came across not as the homage of real humans, but more like the encore of a 1984 Night Ranger concert.
Tell Your Friends