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CLOVERFIELD

NEVER WAS THERE A STORY OF MORE WOE, THAN THIS OF A HIPSTER AND HER ROMEO



★★☆☆☆ (Don’t Bother)

Director: Matt Reeves

2008



I‘ve ripped on The Happening, but it wasn’t the worst movie that wasted my time on a lovely day off in 2008. Cloverfield has the honor of being the most awful thing I saw before the next decade rolled around; a film so spectacularly hyped despite being 10 percent monster and 90 percent melodrama about a guy who risks his life for a one night stand. I’m fascinated by people who recommend this movie. Are you taken by the romance between a man and his handheld camera? The shaky shots that don’t allow you to see the parts you want to see? Lizzy Caplan sneezing to death? Is it the Razzie-worthy acting or the improv that would turn the Groundlings into the Undergroundlings? You can’t say it’s the monster because there are not enough shots to make it the meat of the film. By the way, I’m also perplexed by this obsession over T.J. Miller, the most grating and unfunny actor who could have been chosen for our goofy narrator—Yorick, he is not. Whoever was in charge of casting this film should be in another line of work.



But hey, this is a love story, folks. This is a love story about a girl who bones her friend before a giant sea creature destroys New York City. Like any great dramatic tale, there are dynamic characters we can relate to. They are as follows:

 

Beth (Odette Annable) – Told by the director to act “cutesy”. The Helen of Troy of vaginas.

Rob (Michael Stahl-David) – Mr. Gee Shucks, Me? Will hit it and quit it. The Hero.

Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) – Way too good for this movie.

Jason (Mike Vogel) – Yo, yo, yo, bro! Yo! Rob’s brother.

Lily (Jessica Lucas) – Jason’s sassy girlfriend.

T.J. Miller (T.J. Miller) – Hell’s tour guide.

 

Break out the hankies because you’re going to need them as your emotions will be torn asunder watching these two lovebirds who have less chemistry than you and your grandmother risk life and limb to boink another day. Warning. SPOILERS from here on out.


Won’t thou rescue me? Somebody? Anybody?




Through scraps of video saved by the military after an apocalyptic event, the audience must piece together the puzzle of beautiful and helpless Beth and her businessman friend Rob, who recently got a huge promotion despite the fact that he looks and makes decisions like a 12-year-old. The first scene from this camcorder takes place the morning after they first knock boots, when he’s filming her billion-dollar apartment overlooking Central Park. Beth wakes up giggling at the lens pointed at her, not at all taking the hint that he wants to make a sex tape. Instead, we're treated to awkward improv banter meant to sell us on this couple. Oh, remember that promotion? It unfortunately means he must move to Japan and leave Beth behind, so there’s a whole drama we don’t see until we get to footage from a going-away party for him weeks later. Beth is supposed to be quietly devastated at the party, but Annable looks as upset as a girl who got the wrong order at Starbucks.


P.S. How is “Good luck tonight, Travis” supposed to be some great zinger? Rob says this to Beth’s date in anger as the two leave, but I would have said something like, “Make sure you use a condom, Travis” or “She likes nipple clamps, Travis”. I could go on. This is a good example of the witty dialogue you'll hear in Cloverfield .


Jason and Lily try to run interference at the bash while Hud (T.J. Miller) is put in charge of filming, and he gets such a hard-on for this camcorder that he decides to die for it. Without getting ahead of myself, this is a running theme throughout Cloverfield : a character sacrificing their life for something unreasonable. If there’s a monster running around and one wrong move on your part means he’ll be pooping you out tomorrow, I promise you would put down your camera to stay alert. This is one of a hundred eye-rolling character decisions fed to us by the screenwriter. As Hud does triple duty (filming their escape, flirting with Marlena, and running for safety) Rob desperately tries to find Booty Call Mary Sue with his brain-dead friends following him to their doom.



Maybe Stahl-David and Annable are good actors elsewhere, but in Cloverfield they are excruciating . Their jokes and ad-libbing have no depth; nothing in their forced conversations suggests they’re in love. Not only is it unrealistic that he would be willing to get gnawed on by Godzilla in a trek across the city to make sure she’s okay, but how about his friends? Once his brother is out of the picture, there is zero, nothing, nada, no reason for Marlena and Lily to tag along instead of running over to that line of people led by the military. I guess Hud would likely follow Rob to Mordor as long as the camcorder’s battery didn’t die—the guy’s such a moron, the monster spit him out.


After getting convenient exposition from the military, and a way to escape, Romeo finds his Juliet, the only survivor in a high rise that’s about to fall over. This is kismet considering the odds of her being there and not having evacuated like everyone else was extremely low. Despite being impaled with rebar, Beth lives and is carted to safety by chopper, and this is when we finally get a great shot of the beast. I’m giving Cloverfield two stars instead of one because the monster (what little we see of it) is so damn cool, this pile of happy hipster turmoil is not even worthy of its presence.


Like any romantic tragedy, our couple finds themselves at a dead end. This dead end is Central Park, and they hide under the prettiest bridge after running over to Hud’s dead body to pick up Precious the Camcorder from under the nose of the ravenous creature. Hey, even if a nuke is about to blow you to smithereens, you don’t wanna lose video of that party, dude. Cloverfield is a movie told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.





GENRES: Apocalyptic, Diverse Characters, Monster/Creature


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