2 stars

Watched “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” with Olga on DVD. Both she and I really enjoyed the first two movies, and both she and I didn’t like this one. Let me explain a bit…

First of all, the expectations. Both the first and the second parts were entertaining, active and in general fantastic. So our expectations were a bit boosted up. Especially mine. And it is always a pity when a movie doesn’t live up to expectations.

Misuse of the resources. This film is full of stars. First and totally undoubtful is the directory himself –
Robert Rodriguez. He proved many times that he knows a lot about how movies should be done, and that he can do movies the right way. Here something went wrong. It felt very empty, lifeless, boring and commercial. Cast for this film has such a long list of well known names that I cannot even remember another movie like this. Among the ones who don’t need no introduction: Antonio Banderas, Sylvester Stallone, Mike Judge, Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi, and others. I mean there are probably more people you can name without IMDB than in any other movie. And they all have nothing to do there.

The story sucked. It was so pure and transparent that it was very boring. I bet that even kids were falling asleep while watching it. All coolness was gone. Noone was cool anymore. Superheros running towards their grandpa in case of any minor danger. No gadgets. No spy talk. Nothing.

There were plenty of annimation. Actually the whole film is one huge animation with real people in it (supposedly inside a video game). But even this was boring. It wasn’t anything like a computer game. Take for example a scene where they are racing some strange vehicles at magnificent speeds – no thrill and no turns. They drive in a straight line. In which video game was that? :)

Anyway, I have a bunch of complains about this film. I expected it to be in line with the previous two, but it was way off. I will write it off as something Rodriguez wanted to do for his own reasons and I will forget about this film. I’ll rate as 4 out of 10. Save you money and spend them on something else. Watch this on TV when it’ll come… it will help you fall asleep. With your kids.

I promised not to watch any more of the Russian movies and managed to escape them for some time now. Until today. “Nochnoy Dozor” has been widely advertised in Russia and there was a lot of hype about it. Some people were even weighting it as an answer to Hollywood. My own mother wanted me to watch it. The copy of the film was available on the net, so I decided to see it.

This film sucks. Yes, it is better than many other films. It might be one of the best films from Russia for the last few years. But it still sucks. The biggest problem I have with this movie is the same as with all the other Russian films of the last 10 years or so – greyness, sadness, and depression. It has so much of negative energy that I had troubles focusing on the actual content of the film. Most movies (at least the ones similar to this) use contrast to strongly separate good and bad characters – good characters are usually surrounded by joy and happiness and bad characters are surrounded by spider nets, bats, and other creepy stuff. This film, on the other hand, is totally dark and grey. Good characters look like they have been drinking for a couple of weeks before the shooting. City scenes are dirty. People in the crowd and subway are angry. Blah blah blah. Yuck.

So, now once again I have to say – this was the last Russian-made movie that I watched. Enough is enough.