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May 23, 2006

Dogma

Dogma

Am I allowed to review a film that I've only seen about half of. I guess so, as long as I make it clear it's not a proper review. I started watching this last night at 10pm, thinking it would finish in about 90 minutes. Unfortunately I then discovered that it wouldn't finish until a quarter past midnight, and maybe I'm getting old, but with a 6.15am start I decided to quit at 11pm. There was a time that I would stay till the bitter end once I'd started watching any film. I've been up till the small hours watching Jean-Claud Van Damme so that will let you judge my standards. Maybe I'm just getting sensible. Maybe I wasn't quite enjoying this enough. Maybe it's not as good as 'Timecop'.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are angels exiled to earth. They find a loophole in god's law which means that if they get to a certain church and walk through the door they can return to heaven. So they start travelling across America to this church, randomly judging sinners on the way and blowing them away with a big gun. I think this is supposed to be funny - but Matt Damon in particular doesn't pull it off.

Linda Fiorentino is a woman who gets visited by god's messenger and told to go to the church and stop the angels entering it. She keeps saying "Why me?", and I'm sure there must be a reason, but of course, I didn't make it to the end to find out. So she also starts on a road trip, after meeting sex starved Jay and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith, the writer/director again plays Silent Bob, a recurring character through many of his films). Jay never stops talking, and is quite amusing in the beginning, but his constant whining and requests for sex, and his swearing get a bit wearing after a while.

On the way they meet Chris Rock, who seems to be a reincarnated black 13th apostle. Oh, and Jason Lee plays the devil, and he sends three demon hockey players to try and stop Fiorentino. And Salma Hayek was dancing in a strip club for some reason.

And that's pretty much where I left it.

The movie seems to be a bit too jumbled to really work properly. If it's a normal comedy, then why have all the random violence. If it's a black comedy, why have the goofy stuff with Jay and Silent Bob. If it's a serious dig at the dogma of organised religion, why have so much swearing and violence that the target audience will never watch it.

I may watch the rest sometime, maybe it all comes together in the end. But it really hasn't grabbed me that much, so I'm not going to make any special effort.

Posted by se71 at May 23, 2006 10:21 AM

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