Monday, March 09, 2009

watchmen: rated BBD


Whoever gave Watchmen its current “R” rating really should have rated it a new category called BBD, short for “Big Blue Dong.”

Yes, there was a BBD, and even multiple ones in different dimensions. Wacky.

Seriously, people who thought Doc Manhanttan’s little (or should I say, big) “buddy” was a necessary part of Alan Moore’s epic vision should take another look at Dave Gibbons’ drawings. Do I see panels of BBD? Nope. Not one page. Did director Zack Snyder think Mr. D would be distracting to the viewers? I have no idea what he was thinking. A penis is one thing; but a big, blue CG man bearing his BBD like a liberated animal is another.

Maybe I complain because I saw this on IMAX and could NOT help looking at it. So what? you ask. A dong is a dong. Yes, but when it’s blue and ten feet long and in almost every shot, even the most prudent of deniers would’ve sneaked a peek, cuz it literally looked you in the eye every time. There was no escaping it.

OK, that’s enough dong-talk for now because there’s much more to the Watchmen movie than the infamous blue willy. Being a fan of the comic, I thought Snyder did a great job translating it to film. I was wary at first, envisioning something like the Fantastic Four gone emo, just emoting with the same horrid acting and script-writing. Watchmen, however, was generally well-acted, with extra kudos to Patrick Wilson as a perfectly pudgy Dan Dreiberg and Jackie Earle Haley delivering a spot-on, psycho-licious portrayal of the fan favourite, Rorschach. It seems they got most of the casting right, though, I felt that Adrian Veidt, also known as "Ozymandias," was strangely miscast. They got some fella named Matthew Goode (not the band), gave him a Ken-doll helmet of blond hair and stuck plastic nipples on his suit à la Batman Forever. Voila, the "smartest man in the world"! As for Dr. Manhattan, well, you know my opinion of that streaker.

Sadly, the only female character, Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman), was a bit of a disappointment (though I’m sure all the nerdy single 30-somethings thought otherwise) because her acting, as a friend pointed out, was a lot like Drew Barrymore in her less finer moments. Don’t get me wrong. I like Drew Barrymore. I thought she was awfully cute in the Wedding Singer. But a babe in yellow spandex who sounds surprised every time she talks gets annoying real fast. Sorry.

Okay, so I make it sound like I didn't like this movie, which isn't true. The fight scenes, the characters' messed up human-ness and grittiness made for an impressive anti-heroic comic book movie. But because I’m squeamish and don’t like looking at male anatomy for 2 hours and 43 minutes, I was disturbed by the gratuitous gore, violence and sex made explicit in the movie. There were points where I felt we could get the gist of the violence going on, and didn’t need to see every stinkin' detail. Thank you, Zack, we got lots of that in 300.

So yes, die-hard fans of the comic book should see it; those who have no interest in comic books should probably stay home, or watch Akerman flounce around in 27 Dresses. The performance is about the same, just with lots of spandex and nekked peeps getting it on in a mechanical owl.

2 comments:

Tim "Palantar" Jones said...

For the record, there are "about 330,000" hits on google right now for Big Blue Dong. :)

Matthea said...

And how do *you* know this, Tim?