Friday, June 3, 2005

I'LL JUST NOTE THAT HE NEITHER MENTIONED 'CHILL FACTOR' NOR THAT DAMN 'QUILT' MOVIE: Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells has seen the Pitt/Jolie vehicle Mr. and Mrs. Smith and, um, yeah:
It's Charlie's Angels 2 bad, Xanadu bad, Hook bad, Howard the Duck bad. It's soulless, unfunny (except for some of costar Vince Vaughn's lines), bombastic, totally sterile and inhuman. Did I leave out hateful?

I don't want to go over the top here so let me take a breath and step back for a minute or two and collect myself. (Beat.) Okay, I've done that...fine. I'm calm. I'm breathing easy. This movie has cancer of the soul. It made my skin crawl.

Let's talk about Brad Pitt, shall we? As correctly explained in the new Esquire, he does not belong in leading roles at all:
One of this summer's big event movies, an action comedy called Mr. and Mrs. Smith, stars Pitt as one of "the world's most deadly assassins." That's already a mistake. Under no circumstances should Brad Pitt be cast as a superlative. The essence of Brad Pitt is detached insouciance; he's most interesting to watch when he doesn't seem to give a shit. About 14 years after he first achieved stardom, Hollywood still doesn't understand that Pitt is a brilliant goofball prankster trapped in the body of a Greek god. As Achilles, he's a magnificently sculpted statue, beautiful and boring. But turn him into a Waspy analogue to the young Elliott Gould—the shambling, apathetic buffoon—and he'd be funnier than Sandler and Ferrell.

Seriously: 12 Monkeys and True Romance? He's fantastic. Eating his way through Vegas in Ocean's 11? Plenty of fun. But Meet Joe Black and A River Runs Through It? Yawn.

Brad Pitt is much more successful as a celebrity than as an actor; does anyone see a movie just because he's starring in it? I guess we'll find out.

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