Me and Orson Welles

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, 4:45 p.m. on Jan. 13.

This has to be one of the most shockingly bad movies of the past year.

I spent much of the first hour of this film writhing uncomfortably in my scene. Watching this was like listening to a metal saw cutting through aluminum.

There are 1930s movies---and then are Postmodern 1930s movies. This had all the worst of the latter category. The screenplay seemed to have been written by people who have seen clips of the Thirties in film class perhaps but never bothered to become a fan of the cinema from that era, in any deep fashion. If they had, they never would have been able to write the kind of execrable dialogue, and create the kind of vastly unsympathetic characters, that were on screen in this movie.

The movie wasn't all bad, actually. There were a few scenes, and half-scenes, that almost worked here and there, but then it would sink back down to the barely watchable again.

The casting was so surreally of that I began to suspect Linklater of doing the whole thing as a gag. But I don't think it was intended that way.

Still it feels like to him, and to everyone else involved in this, with a few exceptions, the 1930s were not a real time in history, lived by real people who did real things and spoke real words. Instead the 1930s is a just a virtual genre created by Hollywood, one that exists outside of any factual reality, and thus can be manipulated and reinterpreted in any arbitrary fashion.

That's pretty much my verdict on Postmodernity as a whole, by the way---why it ultimately fails, as does this film.

But I hung in there. I gave this movie plenty of chances. Too be fair, amazingly the story (but not the screenplay) works very well. With a few tweaks, it could have almost made it.

And amazingly in the last half hour, it seems to pull out a miracle, and go from being unwatchable to being almost intriguing. This is the part when the actual play-within-a-movie is being performed. During this time, the characters were unable to say the inane things they were saying in the other two hours.

But above all it is the supporting role of Christian McCay as Welles himself that give the greatest but alas fleeting pleasures of this movie. It can't be easy to be Welles, and McCay hits a few false notes here and there, but considering he's having to play against Zach Efron and the horribly, horribly miscast Claire Danes.

Given that it's awards season, it's hard not to find something in my bag, even for a film like this that had me seriously thinking of walking out on at least four occassions.

I know what the award is.

Best Shakespeare adaptation: Me and Orson Welles (adaptation of Julius Caesar).

I think there is enough of the original in the movie itself, and the surrounding story informs the original to a sufficient degree, to qualify this as an adaptation. I don't think it has any competition in this story, as far as I can remember of the past year, but even if it did, it might still be worthy of this.