The 2011 Summer Screen Review (Part III)

Having been watching more TV on DVD than anything else, a few movies have snuck into the mix, mostly at home, but occasionally on the big screen.

Having finished reading The Girl Who Played With Fire, I was able to watch the Swedish film of the same name. Though less effective an adaptation than The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo, it was still a decently executed film which does an admirable job of streamlining the book's complicated details. Gone is some of the tension of the book, along with a shuffling and compacting of timelines, but the changes have the feel of having been thought-out and deemed necessary to bring the book to the screen. As before, the cast is impeccably assembled (or reassembled, in the leads' cases) and apart from one glaringly obvious technical/factual flaw (which was an odd substitution for a moment in the book, anyway), the film holds itself together nicely. I'm waiting on the final book to be released in the paperback size to match the two on my shelves so I can read it and then view the final Swedish movie, which already lies in wait in my living room.

Onto much less reputable fare, I picked up the notoriously bad Masters of the Universe DVD, starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor. I'd seen it before, many years ago, but upon finding it in the cheap bin, I couldn't resist the trainwreck I remembered it to be. The biggest problem with the movie from the get-go is that the script fails where so many adaptations of cartoons and "old school" shows fail: it betrays the very core concept of the show. Presumably in the interests of saving a whole lot in set construction and location work, the filmmakers transport He-Man and company into modern day America for the majority of the story, in search of a Cosmic Key (which is, in itself, a ridiculously conceived object, a technological portal-opener that happens to play like a synthesizer). Abandon Battlecat (who is never mentioned) and essentially replace the mildly annoying Orko with the VERY annoying Gwildor, stick everyone on a distinctly 80s Earth and, combined with a hundred other flaws, you've got a hot mess of a movie, it still can entertain a little for all the wrong reasons. It's also fun to see Courtney Cox in her pre-friends days, hoping, I'm sure, that this will be her big break.

On the animated front, I watched Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, part of Warner Brothers' DC Animated Universe line. Based on a graphic novel, the movie's storyline centres around Superman being framed by the newly-elected US President Luthor and his battle, alongside ally Batman, to clear his name and save the world from destruction. You know, the usual. Despite the misfires that seem to occur with big screen adaptations of DC properties (Catwoman, anyone? Superman Returns? Joel Schumacher ever having anything to do with a comic book movie?), the DC animated adaptations -- starting with the 90s Batman: The Animated Series -- are generally pretty strong, even if they stray significantly from the source material. This one isn't their strongest, but it's a decent animated flick nonetheless.