maggieameanderings's reviews

I watched this movie because, based on the name, I was expecting it to be set in New Orleans. So I was a bit disappointed when it was set in Michigan, but I couldn't hold that against the film. However, there was still plenty else I could legitimately hold against the film.

Unlike every other reviewer on here, I had no idea who Dave Bautista was and that he was a wrestler. What the other reviews don't mention is how distracting Bautista's size is throughout the movie. Because he is so huge, dwarfing every other actor, I kept expecting him to hulk out and start smashing things. I didn't understand why they would have cast someone with that ENORMOUS size if it wasn't a requirement for the role (à la early Schwarzenegger as Conan). I also couldn't understand why any serious, dramatic actor (and this is a serious role) would do that to his body as I kept wondering how many steroids it took to get that big. Finding out he was a professional wrestler at least explained that apparent contradiction. I suppose the producers thought they were cashing in on Bautista's "fame."

I'll give Bautista credit for trying and trying very, very hard to act this part which was reminiscent of a film noir detective. Unfortunately, he just didn't have the acting skills to pull it off. (Just because someone like a wrestler, model or singer "performs" as part of their job doesn't mean they can act. News flash: Acting is its own unique specialty. It takes talent and practice to be able to act well.) Instead of restrained, he comes across as wooden. Maybe they thought they'd cast against type by putting Gigantor into a role where he's supposed to be low key, intelligent and only resorts to violence when he's forced to instead of just grabbing the bad guy by his shirt, lifting him off the ground and threatening to pound him back into the ground with his ham-sized fist. As the noose draws tighter and tighter around Bautista's character, you're supposed to feel sorry for the guy, but it's nearly impossible to feel sympathy for the biggest guy in the room. (The one character I did feel sympathy for was the hit-man friend.)

To make things worse the script was bad. Tedious, predictable except where it didn't make any sense at all, and far too slow moving in spots --- deadly dull even. Great acting can salvage a thin script. But this wasn't great acting from anyone. It was mediocre acting with performances as flat as the pages of the newspaper comic strip it felt like the story came from.

The nicest things I can say about the movie are at least it was shot on location in Michigan (and didn't take the usual cheap route of Vancouver, British Columbia) and I somehow made it to the end of the movie. But I don't recommend you make it to the end of this movie or even to the beginning. Just do yourself a favor and skip this one.

Without a doubt, Moore will get an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Sarah Palin.......a portrayal that, for the first time, gave me an understanding of Palin and a real sympathy for her. It showed a confident, charismatic, but essentially superficial person used to swimming in the shallows. It was also a Sarah Palin who was a mother with a new baby, a son going off to Iraq, and a close-knit, loving family who was suddenly taken away from that family and was thrust into the meat-grinder of national politics. Instead of being able to transcend herself and grow from the experience, we see a Palin who instead wraps herself up even more into being just who she is and finds a demographic of fellow shallows swimmers who love her just the way she is. Unfortunate, but after seeing this movie you could understand how it happened.

Harris as McCain portrays a rather idealized statesman, one trying to take the high road. There's no mention of McCain's volatile and explosive temper. Instead we're presented with an understanding, but aloof man at odds with the direction his party is going in. Again a sympathetic portrayal.

The final portrayals are of the political operatives in the McCain campaign. As you can understand the way Palin's personality begins to fracture under the pressure, you can also understand the operatives incredible frustration in trying to deal with it. You can understand when one operative, Wallace, finally just refuses to work with Palin anymore. You can understand the frustration of people who have spent their lives being informed try to deal with a Palin who lacks the most basic knowledge of history, world affairs or even how the federal government works. The tutoring sessions remind you of high school brains who've been pressured by the principal into tutoring the well-meaning, but thick-as-a-plank star quarterback so he can play in the finals. The room is thick with frustration on both sides.

This is a movie with no villains in the cast. If there is a villain here, it's a condemnation of the political process whereby a running mate is chosen solely for the electoral votes that person can bring with no consideration if the running mate is actually capable of running the country.

EDIT on 18 July 2012:

I finally read the book "Game Change" over the weekend. This movie actually is based on a very, very small amount of the book; it's not even the whole of "Part 3" as stated/implied in several reviews. The book is 23 chapters long (Part 1 - 14 chapters, Part 2 - 3 chapters, Part 3 - 6 chapters). The McCain campaign starts being covered at the beginning of Part 2 and is covered for the rest of the book. This movie is taken from less than two chapters (out of six chapters) in Part 3: Chapter 20 "Sarahcuda" which is all about Palin and how she got selected and Chapter 22 "Seconds in Command" which as the title implies covers both VP nominees (Biden as well as Palin). Plus the movie uses four and a half paragraphs from Chapter 23 "The Finish Line": two paragraphs describing McCain's relationship with Palin and 2.5 paragraphs about McCain and the "crazies" (that's what the book calls them) who started showing up at his rallies. The book does not cover the actual day of the election, so none of the scenes from election day are from the book, neither are any of the private scenes between Palin and her family. It was surprising to me to see how little of the book that this movie was based on. But many of the Palin incidents in the book are depicted reasonably to very faithfully in this movie. Now having read the book, I feel that the movie brought a greater depth of sympathy and understanding to Palin than the book did. And John McCain definitely comes off a lot better and more sympathetic in the movie than the book as the book does not minimize his foul mouth, his temper, his obstinacy and the dysfunctional relationship with his wife. If you're thinking about reading the book believing you'll find out more about Palin than what's presented in the movie, you won't. But you will find out a lot more about the election. (FYI: The rating for this review was 26 out 30 prior to this edit. Can't say if those people would have kept the same opinion of the review with this addition.)

Like the other reviewers I stumbled across this movie. I honestly didn't expect to enjoy it, but ended up being drawn into the storyline. I guess my sense of humor must be out of step with most current comedies because they're just not funny to me. It's easy for a movie to make me cry and very hard for a movie to make me laugh. So it's high praise when I say that I laughed more with Spin than I have at any movie I've seen in the last ten years. Simply thinking about certain scenes the next day would cause me to break out in uncontrolled laughing.

The version I saw was the under 80 minute TV edit. It's the story of one night at a club and the morning after from the point of view of six different characters all young (twenty-three years old ----- so we're told in the opening scene), beautiful and living in Southern California. The movie starts out slow, but it grows on you. Somewhere in the second vignette I was hooked. In the end, it's a tightly written script where all the pieces fit together wonderfully and with great humor. Spin is a screwball comedy for the modern era but has some moments of pathos in dealing with relationships.

In the first vignette, we're introduced to a character played by fifty-something Michael Biehn with one of the twenty-three year old girls. I'll admit that repulsed me, and I almost changed channels at that point. No matter how often Hollywood goes to the well of much older men with much younger women, I think that water's undrinkable. But it turns out that Michael Biehn was the hidden gem of this movie. I've only ever seen Biehn in serious, intense roles. I don't think I've seen him play any part other than a soldier or a cop (oh, and one sociopathic cowboy). This was the first comedy I've seen him in, and Michael Biehn has a real gift for comedy with impeccable comic timing. Watching his performance in Spin made me regret that Biehn's been so typecast in non-comedic roles.

The movie's focus is on the twenty-three year old characters, and I found the young actors to be very interchangeable, particularly the females. I didn't think any of the young actors put their own stamp on their characters so that I couldn't imagine anyone else playing that role. Pretty much any other actor with that physical type could have played the role, and I wouldn't notice the difference.

But I'll give chops to the older guy. Michael Biehn's been acting for longer than most of the young actors have been alive, and experience counts for something.

Overall, the strength of Spin was definitely from its script, so kudos to Henry Pincus for writing the funniest movie I've seen in many a year.