amado31-1

With the onslaught of independent and art house films making the cut these days that indeed provoke positive thought, there seems to be plenty directors who use art house as a ploy for putting just anything into film. "Brown Bunny" ranks high on the list of films that disintegrates the spirit of decency in film making. The film lacked an interesting plot, which is a travesty in itself. Cinematography? Poor. Direction? None. Character development? Mastheads have more life. Reason for the movie? Well, I'd argue with anyone who says that it was not to feed into Vincent Gallo's narcissism.

The endless scenes of the road trip -- much of it involving a closeup of Gallo and out of focus -- was a recipe for a disastrous movie for starters. The contrived dialog didn't help and the "shocking scene" was nothing more than an upturned middle finger from Gallo as he smiled a thin smile at all who sat through his lumbering piece of work. At best, "Brown Bunny" was a home movie that has received far more press than it should have and Gallo knew it would get said press because of his little shocker.

A movie -- Hollywood, independent, or art house -- should have rising action, a climax, and a denouement to at least achieve some type of artistic or visual credibility. "Brown Bunny" threw all of that out the window and instead threw up minutes of "what?" and a controversial surprise that left Gallo with some money in his bank account and everyone else shocked, to be verbose. Clearly not every script should become a movie. And no one should use this movie as a disclaimer for something worthy of watching beyond the opening credits.

I watched this movie with my grandmother when I was about 6 years old. The movie was PG, so I could get away with watching it then. What a hoot! We managed to watch that movie every time we could catch it on and the last line in the movie kept us laughing for the longest: It's me, Mattie.

I know that a movie about old folks killing to keep their homes may be totally horrific to today's society that salivates over brutality performed on perky-breast blonds, pencil-waist brunettes, and their associated blockhead boyfriends. The irony of "Homebodies" is that you're force to have to acknowledge those old folks for what they were doing -- whether you liked it or not. They refused to be pushed around and their tactics were crude, yet effective.

Having said that, I watched it again recently and I found it just as funny, but with a better understanding. While I could say that the murders were truly without warrant, they were in better context than what you see in most slasher flicks nowadays, where the killings are for shock value and good measure.