Letterboxd Litter #5
Heathers / Monsters University / Sweetheart
HEATHERS (1988)
“Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.”
This absurd line, given by an absurd character, was the point where Heathers suddenly clicked into place for me. If you can see the humor in it, then you can see the humor in the movie as a whole. If not, then… ooof.
It gives a gleeful middle finger to the other teen dramedies of its era, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it still pretty much does the same thing to the same sorts of movies today. It’s witty, caustic, tonally confusing and occasionally grating. I spent the first half of it pretty confused and kind of bored. But then I gradually got more on board, and was having a grand old time once its insane yet satisfying climax barreled around.
If Donnie Darko were a crackhead rather than a stoner, his story would probably end up similar to JD’s. Teen angst and grandiose philosophizing is neither romanticized nor necessarily laughed at in this movie… but romanticization itself is shat upon, and with great brio.
I wonder if the creators of 13 Reasons Why ever saw this movie. If they did, they either forgot about it or chose to ignore it. Pity. Netflix should make Heathers the automatic “play next” suggestion whenever anyone watches that show. 3.5/5
MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (2013)
Blows my mind that this came out a full seven years ago. I thought for sure it was much more recent, perhaps because it tastes so strongly of the commercial flavor that is now characteristic of the sequel-happy Disney-Pixar hybrid. I’m sad that the Pixar I grew up with is no more — but I’m relieved that today’s Pixar is still making good stuff. Not great, but good; and Monsters U is something of a prototype of what I mean.
The last time I saw this movie was when it first came out, I think, and second impressions are much better. Once I managed to ignore the fact that John Goodman, Billy Crystal and Steve Buscemi are supposed to be voicing college students (“how do you do, fellow kids?”), I had a lot of fun with it — its color, energy, world-building and panoply of characters. And it gave me stuff to think about in its treatment of such themes as talent, privilege, prejudice and jealousy.
Somehow, though, it fails to go for the emotional jugular the way a lot of Pixar’s classics did. Those older films, like this one, had a great sense of humor, but they never allowed it to detract from the heart of the story. Monsters University, by contrast, felt a bit like it was keeping me at arm’s length emotionally. It entertained me and made me think, but it didn’t move me.
And that fits with a lot of the current Pixsney brand. So much of the four-quadrant stuff coming out of today’s Disney Empire — from Marvel to Star Wars to Pixar — doesn’t organically interweave humor and emotional honesty. Instead it pivots between them rather clumsily, like it’s trying to demonstrate its proficiency in these areas for some kind of assessor. This makes for fun, thoughtful, exciting films that check the boxes of what a cinematic experience should be… but they never feel truly genuine.
In this case, though, I guess that’s appropriate. This is a movie about college students after all. 3.5/5
SWEETHEART (2019)
Listen, I want to champion indie horror flicks with empowered female/minority protagonists, but Sweetheart really didn’t do it for me. Although the premise is clever, it’s executed with a thudding predictability that quickly becomes tedious, and our heroine has little unique personality beyond “ingenue who miraculously learns how to spear fish and just as miraculously doesn’t get eaten.”
People have praised this film for its largely wordless execution, and I take issue with that. Obviously, visual storytelling that doesn’t use dialogue as a crutch is praiseworthy, but it doesn’t therefore follow that a film is somehow better, more subtle or more artistic for not having dialogue. Most of the movie is wordless, but it also largely fails to make its heroine interesting, its monster frightening, or its milieu textured and believable. A gesture in the climax toward female/black empowerment has also received a lot of praise, but I don’t understand why as said gesture has no real teeth or narrative significance to it.
All that being said, there are a few very effective images to be had that indicate how clever and chilling Sweetheart could have been. But that doesn’t change what it is. In short, I apply the same criticism here that I apply to a lot of “Christian” films — although this is a film by/about the sort of people we want to see more films by/about, that does not make it a good film. 1.5/5
