The Spirit Review

Well, I finally saw The Spirit tonight While my wife and I were waiting to go inside, the audience from the previous showing were coming out. One man told his wife as the walked past us, "Two hours of my life that I will never get back." She replied, "Yes, that was pretty bad." After I reassured my wife that it could not be that bad, we went into the theater. I realize that if you have not seen it, I'm sure you have heard nothing positive about it at all. I didn't detest it, however it was not the best movie of 2008. In my opinion to appreciate the good qualities of this movie you have to be a fan of Frank Miller's work (he directed, wrote it, and produced it) and have a love for the comic book genre. I personally am a fan of his work and I enjoy the comic book genre of storytelling in general. People who are not into comic books had to wondering:
a. About Frank Miller's sanity?
b. Why would Lionsgate allow him to make a movie with so many over-the-top acting and such an obscure character?

About Miller's sanity, all I can say that the majority of society always mistakes genius for madness while the artist lives. And as for the studio motivations: money. Frank Miller's work is the source material for 2 block buster films in the past 5 yeas: Sin City and 300. They were considered cool and cutting edge by the general public but if you knew anything about Frank Miller than you knew that all they did was shoot the movies the way he draws and tells stories. What the producers of those films did was translate Frank Miller's vision into a from that people who are not into comic book could accept and they did it will. I think the problem with The Spirit was that Frank could not translate his vision into something everyone could get. It was lost in translation from comic book to screen. It was gorgeous. It looked like a living comic book. Unfortunately the acting was overdone and a lot of the lines and dialog did not work well. Some of the action and fight sequences looked like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Such actions works great with cartoon characters but falls way flat with real actors. Even Samuel L. Jackson could not save this thing....and that, my friends, is frightening. Some situations made the majority of the audience I was with laugh and I don't think it was meant to be funny. And there were some things that was meant to be funny, but were not. I love Miller's work. I'm hoping that this won't be the last time he gets a chance to film one of his visions. He didn't create The Spirit character but he is a fan and this film seems like a love letter....a bad one...but a love letter nonetheless.

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