Worm's Eye View: I Hate Crash
- By Mighty Worm
- Published 08/26/2009
Mighty Worm
In 1957, Mighty Worm tragically drowned at camp while counselors were inconsiderately having
sex. Or so everyone thought! Ambiguously undead, Worm vengefully
returned decades later and has been happily killing sexy idiots ever
since. He's fought Corey Feldman and Freddy Krueger and even gone into
space where he became part robot.
He hopes someday to fight Michael Meyers and a Predator.
Fun fact: Apparently Crash has been the #1 most-rented movie on Neflix ever since it was released on DVD in 2006. In three years it apparently hasn’t slipped into 2nd place once, not even dethroned by uberhits like The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Transformers, or Indian Jones and The Kingdom of the Raging Shitfest. True, more people saw those four films in the theater, negating the need for a rental, but still… three years! Untouched!
As a film buff, normally a smaller film maintaining such a Herculean feat over bloated studio pics would get me pumped. It doesn't though. Why? Cause I fucking hate Crash.
To me Crash is just as bloated and emotionally shallow as Indian Jones 4, but far more obnoxious. At least I’ve never heard anyone claim Indian Jones 4 was “moving” or “powerful,” and it certainly didn’t win an Oscar for Best fucking Picture.
I’m generally a forgiving filmgoer, but Crash’s gross tone of self-importance really bugged the shit out of me. The movie casts itself as a gritty and in-your-face exposé on race in contemporary America, but it isn’t exposing jack, and it’s certainly not gritty. It’s pandering in knowingly fabricated, cheesy moments to elicit easy emotions from the audience (where were all of Remember the Titans’s Oscars?). Crash is a farce, and I mean that in the literal sense, as in: “a comic work using buffoonery and absurdity and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.” It's like a Neil Simon play, only gratingly pretentious and not as clever.
I should note, I actually like Paul Haggis. But Crash isn’t a movie about real characters in real situations plucked from his life. This isn't City of God or Do the Right Thing. This is some upper-middle-class white dude trying to sound profound after a few glasses of wine at a dinner party, talking about things he understands in as much as he’s aware they exist.
It doesn’t bother me if you like Crash. That’s your problem. It doesn’t really bother me that it won Best Picture either. Who actually takes the Oscars seriously? But I was hoping/expecting that the movie would just die slowly and forgotten in the cinema graveyard, existing only as a factoid in Oscar-winner history. But no - it has become super popular! It’s quickly on its way to being a fucking film classic!
Damn you Netflix! Why are you doing this to me? After all our good times together?
As a film buff, normally a smaller film maintaining such a Herculean feat over bloated studio pics would get me pumped. It doesn't though. Why? Cause I fucking hate Crash.
To me Crash is just as bloated and emotionally shallow as Indian Jones 4, but far more obnoxious. At least I’ve never heard anyone claim Indian Jones 4 was “moving” or “powerful,” and it certainly didn’t win an Oscar for Best fucking Picture.
I’m generally a forgiving filmgoer, but Crash’s gross tone of self-importance really bugged the shit out of me. The movie casts itself as a gritty and in-your-face exposé on race in contemporary America, but it isn’t exposing jack, and it’s certainly not gritty. It’s pandering in knowingly fabricated, cheesy moments to elicit easy emotions from the audience (where were all of Remember the Titans’s Oscars?). Crash is a farce, and I mean that in the literal sense, as in: “a comic work using buffoonery and absurdity and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.” It's like a Neil Simon play, only gratingly pretentious and not as clever.
I should note, I actually like Paul Haggis. But Crash isn’t a movie about real characters in real situations plucked from his life. This isn't City of God or Do the Right Thing. This is some upper-middle-class white dude trying to sound profound after a few glasses of wine at a dinner party, talking about things he understands in as much as he’s aware they exist.
It doesn’t bother me if you like Crash. That’s your problem. It doesn’t really bother me that it won Best Picture either. Who actually takes the Oscars seriously? But I was hoping/expecting that the movie would just die slowly and forgotten in the cinema graveyard, existing only as a factoid in Oscar-winner history. But no - it has become super popular! It’s quickly on its way to being a fucking film classic!
Damn you Netflix! Why are you doing this to me? After all our good times together?
