In the Closet

Not so long ago I scrawled a rant about the new subgenre of film, the buddy cop action romance. Films like The Bounty Hunter, Killers, and the upcoming Knight and Day that combine the brilliant buddy cop formula, with the somewhat trite rom-com formula. Since then, the frequency of promotional material for Knight and Day has increased tenfold…or infinitefold if there is such a thing. Yes, there is apparently no limit to the amount of times I can see the trailer for this film. I have seen it more than Avatar, and even Alice in Wonderland (I saw three trailers for the DVD release in one trip to the cinema).
I used to like the whole blockbuster thing, if a film has a massive budget, and everyone sees it, it must be good, oh the naivety. The current state of film is kind of like Tetsuo at the end of Akira, endlessly expanding with the ever increasing threat of an apocalypse. It seems that every week a blockbuster type film is released. We feel compelled to watch them, and we leave the cinema with empty hearts and empty pockets. These films have become so stale that we are genuinely shocked when one of them turns out to be not that bad really, so much so that they are nominated for an Oscar. Just fuck off Avatar.
So Knight and Day is coming in your face very soon. It’s been almost like walking around with someone pointing a gun in the back of my head ever since I first saw the trailer. I know it could all end at any moment, but it’s the waiting that gets me. And it doesn’t get any better. I’m going to overhear the general public talking about how good it is. How can I judge a film without even seeing it? Quite simply, because it looks fucking awful, and history tells me that it is. Besides, I haven’t seen the last two and a half Twilight films but I can tell you they are a sleight against absolutely everything. I wrote a letter to Amnesty.
What is truly bad about Knight and Day, is that it’s a vehicle for Tom Cruise to make the leap from action to comedy. I predicted this in the previous post, and only a week later it was announced that a Les Grossman film would be coming in our faces next year. Les Grossman was the character Tom Cruise played in Tropic Thunder, he said fuck a lot and did a little dance at the end, the whole world found it just hilarious (it wasn’t), told Tom Cruise, and now he thinks he’s just hilarious. Making a film from a small cameo from a very average film, it’s pioneering at the very least.
I’m not sure how they can make anything other than a small MTV Movie Awards skit from this character, and it is sure to be a 90 minute fuck fest of just hilarious dancing. Someone needs to tell Tom Cruise that he’s not funny before this gets out of hand. Comedy is all about the subtleties of a character, Larry David in Curb your Enthusiasm isn’t a balls out hilarious guy, it’s the little things about him that make him so funny, the same goes for David Brent and Alan Partridge. Tom Cruise has always acted too much, he gives too much of a performance and this won’t work in comedy.
Cruise is an easy target for the media, he acts like a dick all the time, without even meaning to be one. The whole Scientology thing, the embarrassing Oprah thing, it goes on and on. I like the majority of his films though, I’m just worried that any future comedic films will tarnish his whole reputation. If he has to make a comedy film it should be a parody of Tom Cruise, that’s the only way it will work, or they can put a laughter track on Rain Man.