Nacho Libre-fication* of American Society

Caustic Movie Review
Or
The Nacho Libre-fication* of American Society

*To my indescribable horror, I was once forced to share an airplane with the movie Nacho Libre. Airlines seem to have a special talent for culling the absolute worst movies to show on flights. I have used these films as a sort of watermark to show how low films can go. The last low water mark for me was the movie Sweet Home Alabama, a movie that was insulting even without wearing headphones. Sorry Sweet Home Alabama, you just got Nacho Libre’d out of your worst movie spot. By the way, Nacho was favorably reviewed in The New Yorker by Anthony Lane, no kidding.

There are times when I am confronted with aspects of our popular culture that are so relentlessly stupid and awful that I fear that we are all doomed to be turned into brain-dead zombies. It seems that the pabulum mass-produced by Hollywood is not only mind numbing, but actually criminal in its intent to lower the common denominator to a depth not compatible with vertebrate life forms. After watching 88 Minutes, a serial killer thriller starring Al Pacino, and The Guardian, with Kevin Costner, I realize that I could be accused of being hopelessly optimistic.

I often wonder if the writers of blockbusters have ever read anything longer than a two sentence email ending with an emoticon. If you are going to steal ideas—and everyone steals ideas—at least steal from books and not from the movies that everyone else has seen. Steal from some unknown author that no one reads anymore. You are probably safe taking plot ideas from Shakespeare or Homer. Even the movies they make of classic texts are imitations of other movies made from classic texts.

To say that movies these days are derivative is an insult to everyone who has ever read cliff notes instead of the required text, cheated on an exam, or turned in a research paper in college which they bought online. The Costner movie is such an amalgam of clichés that it is like a tick that is so bloated and sclerotic that it doesn’t even realize that it has sunk its fangs into its own fat ass.

These two films serve as a good example of the output of Hollywood over the past…let’s just say, a long time. I should probably include an example from another genre of movie but I just don’t have the stomach for it tonight. I think that two really bad movies is enough for anyone to digest in an essay about movies and even Guantanamo Bay inmates aren’t forced to watch more than two Hollywood blockbusters in a single weekend.

In the case of both of these horrible movies you have to wonder if anyone involved in any way with the production actually read the scripts before hand. I would believe it if you told me that neither film had a script and they just ad-libbed the whole thing, scene by scene, like some sort of actor’s guild workshop gone horribly wrong. I could excuse that because it shows that there was no premeditation, but if they worked from a plan, well, that’s just mean.

I have never liked a single serial killer movie, ever. I hate the genre and I find it silly, sick, and perverse all at the same time and to be all three of those at once probably takes a sort of talent I can’t yet appreciate. One of the reasons I decided to watch 88 Minutes in the first place was because it is set in Seattle. Unfortunately, little of the film was actually filmed in that city. All but a few establishing shots were filmed in Vancouver, Canada. I didn’t know this before I saw the movie and I was perplexed because I didn’t recognize any of the exterior locations. I was really suspicious when they showed a scene on a college campus and all of the students where carrying umbrellas. Everyone knows that Seattle people don’t use umbrellas—too much wind.

It takes a lot more than falsifying a location to ruin a movie for me but 88 Minutes was doomed from the start. I have a simple rule: A movie should grab you right from the opening credits and this one just about put me to sleep before the credits ended. Long story short, Al’s character is a psychiatrist who testifies in the trials of serial killers. One of the people he helped to convict is on death row and Al receives a death threat telling him he has 88 minutes to live. I only wish the killer would have been in more of a hurry, he could have saved us a lot of grief if the movie were called 30 Seconds.

As if the premise isn’t stupid enough (why not just go hang out at a police station for a couple hours and save yourself the easy way?) we are treated to insult after insult in the form of suspicious characters who blunder into the story posing as students, lovers, and lovers of the students of the esteemed psychiatrist. I could have turned it off but I kept watching—not to see what would happen next, but to see if it could get any dumber. Boy did it ever get dumber.

Al Pacino must either be too stupid to realize what a complete piece of shit he was about to star in, have the world’s biggest ego and just wants to be the leading man, or need money worse than I ever have. Although there is no reason why all three of those options can’t apply to an actor who once played in one of the best movies ever made.

Kevin Costner is almost on a par with Pacino’s superstar status and The Guardian is every bit as bad as 88 Minutes. The story for this boy-meets-younger boy formula probably came right out of a Microsoft Word template for action movies. All you have to do is point and click. They all have the dead best friend, the love/hate relationship between old veteran and jump upstart, completely disposable and recyclable love interest, and frat house aphorisms and humor. They probably don’t bother with writers at all anymore; the finance people just play Liar’s Poker during happy hour and the loser has to cobble together a script.

Top Gun and An Officer and a Gentleman were clichés so what do you call a script that lies upon the rubble of two decades worth of movies that have imitated those two unoriginal “classics?” In this case you call it The Guardian but they will have a different name for the next movie of this genre. Please lord, don’t let it be The Guardian II.

You may be asking yourselves this question: Why is this guy watching these dogs in the first place? Although he doesn’t seem too bright it’s not like he’s functionally retarded or anything. That’s a fair question. I probably read glowing reviews of both movies in The New Yorker, those two guys love anything that has a big budget. I remember when Anthony Lane just about peed his panties over the movie Speed. No kidding, he loved it.

Why does Hollywood make such lousy movies and how can we make them stop? For what these two movies cost to produce Hollywood could have given out probably 100 different grants of $1 million to eager new filmmakers. Out of those 100 films, all of them would be better than the two bombs that ended up in theaters and a few of them may have turned out to be masterpieces, and none of them would have starred Ashton what's-his-name. Of course, there is always the possibility that the 100 new director/writers are from the same mold as the makers of The Guardian and 88Minutes.

I think that originality scares the living crap out of the people who finance the making of entertainment so they stay with what has worked in the past, even if the idea has been bludgeoned and left for dead years ago. It all makes sense when you realize that movie producers don’t care whether or not the movie they make is good or bad, just that it makes money. Their product just needs to contain the right ingredients so that the people in marketing can do their job and sell it to the public. I may be wrong but selling a crappy product to the American public doesn’t seem like a very difficult job—just look at how many people buy all of that Ronco trash.

I think a harder task is to convince people that they should be holding out for quality movies. First of all, I don’t think that anyone walks away from The Guardian or 88 Minutes thinking they have seen a great film. I don’t think they think about it at all once the lights go up. It’s just a way to waste a couple hours between whatever it is that people do when they are watching crappy movies. Many people don’t insist on quality in any other aspect of their lives so why should they get picking when they go to the movies? The Guardian is just the cinematic equivalent of other products like Applebee’s or Miller Lite. In this day and age they are probably owned by the same company.

Is it possible to actually like Miller Lite, or a meal at Applebee’s, or a movie like Nacho Libre? I think it isn’t and these products just fill the lowest requirements in the human need for booze, food, and entertainment. It just seems that it would be a lot easier and cheaper to provide quality than to convince people that Miller Lite is beer, mozzarella sticks are food, and Nacho Libre is a movie. Am I some sort of cultural elitist because I didn’t like 88 Minutes? If that is your definition of “cultural elitist” then that just means anyone who is capable of resisting the relentless marketing, or Nacho Libre-fication of products.

The extent to which we are willing to allow product recognition to guide our every purchase is the subject for another essay but it really isn’t that difficult to choose quality over brand names. It will take a bit of trial and error which is infinitely wiser and more satisfying than constantly choosing badly. It takes a bit to get used to the taste of good beer from a small brewery but it’s worth it in the end. If the choice even exists for you wherever you live, go to a privately owned restaurant and more than likely the food will be better than TGI Friday’s, I promise. As far as movies go, let’s just hope that Another 88 Minutes is better than the original.