Review: "Hot Fuzz"
Apr. 24th, 2007 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebAlthough I normally prefer to see my movies cheaply, showing rented DVDs on R.'s computer screen with his fabulous sound system and with subtitles on, I will see movies in theatres socially. And on occasion, I like a preview so much that, if it's not from rich people, I will want to see it in a theatre myself. "Hot Fuzz" was such a movie. (Perhaps these guys are actually rich, I don't know. I'm pretty sure their wealth doesn't compare to that of other movie people I've heard of.)
"Hot Fuzz" is a terrible name for a good movie. It's a buddy cop movie about a cop who doesn't already have a buddy at the beginning of the movie. The trailer doesn't actually wreck the movie, although it does give a lot away. You still have to see the movie to decide what the reality behind the set-up really is.
What I most like about the movie is that it is full of silliness that is not stupid. That's so rare! One way they do this is by juxtaposing the mundane with the extreme, creating surreal silliness. Like the librarian-looking person firing two guns. Paperwork is funny. And crossword puzzles. They also do it with pun-like humor they can't quite resist. For example, if the script calls for a jar of something to get busted over someone's head, it may as well be a jar of something red and gooey, right? How can you resist that?
You may also like this movie if you like John Woo photography, movie references, or swans; if you are a goody two-shoes; or if you have issues with small towns. (You might think that small towns in England are quite different from those in Texas, but according to this movie, there are far too many similarities. Like everybody and their mother has guns! "Like who?" "Farmers." "And who else?" "Farmers' mums.")
You might not like this movie if you don't like jerky scene changes, are disgusted with political correctness, or don't like gore. (Sadly, you could guess by watching this movie that the guys involved enjoy zombie movies, even if you hadn't seen their "Shaun of the Dead." The gore is all supposed to be original and funny, but still. Ew.)
I can't tell yet if I will want to watch this movie over and over, but I suspect this is the sort of movie in which you can notice more things with repeated viewings. I definitely want to see at least once more to find out if they set up a certain pattern which I suspect they did.
"Hot Fuzz" is a terrible name for a good movie. It's a buddy cop movie about a cop who doesn't already have a buddy at the beginning of the movie. The trailer doesn't actually wreck the movie, although it does give a lot away. You still have to see the movie to decide what the reality behind the set-up really is.
What I most like about the movie is that it is full of silliness that is not stupid. That's so rare! One way they do this is by juxtaposing the mundane with the extreme, creating surreal silliness. Like the librarian-looking person firing two guns. Paperwork is funny. And crossword puzzles. They also do it with pun-like humor they can't quite resist. For example, if the script calls for a jar of something to get busted over someone's head, it may as well be a jar of something red and gooey, right? How can you resist that?
You may also like this movie if you like John Woo photography, movie references, or swans; if you are a goody two-shoes; or if you have issues with small towns. (You might think that small towns in England are quite different from those in Texas, but according to this movie, there are far too many similarities. Like everybody and their mother has guns! "Like who?" "Farmers." "And who else?" "Farmers' mums.")
You might not like this movie if you don't like jerky scene changes, are disgusted with political correctness, or don't like gore. (Sadly, you could guess by watching this movie that the guys involved enjoy zombie movies, even if you hadn't seen their "Shaun of the Dead." The gore is all supposed to be original and funny, but still. Ew.)
I can't tell yet if I will want to watch this movie over and over, but I suspect this is the sort of movie in which you can notice more things with repeated viewings. I definitely want to see at least once more to find out if they set up a certain pattern which I suspect they did.
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no subject
on 2007-04-25 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-04-26 12:34 am (UTC)It's not exactly a pattern, but I didn't know how to describe it.
You know how Danny keeps asking Nicolas so many questions about what Nicolas has done back in the big city? By the end of the movie, they have done many of these things. We know from the preview that they've done some of the more extreme ones like shoot both guns while leaping through the air. Have they done all of them? Has Danny himself done all of them? I just think he might have!
no subject
on 2007-04-26 01:08 pm (UTC)