mr_walsh

...an engineer is firing his newly designed motor...or building a factory...or perfecting the ability to pour concrete for a new power plant. Somewhere in India some young entrepreneur has set up shop making something and can't wait to hire workers and move product out the door. These guys are seeing achievement brought to life and seeing wealth emerge from minds and hands.

In Atlas Shrugged you, for a brief time, get to experience what that must feel like; to enrich the lives of people with transportation, oil and steel while battling for the right to do so against the parasites that seek to control and manipulate it all.

'Looters', those who take people that create things for granted, will - correction - *do* hate the film; we see single digit critic review scores and very high viewer reviews. Roger Ebert expects people to believe the movie isn't worth seeing because there's too much drinking and business language, completely overlooking the awe-inspiring panoramas, unforgettable characters and spot-on (if archetypal) representations of the wealth producers vs. their 'entitled' enemies. Ebert & co. seem to hope to paint the picture as an artistic failure in hopes it will be missed. I sure hope they fail - I loved it.

I enjoyed the performances by all the actors. 'Bleeker' in particular came across as completely authentic. The dialog had its moments, though I didn't understand how a teenager would know about such ancient obscure things like 'Soupy Sales'.

But like 'Lars and the Real Girl' I felt like the movie felt incomplete somehow. Almost in the same vein as 'Dazed and Confused', except that it *unintentionally* was a fairly unexciting recount of a few days in the lives of a few people as they deal with a fairly novel situation.

And I have to say that I can't really enjoy a movie that glorifies people like Juno and 30+ year old teenagers like Mark but belittles responsible 'grown ups' like Vanessa and the abortion protester. I guess movies like this appeal to a society that would like there to be no shame for anything.

Without a doubt this movie is a joy to look at, particularly the scenes in the 50's college town. And there were some intriguing ideas in the plot. But in the end, movies are about people and their stories, and this movie neglects the 'people stuff'. Maybe the stunts were so fantastic that you stopped thinking of the people as human beings. I've got to say things like the groundhogs shattered the Indy genre to me. Or maybe the pacing during the action scenes was so rapid that it left no room for my own imagination to become invested. Or perhaps the basic goal of the story didn't work for me as it did so brilliantly in RotLA or IJatLC.

All I can say is just as I walked out of 'Star Wars Episode I' basically un-entertained yet undeniably impressed with the technical achievements, I walked out of 'IJatKotCS' with my senses pleased but just not particularly entertained.

I wouldn't say this is a terrible movie...but it certainly falls far short of being a classic like 'Raiders'.