photomac

I've been a vegetarian for five years, leaning towards veganism (but just can't make that last jump to eliminate honey and real cheese) ... that said, I thought this film was clumsy and sort of annoying. It struck me as ham-handed (tofu-handed?), unsubtle, and somewhat self-righteous.

The parts I liked most about the film were the parts the filmmakers focused on least: day-to-day details like going around feeding the animals, and the laid-back interview segments allowing people to speak at length without interruption. I thought these parts were interesting and got across the message the filmmakers wanted without being overbearing about it.

Most of the film struck me as choppy, its editing clumsy and its narrative disjointed, to the point that it seemed a bit panicked (perhaps at the thought that some viewer somewhere might not understand how horrible the filmmakers think it is to eat animals).

I think the film underestimates the audience's intelligence and also oversells its message. In spite of itself, the film was interesting at times and genuinely affecting in a few places, though overall it didn't strike me as anything special.

After watching a few Ed Wood films, I think I can safely say that if you want a bad film that is truly hilarious, you should look for this one instead.

The narrator very sternly intones against the "flood-tide of filth" that he considers against Christian values, and carefully and methodically gives examples of this "filth," showing almost as much as you'd see if you'd bought it yourself. But it's not all pretty pictures: the narrator explains a bit about it as well: that people can get sexual satisfaction from hurting themselves or others, and that various forms of fetishism deserving thorough discussion are "threatening our children": "the extreme spiked heel and the tight boot, the burning cigarette, the laced leather garment, the nakedness," "the worship of the whip, the riding crop, rubber and leather garments."

Aside from the S&M, which didn't disturb me at all, the film does also focus on child pornography; it's hard to dismiss that.

Yet still, by the end of it, the film has given so much detail in decrying all these "perversions" that one wonders whether the protest were a bit more personal than the staunch narrator pretends. It's easy to imagine the writers stacking up more and more magazines, saying to themselves "oh, that /is/ perverted ... yet oddly intriguing... such a nice boot...."

Nearly everything about this film, and the story it's based on, strikes me as humdrum, formulaic, and uninspired. It took me awhile to figure out why, especially in an area where the writer had a chance to cut loose and present some truly fantastic characters, themes, and situations--to do something original and profound. That chance was never taken--the presented conflicts are superficial, the obstacles ankle high, the outcome never in doubt.

That is what is at fault with the story's construction, but the cause of that fault is essentially that this is a Mary Sue story, or in this case a Gary Stu story: one in which the central character is considered wonderful & talented, generally through no fault or cause of his own, and nearly everyone comes to admire him by the story's end. In other words, the story is on a level with most fanfic, in which the author inserts himself as the main character and spends most of the storytime imagining fantasies of universal acclaim and wish-fulfillment best left abandoned by the early teens.

There are of course good fantasy films and novels, but I'm afraid this isn't one of them. And there are also films for children which adults will find entertaining, but I doubt this is one of those either. I imagine, instead, that the film is perhaps a bit boring to most people who aren't blessed enough to be the author.