Month: September 2023

 

This week’s offering is on A Haunting In Venice. But first…

All apologies to my readers…I was AWOL last week. I try very hard to hit the pleather seats and chomp corn every single week. Sometimes life intervenes. In this case, we were all hands on deck to prepare for a massive engagement party at Average Dude’s house…which included finishing out the Average Dude’s Mancave (which we have dubbed ‘The Screening Room’). It was a big task and a big hit. Average Dude is very proud.

But my dedication to you is resolute. Look for a second review later in the week.

Mrs. Average Dude is a crafty lass (not in the derogatory way). She absolutey is in her element when decorating for an event. And Halloween is her unchallenged favorite event. To help her get into the spirit of the Season of the Witch (see what I did there?) she wanted to go see a scary movie. She’s not big at all on splatter movies (nor am I, tbh) so she chose A Haunting In Venice to satisfy the craving. I’m not sure that her craving was sated. Mine sure wasn’t.

Hercule! Hercule! Hercule! (did it again, somebody is going to have to stop me…)

A Haunting in Venice was directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, a French detective of great renown. You might think of him as France’s weak answer to Sherlock Holmes. And yes, I know Poirot appeared in 86 works by Agatha Christie. I did not even know the name Hercule Poirot before this movie so I said what I said.

In honesty, I had no idea this was an Agatha Christie movie. If I had, my expectations might have been different. But the end result would probably have been the same, maybe worse. Christie is widely considered the gold standard of ‘whodunnit’ fiction. If I had plopped down in my seat with that in mind, I might have turned my analytical knob up to 11 (I did it again…can’t help myself).

So, was A Haunting in Venice a quality whodunnit? This is where the ‘meh’ comes in. It wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen, but guessing the culprit was just that, a guess. There were definitely not enough ‘clues’ to allow us to piece it all together. Not even close. Scooby Doo did it just as well.

Giving A Haunting in Venice a bit of a break here…it’s got to be nigh impossible to do a proper whodunnit these days. We as an audience have become so used to forgiving plot holes, editing oopsies and suspension of disbelief that pretty much any of the clues could have been overlooked as mistakes. The quality bar has been set appaullingly low. We have nobody to blame but ourselves for allowing it to happen.

I’ll spare you all a rundown of individual cast members. I’m sure they will thank me later…

So, was there anything to truly like about A Haunting in Venice? Nothing that comes easlily to mind, I’m afraid. The dialogue seemed over-rehearsed, if that makes sense. Branagh rattled off his lines in a decent French accent, but the words sounded too polished, too perfectly metered. Is that a characteristic of Poirot? Maybe. But in the moment, it all just felt rushed, like a bad actor would do. I don’t think Branagh is a bad actor so I have to assume it was a director’s choice. And it seemed to be a contageous quirk, because Tina Fey fell into the same habit. So, if it was a director’s choice, it missed badly. For the Average Dude, at least.

If pressed to find a positive in this, I’d have to say that at least I’ve now been warned that Agatha Christie movies are not going to be given the attention they deserve as far as writing goes (and it goes a long way, obviously). In a world that has become okay with sub-mediocre writing in our entertainment, a true artist like Christie is just not going to thrive. Sad but true, I think.

I’m giving A Haunting in Venice a 2 out of 5 and will say that, unless you are a ride or die fan of Agatha Christie or Hercule Poirot, skip it. At any time. Even when it shows up on streaming (should be a couple of weeks from now, I’m guessing).

Let’s just put this one behind us and move on to the second helping of Average Dude Movie Reviews, coming tomorrow. I promise you, it will be worth your time and corn!

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So…the Average Dude is many things…writer, artist, movie afficionado extraordinaire, golf hacker, budding entrepreneur, fantasy football demi-deity and so on. But what I am most in life is a family man. I love my family above myself. So when Mrs Average Dude was excited to go see My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, how could I say no? She has so very dutifully accompanied me to see almost every movie I’ve reviewed (she skipped Fast X and I continue to remind her that she missed out). And to be fair, I did see MBFGW 1 &2. I didn’t pay to see them in theater, of course. But I remember that I didn’t hate them.

(And, I’m not saying that I spray Windex on lots of stuff you wouldn’t normally spray it on, but I’m also not saying that I don’t. Full disclosure, as always.)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is the sequel that we never cared enough to know we didn’t need

MBFGW was released over two decades ago (in 2002) and the first sequel released 14 years later. For a long awaited (ahem) second helping of souvlaki (I looked it up…think gyro without the pita) it was not too bad. Focusing on Gus and Maria was nice because, frankly, Toula and Ian were the least interesting characters of the lot. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 arrives in theaters in 2023 and it is amazing that a lot of the original cast were still around and able to participate. Sadly, one of the missing was the very heart of the Portokalos family. RIP, Gus. I truly loved you.

Heart and Soul

With the heart that holds the family together gone, apparently the soul departed as well. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was all over the place and never found any real identity. Was it about who would now lead the family? Was it about honoring Gus’s memory (on multiple fronts, apparently)? Was it about connecting with distant family? Was it about young love? Old love? Forbidden love (x2)? An existential soul-search? Believing in yourself? Finding yourself? Was it about saving the past or evolving? Immigrant rights or overcoming bigotry? Was it about how to care for an elderly loved one with some stage of dementia? Yes to all of thee above. And unfortunately, none were done well.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was a master class in trying to cram way too much into a movie and giving nothing time to flourish. So many plates spinning that I can’t even list them all. Every single character seemed to have their own mission, secret or internal dilemma. And in the final reel, they all were resolved – weakly – because ‘the movie is ending sooo SHAZAM! RESOLUTION!’

As disappointing as that was, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 also shoe-horned in a whole handful of new characters that had their own storylines to flesh out. One of which was apparently meant to check a certain box. The ham-fisted inclusion of the whole trans question only served to make what could have been an interesting character shallow. That sounds contradictory but it isn’t.

In fairness to Mrs Average Dude, I should tell you that she liked MBFGW3. Am I missing something? Some emotional disconnect inherent in the male mind? Maybe. I am a dude after all so probably. But since I didn’t hate MBFGW 1&2, I feel like I have sufficient cred to be able to say that My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was a big fat Greek mess and doesn’t add anything to the quirky characters we loved and, in fact, detracted from them. I’m giving My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 a shakey 2 out of 5. I’m glad now that Gus wasn’t in this movie. I don’t think even he could have weathered this unscathed.

Oh, and just btw, they managed to jam an actual Greek (sort of) wedding in at the finish line. Otherwise, they would have had to call it My Big Fat Greek Vacation…that would have worked, actually. They need to have me on speed dial. Seriously.

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