on cloverfield

the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence... - manohla dargis (ha!!)

read her scathing review in its entirety here.

i saw it last night--it was fun, the way a gimmick-y roller coaster ride at an incredibly cheesy theme park is fun. but that's about it.

this is my favorite point that dargis makes:

For a brief, hopeful moment, I thought the filmmakers might be making a point about how the contemporary compulsion to record the world has dulled us to actual lived experience, including the suffering of others — you know, something about the simulacrum syndrome in the post-Godzilla age at the intersection of the camera eye with the narcissistic “I.” Certainly this straw-grasping seemed the most charitable way to explain characters whose lack of personality (“This is crazy, dude!”) is matched only by their incomprehensible stupidity. Smart as Tater Tots and just as differentiated, Rob and his ragtag crew behave like people who have never watched a monster movie or the genre-savvy “Scream” flicks or even an episode of “Lost” (Hello, Mr. Abrams!), much less experienced the real horrors of Sept. 11.

even better, however, is her closing line. i'll let you find that out for yourself, though.