Writing something about which you hate seems too easy. Any half-wit can toss off a few lines when they’re of the mind that something sucks. They may even succeed with having written a clever line, but that kind of response still feels like a cop-out. Writing something about which you really enjoy, however, can present a great challenge. Most people want to share the excitement of what they loved, but conveying that impact can be tricky. All movies, I thought, could fit easily into a “really liked it,” or “really didn’t” category, but Angel-A fit neither. It’s true, I didn’t like Angel-A, but certainly not on the same level as disliking the highest-grossing movie of all time, and it served to remind me of the varying degrees of what we label “sucky” and what we declare as “great.”
Some things I really liked: the film looked beautiful shot in black & white and at times looked more like black & silver, I loved the shots of Paris in the background, I enjoyed the story, especially the part of how the protagonist’s angel misrepresents the future in order to change its direction. I even liked the instrumental music used throughout the film. But, speaking of music, early in the movie there was an entire feature song that was so misplaced I almost stopped watching right then. Its inclusion felt like an obvious attempt to push some unknown artist into the charts. The frozen frame effects, visual morphing, and sped-up scenes all worked against it, too, but I stuck with it hoping for a big turnaround. Since one never came, Angel-A’s good points balanced with its bad and it landed as a zero on the movie number line; neither positive nor negative. Now if only that other movie comes up for review on 3mulligans.com…
3 Mulligans 