Million Dollar Baby
March 17th, 2005
by Dave Belisle
A boatload of Oscars. And for what? The sympathy vote. I realize as a screenwriter you want to reach for the farthest sandwich on the buffet table. That is, don't write the easy scene ... but this flick is about as realistic as a white bronco in the Rose Bowl parade.
So we have a girl boxer coached by a guy who'd rather substitute his face for a punching bag. Who's watching these boxing matches anyway? ESPN? TBS? Hardly. Female boxers are a sideshow.
I have two lovely daughters and I attend every game they play. But if it was the girl down the block, I wouldn't cross the street. I need a big bang for my entertainment buck. My screenwriter budget demands as much. (I went to this movie thanks to a $4 cereal coupon and a need to feast on at least one Oscar-nominated feature.)
The boxing accident was inherently unbelievable. A fighter would've been disqualified long before the "death blow". The pestering referee was the writer's "get-out-of-jail-free-card"? Hardly.
However, I DID like the cursing priest. That made me sit up. It was a well-orchestrated reach for the meatball on rye. I'll bet that caused some indigestion in the Bible Belt. But how many of those Oscar envelopes carry a return address of Nebraska?
The family visiting Maggie (Hillary Swank) in the hospital was straight out of a screwball comedy gone wrong. Let's create some over-the-top animosity by having them wear their Disneyland t-shirts, with their lawyer, ready to take her money away -- which already purchased a house they didn't want. They preferred their trailer to a house? Notice that a "fixer-upper" man wasn't in the room during THAT conversation. Shrewd. The scene played like an extreme home make-over show in reverse.
But to have a mother call her daughter a loser as the girl lies in bed with no movement below her tonsils? Well, the writer DID foreshadow it by having the mother make some derogatory remark about Maggie's chosen career earlier. I guess that gives her the right to pee on her grave.
This was a chick flick disaster. The last 20 minutes of the movie had me breathing dirty air from Maggie's respirator. Or was that the hospital food? Somebody pull the plug already. I'd memorized the room and could introduce you to the pedestrians in the intersection outside the window. I sure needed the bite-my-tongue scene. Who was that for? Freddy's Friday the 13th friends? Oh, but she's a rugged little fighter, isn't she?
A final thing I didn't like was how Boss (Clint Eastwood) goes AWOL at the end without saying goodbye to Scrap (Morgan Freeman).
I'm guessing it was a double pay-off. One, to the fact that Boss' daughter never wrote him back -- I never caught on why (poor audio or loud popcorn) -- and two, he screwed up in Freeman's last bout as well. But he owed Freeman a new pair of socks at least. Freeman didn't die. Freeman did deserve his Oscar.
The cream never rose to the top in this year's movies because most of the lot looked sour. But blame that on the Hollywood marketing machine. I'm not going to see a McCauley Caulkin-looking Leonardo DiCaprio play the world's wealthiest man no matter how many $4 cereal coupons I have.
So we have a girl boxer coached by a guy who'd rather substitute his face for a punching bag. Who's watching these boxing matches anyway? ESPN? TBS? Hardly. Female boxers are a sideshow.
I have two lovely daughters and I attend every game they play. But if it was the girl down the block, I wouldn't cross the street. I need a big bang for my entertainment buck. My screenwriter budget demands as much. (I went to this movie thanks to a $4 cereal coupon and a need to feast on at least one Oscar-nominated feature.)
The boxing accident was inherently unbelievable. A fighter would've been disqualified long before the "death blow". The pestering referee was the writer's "get-out-of-jail-free-card"? Hardly.
However, I DID like the cursing priest. That made me sit up. It was a well-orchestrated reach for the meatball on rye. I'll bet that caused some indigestion in the Bible Belt. But how many of those Oscar envelopes carry a return address of Nebraska?
The family visiting Maggie (Hillary Swank) in the hospital was straight out of a screwball comedy gone wrong. Let's create some over-the-top animosity by having them wear their Disneyland t-shirts, with their lawyer, ready to take her money away -- which already purchased a house they didn't want. They preferred their trailer to a house? Notice that a "fixer-upper" man wasn't in the room during THAT conversation. Shrewd. The scene played like an extreme home make-over show in reverse.
But to have a mother call her daughter a loser as the girl lies in bed with no movement below her tonsils? Well, the writer DID foreshadow it by having the mother make some derogatory remark about Maggie's chosen career earlier. I guess that gives her the right to pee on her grave.
This was a chick flick disaster. The last 20 minutes of the movie had me breathing dirty air from Maggie's respirator. Or was that the hospital food? Somebody pull the plug already. I'd memorized the room and could introduce you to the pedestrians in the intersection outside the window. I sure needed the bite-my-tongue scene. Who was that for? Freddy's Friday the 13th friends? Oh, but she's a rugged little fighter, isn't she?
A final thing I didn't like was how Boss (Clint Eastwood) goes AWOL at the end without saying goodbye to Scrap (Morgan Freeman).
I'm guessing it was a double pay-off. One, to the fact that Boss' daughter never wrote him back -- I never caught on why (poor audio or loud popcorn) -- and two, he screwed up in Freeman's last bout as well. But he owed Freeman a new pair of socks at least. Freeman didn't die. Freeman did deserve his Oscar.
The cream never rose to the top in this year's movies because most of the lot looked sour. But blame that on the Hollywood marketing machine. I'm not going to see a McCauley Caulkin-looking Leonardo DiCaprio play the world's wealthiest man no matter how many $4 cereal coupons I have.
More recent articles in Uncategorized
Comments
Only logged-in members can comment. You can log in or join today for free!
Advertisement
