In short:
• good acting
• 3-D characters
• story that could of been ultra cliché was not cliché at all.
First off, Meryl Streep was awesome. Her character is such a bitch but Streep manages to bring humanity to her character. Even though this woman is a complete devil, she's got emotions and she has motivations for the way she acts and you do see it slip out here and there, but not in a cheesy way, either. Very subtle. Streep is amazing to watch anyhow; she can convey so much with just the twitch of an eye, for goodness sakes.
The gal who plays the main character did a good job as well. I had seen her in The Princess Diaries and was afraid she might bring a bubblegum cliché performance to the film but she did not. She was human and she does evolve but while staying true to herself.
Which is what the film is about - staying true to oneself. So many films are about some girl starting out frumpy, heading for sucess, and along the way they're taught how to be fashionable and how to get the cool guy or whatever -- like in films like She's All That or even in the Princess Diaries - and dozens of others. And our main character, Andy, *does* start out frumpy and heading for sucess, and she does learn how to dress fashionably and gets to be cunning at her job. And in the end when she realises that there are limits to what she'll do before she's no longer being herself, it's a realistic realization. There's no huge change -- she keeps what she likes about what she learned, like keeping some of the nicer clothes for instance, but it's toned down. Just... more "normal". And she gets the kind of job she wanted in the first place - she doesn't settle, but she's equally not going out there for some hot-shot position for the status or money of it.
And the romance in the film is treated the same. It's just all very human, with humour, style, and then some. It may not be blockbuster-stuff, but it is a smart film, intelligent, with little trace of bubble-gum, if any. I found myself on the edge of my seat, rooting for Andy. And if a movie can do that, if it can make me really care, then I give it a thumbs up. :D
No comments:
Post a Comment