The Re-Visit: Thelma & Louise
Up until this week, I had only seen THELMA & LOUISE once, when I was a kid, on home video with my mom. For some reason, she thought it’d be ok for an 11 year old to see some asshole attempt to rape Geena Davis only to have his ass blown away by a very angry and vengeful Susan Sarandon. I guess she had a valid point in wanting to show an important life lesson to a young man, but sweet Jesus, it was a little hardcore for a young buck like myself. I hadn’t seen the flick since, but as it’s one of those movies people seem to gush over, not to mention that it was a relatively successful film at the box office, I decided to give it another show. And I came to this conclusion: fuck this movie.
You can call me a pig, you can say that I’m chauvinistic and against the whole women’s liberation movement or whatever (and you’d be wrong on all accounts), but strictly from a movie watching point of view, THELMA & LOUISE is not very good. There are decent parts to it, there are a few cool characters and performances, but for the most part it’s a very frustrating—and dated—movie to sit through.
I expect more from a Ridley Scott film, I guess, but holy hell, those who made this flick so popular should be ashamed of themselves. Here are a few reasons why I hated this flick so much:
- Geena Davis is fuckin’ hot in this movie (one of her hottest roles ever), but Thelma is one of the most annoying characters of all time. She’s an airhead, she’s naïve of the world, she doesn’t know how to stop talking, and every bad thing that happens to Thelma & Louise in this movie is (more or less) her fault. Half way through the movie you want to ring her neck or shake the shit out of her, hoping that some sense will knock into that skull of her. But it never happens. And this is a movie that preached “Girl Power”? She makes women out to be idiots.
- On that note, Susan Sarandon should have slapped the shit out of Thelma long before Thelma had a chance to get plowed by Brad Pitt and have her life savings stolen out from under her. I’ve never really been a Sarandon fan (she always looks really old to me, no matter what movie she’s in), and I guess she does OK here, but why and how Louise is friends with Thelma is a fucking mystery. Thelma is a moron, Louise has a strong head on her shoulders, and everything Thelma does shits on what Louise is trying to get accomplished. Thelma is the worst friend EVER.
- Nothing dates a movie like music, and the music choices in THELMA & LOUISE are horrendous. Not only are the country-rock songs bad, they’re used way too often and when used, they’re played way too loud, so they take over each and every scene they’re being featured in, even when the song/music isn’t the focus. It’s like having a fuckin’ music montage in every scene, even when they’re just sitting there chit-chatting each other up. I pretty much hated all the song choices. Maybe I’m a hater of the rock/country music of the early 90s, but so the fuck what. Bad music is bad music, and when it’s played so loud and frequent in a movie, it makes me hate it even more.
- Men are assholes. That’s the moral of the story and I know this because all the male characters in the movie, save for maybe Harvey Keitel and Michael Madsen, are complete assholes. Rapist dude in the beginning? Asshole. Christopher McDonald as Thelma’s husband? Asshole. Brad Pitt the hot hitchhiker? Asshole. Most of the cops in the movie? Assholes. The perverted trucker? Asshole. I get that shoving the notion of “all men are assholes” is the point of the movie, but come on!
Is there any good in this movie? As mentioned earlier, Harvey Keitel and Michael Madsen are both awesome, and Christopher McDonald steels every scene he’s in because he’s just that ridiculous. And I dug how adult the movie is: it’s made for adults and it feels that way, and for that, I’ll give it some props. Movies today are all made for teenagers or twenty-somethings, and this one didn’t cater down to the audience, but rather kept shit serious for all the grownups eating this shit up. Otherwise, I can easily say this is one of Ridley Scott’s worst movies to date… and that’s saying something. Is THELMA & LOUISE worth a re-visit? Not unless you want to see Brad Pitt’s shirt off before he was famous. Otherwise, it’s a movie that should never be sat through again.
Honest Grade: C
Re-Visit Grade: F (for FUCK this movie)
Steve Wood
September 6, 2013 @ 3:00 pm
Damn this movie reminds me of my mom and her best friend when I was a kid. They were crazy, not man killing road trip crazy, but almost everything else.