Adaptation

Those car crashes were shocking, the way digital effects can portray anything these days always disturbs me when used in scenes like these, that look so real, and are so unexpected.

The ending of Adaptation didn't work. I felt as if the movie was (deliberately?) taking the advice of its own movie boffin within the movie too seriously: everything depends on the ending. Ironically, this was where the movie unravelled: the acting became stilted, as if the actors themselves were uncertain how to play it, which in turn seems to have been down to fuzzy direction.

The movie lost me when Meryl suddenly decreed that the screenwriter must be murdered. A million bells rang false in my head. That wasn't down to a character arc: that was down to desperation. Up to that point, though, Adaptation was rather original and pleasing.

Of course, this ending could have been a self-aware, sell-out ending, that spoofs the usual, ridiculous Hollywood endings, as was foreshadowed by the advice of both the movie guru and Donald. Drugs, sex, shootings, car crashes, dire speeches about lurve, gators, death. (With a good night's sleep betwixt the horrors!!) But the ending was not exciting enough or OTT enough to be completely gratuitous, and so we ended up with the worst of both worlds. The original Scream pulled self-awareness off (its dire sequels did not), but ultimately self-awareness is a gimmick. You can foist such cheap irony upon your public once and get away with it. This movie is so good that it nearly gets away with it. Adaptation is a fun ride; analytical of obsession and script-writing; playful; and a risk taker: not bad for modern, dumbed-down Hollywood.