More like "House of Flying Poop"

[Dookus]

The BF and I have been dying to see House of Flying Daggers. It's been compared favorably to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero".

I walked out on it - and I have a great tolerance for movies. This is the third time in my life I've walked out on a movie before it ended.

Thirty minutes in, I was already bored to tears. An hour later, nothing had alleviated the situation.

It was awful. It was boring. The cinematography was mediocre. The acting was bad. The story was just an Asian version of "Two Mules for Sister Sarah", only without the humor. The fight scenes were short and rather poorly-choreographed. The boring scenes (about 99% of the movie) were LOOOOOOOONG. The plot was predictable.

An hour and forty minutes into it, I told the bf I'd meet him out front. I had more fun standing outside watching drunken homeless people.

We haven't been to a movie in ages - our choices were "Aviator", "Ray", "Meet the Fockers" and "Million Dollar Baby". And we chose this craptacular piece of poopage. sigh....

[Lavender Brown]

1. It was repetitive and predictable

I did think it was visually interesting though. I'm just not into these movies that much to begin with. I had to be dragged by a friend.

[Dookus]

2. I missed the visually interesting parts

I kept thinking "now here's a scene that COULD be visually interesting - but it's not."

[luckypunch]

3. I totally agree with your review

It was awful!

[Dookus]

8. Thank you...

rarely have I seen such a gap between the reviews and the actual movie. It was pure dreck.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

4. Well there was a lot of the flying daggers, wasnt there?

That's the part I care about.

[Dookus]

5. not enough

to make it interesting. I've seen bad kung-fu movies. I've seen poorly made kung-fu movies. I've seen ridiculous kung-fu movies. But never a boring one. Even the friggin' sex scene was B-O-R-I-N-G!

[Lorien]

6. China doesn't do hot sex scenes

I thought the film picked up after the first act. Some of the scenes in the third act were indeed visually stunning.

Personally, I preferred "Hero", though I know a few people found that boring, too. If it doesn't move as quickly as a music video, most people have no patience for it.

[Dookus]

7. I loved Hero

and this movie was very favorably compared to it.

I doubt my reasons for not liking it was because it wasn't like a music video. I own close to 1,000 DVD's, many of them long, slow movies that I adore. This movie just sucked, though.

[Lorien]

9. That was the main complaint I heard against "Hero"

from the younger people I know-that it was just too slow (plus, they hated the subtitles). I wasn't implying that you personally dislike slow movies.

[WindRavenX]

10. 'Hero' was so much better

Had a very powerful message, too.
"House of Flying Daggers" was tremendously disapointing for me too, Dookus.

[Plaid Adder]

11. Well, it was no "Raise the Red Lantern," that's for sure.

Also no "Hero." And I didn't like "Hero" that much.

Liza really likes these Zhang Yimou action flicks, so we went. It was pleasant visually, but the plot! Criminy! Here's this woman who can do *anything* while being blind--kill 6 people at 100 paces using one throw of the same dagger, anything--and one of the big 'twists' is that they find out she's not really blind because she can pour tea into a cup unassisted. WTF? You figure it's normal that she can go charging through a strange wood at full-tilt without smacking into anything, but you don't figure she can pour tea without a seeing-eye dog? Do you people, like, know ANYTHING about being blind?

If you walked out, you missed the big denouement, which involves extended use of what may be the most fake-looking 'snow' I've ever seen in a contemporary film.

Also, Zhang Ziyi is no Gong Li. But that's another story for another time.

Oy,

The Plaid Adder

[Dookus]

12. LOL

yes, it was shortly after that "revelation" that my internal groaning was threatening to break out of my body.

[Plaid Adder]

13. One of my friends from grad school is blind

and I only wish she could have been there to rip this movie a new one. I was bitching about the blindness shtick from scene one onwards...but the 'revelation' was the last fucking straw.

It was particularly obnoxious to me because my partner's first case as a little law student involved suing a brewery in order to get them to allow guide dogs on the tour (as the ADA mandates). The plaintiff was blind, and had been turned away because of his dog. Anyway, while on the stand, he made sure to pour himself a glass of water and drink it while testifying, in order to impress the judge with the fact that blind people aren't such helpless blundering morons that just having them on the premises involves you in millions of dollars worth of liability (as the company was trying to argue). The judge was suitably impressed. The company lost, though it probably wasn't jsut because of that.

So when, after doing all that flying/dagger flinging/thousands-of-beans-bouncing-off-drums-tracking/backwards-impaling stuff, Doofus Boy was amazed to see her pouring tea...I mean, criminy.

Watch *Raise the Red Lantern,* by the same director before he decided to go blockbuster. It's not got a lot of martial arts in it but it's a great movie, and Gong Li is h-o-t hot!

C ya,

The Plaid Adder