Strictly Ballroom
Mar. 1st, 2015 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroOver lunch this week, Mithrigil told me that I had to see Strictly Ballroom, as she felt it was the best of Baz Luhrmann’s movies and was her favorite of the lot. Jethrien hadn’t seen it in over a decade, so we watched it last night.
Random thoughts:
• I don’t think I can watch anything done “mockumentary” style without thinking of Christopher Guest. Jethrien commented that this was like a Guest movie turned up to 12 (“Why not just make eleven louder?”) and I couldn’t really disagree.
• Despite this coming out in 1992 (and being very 80s), Luhrmann managed to skip a trope that’s been in effect since well before then: In pretty much every other movie where a son is pursuing something his father failed at, they’ll have the, “No, Dad, that was YOUR dream, not mine!” conversation. This movie zig-zagged around that entirely.
• Having a character named Liz and a character named Les who is essentially is pronounced the same way is needlessly confusing.
• Did Barry Otto with the fake belly and the terrible comb-over remind anyone else of Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent?
• I feel like literally anything in the 80s could have been called a “bogo pogo”. Children’s toy? Cartoon character? Yogurt drink? Exercise move? Shocking sex act? Sports car? Anything!
• I would’ve liked Fran to either be wearing contact lens or some kind of deal made of her inability to see distances in the later scenes. Nobody wears glasses that thick if they don’t need ‘em, and the magic of ballroom dancing doesn’t make your eyes better.
Random thoughts:
• I don’t think I can watch anything done “mockumentary” style without thinking of Christopher Guest. Jethrien commented that this was like a Guest movie turned up to 12 (“Why not just make eleven louder?”) and I couldn’t really disagree.
• Despite this coming out in 1992 (and being very 80s), Luhrmann managed to skip a trope that’s been in effect since well before then: In pretty much every other movie where a son is pursuing something his father failed at, they’ll have the, “No, Dad, that was YOUR dream, not mine!” conversation. This movie zig-zagged around that entirely.
• Having a character named Liz and a character named Les who is essentially is pronounced the same way is needlessly confusing.
• Did Barry Otto with the fake belly and the terrible comb-over remind anyone else of Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent?
• I feel like literally anything in the 80s could have been called a “bogo pogo”. Children’s toy? Cartoon character? Yogurt drink? Exercise move? Shocking sex act? Sports car? Anything!
• I would’ve liked Fran to either be wearing contact lens or some kind of deal made of her inability to see distances in the later scenes. Nobody wears glasses that thick if they don’t need ‘em, and the magic of ballroom dancing doesn’t make your eyes better.
