Saturday, 10 July 2004
The Cooler
For whatever reason, I seem to have an inversely proportional rule to writing about movies: The more I like them, the less I end up writing in my reviews. This entry definitely breaks that rule.
Fair enough, maybe I was affected from having spent three and a half hours laid over, waiting to board my flight (planned). Or maybe it was the more than two hours that I spent at the gate waiting after boarding the plane (unplanned). Or perhaps it was the nasty couple behind me, or my fatigue - or one of the million other potential reasons I'd have to put me in a bad mood for my eight-hour transatlantic flight.
Or maybe, The Cooler was just complete crap.
William H. Macy has done so much better. As has Alec Baldwin (The Hunt for Red October, Beetle Juice). And I guess Maria Bello was at least acceptable in Secret Window (the only other movie I've seen her in).
But this film seems to have been struck lame by its titular character, a perennial loser whose luck is so far down that his chills every one else's chances. Alternately slow-paced and halting, it only held my attention because I'd seen all of the other films in the seat-back screen's selection. Well, aside from Chasing Liberty - so obviously, it was either The Cooler or sleep.
Unfortunately, I kept myself awake in order to see what the Onion A.V. Club called "the most inexplicably acclaimed movie of 2003." Don't make the same mistake.
1 / 5 - remarkable only in its suckiness; don't bother