Flickchart’s Greatest Battles

 In which we pit two movies together using flickchart.com, debating their merits or lack thereof.

ROUND ONE

HITCH

VS

FANTASTIC FOUR

This battle was an extremely tough call.  It was like answering the question, “What would you like to drink?  Tampon tea, or snot soda?”  And you HAVE to get a drink, because it comes with your combo meal, and you’ll be damned if you’re paying for something without consuming it.

Both of these films hail from genres from which I’ve developed a lot of fatigue–rom-coms and superheroes.  There are some good superhero flicks, to be sure.  We’ve just been experiencing a real glut of capes and boots over the past decade.  Romantic comedies, on the other hand…  even the clichéd devices that populated Nora Ephron’s scripts seem like gold compared to what passes for marketable today.

“Hitch” is a film about a dating consultant who advises men that to get the girl, all you have to do is make a gallant gesture (and if no opportunity presents itself, fabricate one!  It’s not creepy to lie to initiate a relationship!)  But this erroneous urge is understandable.  After all, these are grown men working under the assumption that sex and romance is something that women give to men, in exchange for men doing or saying nice things.  Hitch, the consultant, follows his own advice, with “hilarious” and “madcap” results.  For some reason, this movie is generally described as merely mediocre, which I’ve always thought rivaled even Ghandi’s patience and charity.  I describe it as a god-awful pile of shit, mostly because of its idiotic premise and some truly irritating characters (Eva Mendes.)  Not to mention some of the dialogue:  “Because that’s what people do.  They leap–and hope to God they can fly.”  Barf.  This is one of the lines uttered by Hitch after he jumped atop a moving car while chasing down the person he had arbitrarily decided was the love of his life.  This is sincerity.  This is meaningfulness.  Just because something’s a comedy doesn’t mean that the “serious” moments should be half-assed.

“Fantastic Four” is a movie about the Fantastic Four.  Stretchy Dude, No-See Lady, Fire Guy, and Rock Man.  The people who made this movie basically said, “Hey, it’s been almost a whole week since a superhero movie opened.  What comic book characters haven’t been adapted for film in a while?”  Then they wrote the script in about two days and started production.  You know the rest.  Banality, thy name is Fantastic Four.

So, which of these skid marks wins the battle?  Fantastic Four, I guess.  It may be utterly pointless, but at least it’s not chock-full of cringeworthy moments and stupid lines.-EW

WINNER:

Fantastic Four

ROUND TWO

MEAN GIRLS

VS

TRON

I think that as a society we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t have to qualify Mean Girls as ‘actually’ pretty good.  It’s a good movie.  Let’s stop being surprised by that and start being surprised by how fondly remembered Tron is.  It’s a movie with no point that makes no sense and now that 30 years have gone by it’s just a bunch of outdated effects wrapped around a plot that comes off like a shitty, digital Borrowers.  The one advantage Tron has is that it was ‘groundbreaking’.   And you know what?  Good for Tron.  Now put it in a museum and get it the fuck off my TV screen.  The better movie always wins and context can go fuck itself.  Mean Girls showed us that even a girly teen comedy can appeal to adults when done well and Tron showed us that with the help of computers, movies can be more boring than ever before.-DT

WINNER:

Mean Girls