I took in both flicks in a suburban mall this weekend. This was in rural North Carolina, (where I'm starting to get a grip on why Bush won twice.) What do these two films give us, and how do they measure up as Idea?
I wasn't familiar with the British comic book that inspired "V". I also wasn't too conversant on Guy Fawkles, the knucklehead who got caught with umpteen kegs of dynamite beneath the Parliament building in London one November 5th. I am familiar, however, with Natalie Portman, and I'd eat a mile of her footprints on a warm nude beach just to kiss her widdle toes.
When I last saw her, she was killing me in "Closer," one of the best films about modern "love" ever, giving me feelings I hadn't felt since I kissed Betty Gail at the Knox County fair. I think this establishes my credentials. In that movie she portrayed a fem fatale with seductive powers that leave men devastated, simultaneous with no damn intention of changing.
In "V" she's in a weaker position. She needs help, she needs shelter, she needs a better hairdresser, although her Sinead do is admittedly darling.
Eventually she gets blow up stuff: a dead guy, some rare flowers, and oh, yeah, the big wedding cake on the Thames.
Okay, I think I'm ready to talk about "Dreamz." It's a big happy, slightly sardonic Capra-esque outing which almost succeeds but for the donut hole of Dennis Quaid's Georgie Bush. This Bush lacks all the darkness which defines the actual person, and that is a big effing hole.
Only one performance comes to mind that is close to painting up a monster as such: "Springtime For Hitler," the "Producers" play that couldn't fail.
However Dreamz is a dead-on commentary on American pop culture. I witnessed it in a throng of gawkers who couldn't stop eating and shaking their noisy-assed food, coughing, yakking, missing the jokes and generally making my experience of the "American Idol" parody a theater in the round.
What do these two very different movies say to us? I'll let you decide.