- I was given last minute tickets to this so I went into it knowing only that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in it and that it was a film by Rian Johnson, whose previous outing was my favourite at TIFF 2008. I was not exactly super psyched to learn that this revolved around time travel since time travel almost always ruins things for me, but one should give these things a chance.
- There was lots I really liked about this movie and almost all of it revolved around Emily Blunt’s story line. Up until she was introduced I was feeling pretty meh about the whole thing, but it definitely came alive for me once she showed up. It finally gave me something to care about, but I don’t think it came early enough in the movie.
- I think Johnson does well with character building and working a lot of plot without a ton of bells and whistles, which is why the sci-fi aspect of this really didn’t work for me. It wasn’t even the time travel, despite the fact that that’s usually what I dislike most, it was all the futuristic stuff that really screamed “This is my third feature and someone gave me a really huge budget to blow on special effects.” It didn’t feel overly necessary; it felt tacked on, as if because there’s time travel involved it means we need The Future™ — the lovechild of Blade Runner and J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, complete with over-use of lens flare — in order for it to make sense.
This is especially annoying since Bruce Willis shows up and when giving Ye Olde Typical Time Travel Talke™, he basically tells the audience to not worry about the details and just go with it. This is probably meant to be an invitation for the audience to lose themselves in the story, but it felt like a cop out to me. Why worry about bringing in all the futuristic trappings if you’re really not that fussed on the details? Ugh.
- Jeff Daniels was kind of hammy but pretty funny. I think I like him?
- Not sure it was necessary to put JGL into Bruce Willis make-up for the whole film. They made it quite clear that we’d see older versions of the Loopers, so I’m pretty sure the audience could have put two and two together to figure out they were the same guy without planting images in my mind of Bruce Willis sitting around somewhere with his face peeled off while JGL plays dress-up. In the scene where Joe first encounters the older version of himself, there’s a low angle shot where the facial prosthetics are lumpier and more plasticine-looking than Mrs Doubtfire’s face.
- When Joe revealed BEATRIX on his arm, my inner monologue read it in Steve Holt’s voice.
- Sara’s kid really just needed to spend some time at St. Xavier’s School for Incurably Mutant Children. Professor X would have had that shit sorted out in no time.
Categories: 3 Stars