The movie is a total throwback to sixties movie making. The sets, costumes, story and acting are all amped up versions of the movies that served as this movie's inspiration. And if that sounded convoluted, you should see the actual plot. There is a scene late in the movie that sets the standard for convoluted plotting.
This is a hard movie to get a handle on. It looks like they spent a lot of time on the look of the movie and really nailed the style they were looking for. They even went so far as to make sure that scenes where characters have conversations in the back of moving cars didn't look too realistic because the originals didn't either. The look of the movie is its strength and often the source of the best jokes too. When Renee Zellwegger's Barbara Drake character gets her first look at her apartment, I howled in laughter at the massively over designed set. It's so over the top it runs screaming past stereotype in to all out mocking. Similarly, some of Drake's costumes are wildly over the top impersonations of 60s couture.
I can't tell if Ewan McGregor is a brilliant physical actor or if they gave him false teeth for certain scenes because the whole shape of his mouth seems to change when he needs it to. Either way, his performance is a perfect over the top match to the set and costume design.
That's about it for thoughts on this flick. It seems to want to take this specific style of movie and remake it with modern actors with tongues planted firmly in cheek. Or this is sincere and the original movies were really this goofy. I can't claim to have watched many, if any of these type movies so I just don't know and that made it really hard to tell where they were going with this. It's basically made for fans of a very specific type of movie and thus it's no surprise it didn't exactly light up the cash registers.
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