RE: The Last Movie You Watched
November 12, 2019 at 1:05 am
(This post was last modified: November 12, 2019 at 1:17 am by Rev. Rye.)
This week in the Deep Hurting Project, The Identical. So, Elvis fans might know about how Elvis had a stillborn twin called Jesse Garon. So, imagine what would happen if Jesse survived. So, this group of Messianic Jews created a movie based around that premise, with the "dead" twin being adopted by a preacher, and he grows into an Elvis Impersonator. Except he's not Elvis; not only have the names been changed, but, well, I'll get to it.
- The opening is normal enough, with Not-Elvis looking at cotton fields as he drives through, even if he does look like Joseph Fiennes in that cancelled TV special where he played Michael Jackson. And then he sees what appear to be slaves (well, technically, sharecroppers) in black and white, and I legitimately did not know you could fuck up black and white cinematography in this age this badly. It actually does get better after it goes to colour, but it's still rough going.
- "Blacks and Whites, Jews and Gentiles, all equal in the eyes of the Lord!" A remarkably progressive sentiment for a revival preacher in the Jim Crow South. It's surprising he didn't get run out of town on a rail. To be fair, it's clear that Ray Liotta's actually trying to put out a good performance in this stinker. I take him for granted in Goodfellas and even with this, he's not phoning it in.
- The music sounds like shit. It all sounds like lawyer-friendly versions of legitimate rock songs, and they even do this for banjo licks that want so badly to be "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." And the song Ryan uses as "his song" with his love interest sounds a lot like Weird Al's "One More Minute." And then, the music gets a lot more out of step with what Elvis was doing, with one sounding a lot like it came out of Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac. In 1967.
- "I Love Beer." Truly the spirit of Coleman Francis is guiding this movie.
- Jonah did listen to the Lord's call. He just decided he didn't want to follow through with it. A seminarian should know this.
- So, Ryan stalks his girlfriend after leaving the army. She's already taken, and he finds out about that, and he shows up to her apartment to serenade her, and she calls the cops. And then in the next scene they're married.
- 72 Minutes in, Ryan's manager says "there's only one Elvis." So, Elvis still exists in this universe? And somehow, Colonel Tom Parker didn't sue Drexel "The Dream" Hemsley into oblivion?
- City of Peace Records, just like the film company that financed this movie.
- Also, there's a brief scene where Ray Liotta talks about the Six Days War and how important it is, and it's just shoved in there randomly. It's like, well, I once wrote a story in review form and, in it, out of nowhere, the writer decides that the need for ritual purity is paramount, and they decide to fuck bears (because that's part of the author's religion). And this sermon on the Six Days' War feels like that. It has a scene devoted to it and it's never mentioned again. With that and the sudden revelation that Hemsley was Jewish, it just looks like they're trying to shoehorn Judaism into it.
- And the letter from the Hemsleys is laid over footage from the first 12 minutes, and it just looks lazy.
- And goddammit, the last 20 minutes of the movie really fucking drags. It just keeps going on and it never stops.
- So, that opening shot of Drexel Hemsley, it turns out he died years before that scene happens. And when Ryan drives through the old family home, it's on a motorcycle. And while Mr. Hemsley has a limo, Ryan never rides in it. A good opportunity for a bookend that never happens. Dafuq?
- And we finally end with a copywritten song: a cover of Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy."
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.