Michael and I attended a special screening of Clint Eastwood's Oscar-bait "J. Edgar" last night -- what a mess! The "aging" masks and make-up weren't just distracting, at times they were laugh-out-loud-ridiculous -- why did the younger Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) become 100 years older than J. Edgar Hoover once they both aged? -- and some performers bothered to act as if their bodies and mannerisms had aged, while others didn't (I'm looking at you, Naomi Watts, whose character, loyal secretary Helen Gandy, was apparently American, except when she was Australian.) And was Edgar Southern, British or from Boston? (It depended on how angry Leo was acting in the scene.) Armie and Leo had the right look without the horrible special effects, though, but the interwoven scenes of the distant past, the slightly-less-distant past, the past and the present were frequently disjointed -- as was the portrayal of Edgar's relationship with Tolson. Some of the "intimate" scenes give "Mommie Dearest" a run for its money when it comes to camp -- the problem is I don't think Clint Eastwood is in on the joke. If this takes home any Academy Awards, I'm dumping Oscar for good. My grade: C+.
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I disagree with you often, Kenneth (but we always eat lunch and dinner together anyway), but you're so right on this. It's crap. The overacting (hammy Leo, Judi), the underacting (zombie Naomi) and then Armie, who's "okay" but whose lines are ridiculously camp. ("Dorothy Lamour...she's a bit camp for me..."). The screenplay is really poor, I'm sorry to say. Such cookie-cutter psychology. I'm glad Hoover was not portrayed very sympathetically, but I have no doubt he didn't deserve even this fair-handed a treatment. The positive reviews I've read seem dazzled by the pedigree (Black, Eastwood, DiCaprio). I noticed at RottenTomatoes many of the big-time reviewers gave it a pass or liked it and the less connected ones hated it. I hated it.
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