I love Christmas breaks. But I took one from da blog. And that was wrong. Very, very wrong.

I’m back, having hated another movie I really wasn’t allowed to hate. This time I wasn’t allowed to hate it not for political reasons — as was true with [film as boring as the lifetime’s worth of Coldplay songs that impregnated its star] — but because it goes so against the reviews consensus to hate this movie that people will think I’m hating it just to be contrary. I swear I’m not. I really didn’t like [film I thought was bad]. Anyway.

Movie I Wasn’t Allowed to Hate, Part the Second

The biggest problem with the movie [film I thought was bad] wasn’t that it was too long. Or that the acting was bad. Or, like [name of every movie I’ve rented this week], that it didn’t make any sense in some fundamental way. Or even that it starred [name of anyone in Gigli].

The problem with [film I thought was bad] is that it was in love with how not bad it overwhelmingly believed itself to be. And, to be sure, it did some things well. The acting, for example, was good, what with Mr. [Incorrectly-Spelled Inky Writing Instrument] and [blonde starlet with amazing fucking publicist, I guess] doing their Method thing, and [guy who you’d never mistake for someone else] finally speaking English and not pretending he was from “Foreignia” or some other vaguely non-America-like place where they speak with marble-mouthed accents.

But in its sheer, raw [emotional state], the movie failed on all counts. I don’t mind depressing movies, but it so lacked any sense of redemption that it rendered the viewing experience something entirely outside of [famous philosopher who helped codify viewers’ expectations of art]-ian spectacle. No redemption. No development. Just [actor whose first name rhymes conveniently with “yawn”] wheezing, smoking, growing, shrinking, shirking, cheating, driving, and almost knocking himself over from patting himself on the back, all while his wife say idly by, playing the character of “woman who is this guy’s wife.” Nice.

And the [whatever the opposite of linear is] time frame of the film was excessive, pointless, and [synonym of “excessive and pointless”], serving no legitimate dramatic purpose other than making me want to cry for the editor, who is now locked away in an asylum somewhere. It didn’t develop in sequence. It didn’t develop out of sequence. It was an arrogant, overwrought, time-bending mess, a Lawrence Kasdan movie by way of a Quentin [word that sounds a bit like it should be a spider] screenplay gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Don’t see [legal drinking age] [unit of measure]. It’s way overrated.

Feel better, Pamie. I knew you thought someone else had already made the last Gigli joke the universe would allow for. Wrong you were.