when is a film like an onion?

when you can keep peeling through the layers and there is more there.  and perhaps you cry a bit at the end.  Somewhat of a surprise was the film “Hancock” starring Will Smith.  Its storyline was indeed like an onion, the layers kept peeling away, surprising with more than just plot twists.  I have to give its writers/et al credit;  the ending wasn’t quite the blatantly expected obvious one … there was more than one scenario that could play out.  Of course the viewer doesn’t quite believe the title character is going to die at the end … after all it didn’t follow a usual sequence for a tragedy.  However, I have to admit my mind was racing with so many scenarios at the climax, I was forced to quit analyzing and just watch the movie … dammit.  Watching through my fingers a bit, as the ZAP POW CRASH FX were there … but there because that was how the movie was billed.  A bad boy superhero movie.  And if you were dense enough, or drunk enough, or defeatist and unsentimental enough, you could sit back and watch the ZAM BLAM show and let the underlayers go undiscovered.  It sells tickets, eh wot?

What is Will Smith philosophizing?  That we are attracted by forces of destiny to our one true mate, but if we coexist too closely together in space and time, we will be destroyed as our vulnerabilities are exposed?   A good subject for a late night latte session in Barnes and Noble, but not for this blogger this early AM.  My inner life related the most when both superheroes are dead and down for the count (or so it seems).  Life can be such shit, and then you die.  In the meantime, wear clown shoes.

One film I saw a few days ago on cable that wasn’t like an onion was “Hairspray”, the film version of the Broadway musical remake of movie of the same title.  Whoever thought John Travolta playing drag in a fat suit was a good idea has access to some interesting pharmaceuticals.  Or maybe they needed the marquee name.  The project certainly needed something.  Like my impression of the movie version of “Rent”, this was one musical show that worked a lot better on a stage.  IMHO.  Maybe some other time I , or some more cinematically enlightened person, will be able to explain how in making the stage show “big” enough for the big screen, even with a former film version as reference, the overall result was much much less than either of its predecessors.   Now here is a frightening thought … a film version of the stage show “Legally Blonde”.