Good, Great or Masterpiece?

My thing is film. When I was 7 years old, I wrote in my school "diary" a synopisis for a movie I had seen the weekend before. The movie was Snowball Express. I didn't actually say what I thought of the film, but I was smitten enough to continue to plot out the story over the next few weeks, bit by bit.

I can't imagine a 7 year old living in today's over-stimulated Western society remembering the plot of a movie he'd just seen at the cinema longer than it would take him to get home and switch on his XBox.

I don't know if that has got anything to do with it, but the fact is, there are films out now which are considered by huge majorities to be magnificent works of genius worthy of their undiluted adoration. Yet, they are, to me, way way short of that level.

For example: Shaun of the Dead.

I don't get it. I simply cannot comprehend how people who would otherwise appear to be relatively intelligent can claim this to be a great comedy film.

I watched it once at the cinema, with my Mrs and a half-full theatre. It started well... ish. I was optimistic. The ex-gf got impaled. I laughed. Then, hardly a titter for the rest of the film. From me and the rest of the audience. Let me tell you, when no-one is laughing, the scene where everyone beats the crap from the zombie barman to the tune of "Don't Stop Me Now" draaaaaggggss. It was painful. I felt acutely embarrassed on behalf the film-makers.

But everyone loved it. Almost everyone. So, a couple of years later, I decide I must try harder and watch it again on TV, with Mrs and teenage son. Same reaction.

I don't get it. I mean, can you compare this to a Neil Simon or a Woody Allen at his peak? What about a Python film like Holy Grail? Even if Python isn't your thing, you can surely appreciate that every scene is worked and crafted on various levels of wit... But how... I say HOW can you compare that to some writers going "Hey, it would be really funny if we beat up a zombie to the tune of "Don't Stop Me Now".... "Yeah, dat wud be sooo funny..." "OK, do you want to write dat or shud I write dat?" "You have de pen so you write dat den." "OK den".

I mean, the Pink Panther films are crap, but they have the comic genius of Peter Sellers in them. Who the fuck is Simon Pegg? Does he compare to Walter Matthau or Jack Lemmon? Like fuck - he's Mr Normal-Average Lovable Cuddly Simplistic Bland Reasonably Talented.

Shaun of the Dead is not a great film, or even a good film, by any standards. It's simply a popular film. And the 'good' and the 'great' should never, ever be confused with 'popular'.

Yesterday I was reading the notes Orson Welles sent to Universal studios after they had re-shot one of his great films - Touch Of Evil. This took my interest: [Orson talking about the characters of Ramon and Susan] "...by sweetening their relationship at the wrong moment, and warming it up at precisely that point where the distance separating the man and woman should be at its greatest, there is a sharp loss in dimension, and both Vargas and Susan emerge as stock characters - the sort of routine "romantic leads" to be found in any programme picture."

It's clear that Orson is working at a different level to everyone else involved. I can just imagine that all-American wholesome couple the Universal people had in their minds. It's such simplistic, by-the-numbers, 'creativity'. The kind of 'creativity' that's involved in the making of almost every mainstream film released.

To me, it screams "we couldn't be bothered or just simply didn't have the ability to think of anything better than this!!". And then it wins an Oscar or everyone claims it to be the best yet so far seen on a cinema screen.

They say "talent will out". In other words, if you have talent it will eventually get recognised. In cinema, it squeezes through the cracks and then is quickly scraped away before anyone notices.