Mist Opportunity

As it has already been documented on this blogosphere, Roger Ebert gets a pass (most of the time) from criticassassination on account of his ability to present good, fair and balanced reviews, packaged in interesting and well crafted prose. He’s not flawless—but then again, being a professional critic of any art form sort of dictates that. But, more than anything else, there is a sense of nobility that comes with Ebert, which is why, even when he’s wrong, you never get the impression that he’s been influenced by anything other than his own cinematic conscience.

While it’s bad enough that Richard Roeper has carved out a national profile for himself riding Ebert’s coattails on his nationally syndicated show, At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper, what's worse is in the wake of Ebert’s sick leave his chair has been filled week after week by guest-critics who are more concerned with tossing a studio’s salad than making a genuine contribution to the craft of film criticism.

The most recent culprit: Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune

The film in question: The Mist

Anybody who has seen The Shawshank Redemption knows what sort of wonderful filmmaking Frank Darabont is capable of, so his most recent movie, The Mist, can’t be seen as anything less than a disappointment (it can’t be a good thing when the movie poster is more entertaining than the movie). As always, Roger Ebert finds just the right way to put it all into perspective. Michael Phillips, on the other hand, finds just the right way to get it wrong.

Darabont himself admits that he didn’t try very hard on this film, even if he couches his admission in director jargon. Says Darabont:

“I always wanted to approach [The Mist] with a different hat on as a filmmaker and get out of my comfort zone of a more painstaking kind of filmmaking.”

Darabont is better than this and I can’t help but think that this lazy adaptation was a convenient way for him to cash a check.

What’s worse is when a film critic, like Michael Phillips, regards a throwaway film as better than it actually is. The funny thing is that, despite his 3 ½ out of 4 star rating, you would be hard-pressed to find anything particularly glowing in his review. Phillips is more interested in taking stabs at Saw and Hostel, then actually backing up his near-perfect rating. Says Phillips:

“Good and creepy, ‘The Mist’ comes from a Stephen King novella and is more the shape, size and quality of the recent ‘1408,’ likewise taken from a King story, than anything in the persistently fashionable charnel house inhabited by the ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ franchises…. People get torn apart and beset by monsters in ‘The Mist’ but not enough, I’m guessing, for the ‘Saw’ folk, who prefer grinding realism to the supernatural.”

Ebert, who gave The Mist a generous but reasonable 2 out of 4 stars, spends much more time actually analyzing the movie, which is ironic since he apparently didn’t like it nearly as much as Phillips. Says Ebert:

“Combine (1) a mysterious threat that attacks a town, and (2) a group of townspeople who take refuge together, and you have a formula apparently able to generate any number of horror movies, from ‘Night of the Living Dead’ to ‘30 Days of Night.’ All you have to do is choose a new threat and a new place of refuge, and use typecasting and personality traits so we can tell the characters apart.”

Ebert hasn’t even gotten to The Mist yet and still you get the impression you’re in the hands of somebody who wants to give you (gentle reader) a genuine review of a below average movie.

Darabont, at this point in his career, has made a name for himself as the guy who adapts Stephen King stories, but good. Nothing wrong with that. His most recent King adaptation before The Mist was The Green Mile. One need only watch five minutes of either film and it is clear which is the superior effort.

Right?

While sitting in Ebert’s chair, Phillips says:

“Darabont’s adaptation [of The Mist] is so much better than The Green Mile, which to me I think is still going on.”

While less emphatic in his written review, the sentiment is still same, when he writes:

“…with ‘The Green Mile’ [Darabont] stretched the adaptation beyond the three-hour mark. For all I know, it hasn’t ended yet. (‘The Mist’ is a full hour shorter, for the record.)”

Because, in Phillips’ world, shorter movies equal better movies.

Notice how in plowing the same terrain, Ebert’s criticism simply comes off as more genuine and more in the spirit of what his job description calls for when he writes:

“If you have seen ads or trailers suggesting that horrible things pounce on people, and they make you think you want to see this movie, you will be correct. It is a competently made Horrible Things Pouncing on People Movie. If you think Frank Darabont has equaled the ‘Shawshank’ and ‘Green Mile’ track record, you will be sadly mistaken.”

Phillips was given a great opportunity when being given a seat across Richard Roeper, who makes anybody in his presence look brilliant by comparison. Unfortunately, Phillips got greedy and was too anxious to please the studios so that they will keep inviting him to their screenings and giving him extra butter on his popcorn.

What a shame.