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as a filmmaker, this is the best thing he has made in a very long time. it looks incredible. its the work of someone throwing everything hes got into it. the energy is superb. spike still knows how to make a film look good, how to make it zip, how to pull from many different styles and hollywood genres. its also pretty crazy and unorthodox, which makes me remember how daring spike can be as a director.
but its also a jarring mess that goes all over the place in a way thats maybe worse than any of his previous messes.
if it was set anywhere else, i might be more forgiving but to set it in chicago, with the aim of tackling a real issue in that city, superimposing lysistrata onto that seems like a poor idea. all the stuff with the gangs in this was kind of silly and laughable, reducing it to some kind of west side story version of gangs, and spike even seemed disinterested in the gangs. sticking in his old 'wake up' slogans also seemed to indicate he didnt really care that much about the guys who the film is supposed to be about. if it was a fictional world, that was maybe just an analogy for chicago, it might have been easier to forgive the brashness, the blitheness, the sort of feeling of style over the reality it is meant to be depicting.
if this was a theatre production, i think it might have worked well, but on film, it just seemed too tonally WTF. he just threw everything in there, without much rhyme or reason.
im thinking if i watched it again, i might feel kinder towards it (all the rave reviews im guessing are for reasons that dont have much to do with the film itself).
still, fingers crossed this is the start of a new era for him. i dont think hes progressed at all, or learnt anything new in terms of politics from the 1980s on the evidence of this film, but fingers crossed he still has a couple of good movies left in him.
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