(:) out of a possible five snouts for Troy on DVD. For some reason something I read or heard made me think that this might actually be a good or at least enjoyable flick (I initially wrote “film” but that ain’t it). So, despite having avoided His Pittness for years (as far as I’m concerned, it’s all been downhill since the ass shots in Thelma & Louise), I gave it a try.
Troy has been backing up my Netflix queue since early December when Bill and I stomached an hour of it and then couldn’t go further. I was all for mailing it back but thought that Bill might watch the rest. Tonight we read and answered our email while the rest of it played to the finish. To detail why it is bad would give it more than its due.
Troy’s only possible redemption, and even this is a stretch, is as a college drinking game where you get to throw back a shot each time someone says something like “the name Achilles will live on through the ages,” or “long after you are gone, the battle of Troy will live on.” There’s no question one would get good and drunk playing it, but would you ever get sloshed enough to enjoy the tedium of the endless battles and uninspiring love scenes it serves up?
Not possible. Long after the battle of Troy has been forgotten, the movie Troy will live on on the list of worst movies ever watched by Snichols.
Come on, his Pittness dragged his arch ememy in circles with CFE&G. Not that I cop to have seen this flick.
Long live the stable, the harness, and the twelve steps.
Indeed, the list of ham-handed missteps in this movie is longer than the naming of the Achean army in Homer’s original. Two things (apart from the horrendous miscasting of Brad Pitt and the fact that in Homer, Agamemnon actually SURVIVES the war only to be murdered by his wife.) struck me as particularly stupid: First, the makers of this movie chose to focus solely on the temporal, human story, cutting the gods – literally half the narrative of the Illiad – completely out. Gone are the wonderful feuds between Hera and Zeus, the shameless plotting of Athena on behalf of her precious Acheans, the capricious changing of favor by all of the Olympians that leads to such tragic ends for their human pawns. All the richness of this part of the drama is simply not there. YIKES.
Second,THE DESIGN. Forgive me for emphasizing what might seem a secondary consideration but as a production designer I can’t help myself. Leaving the ridiculous “big, stiff robes with lots of necklaces must make the narrative seem more serious” school of costume design for another discussion, the sets – especially the streets and squares of Troy – look like an Orange County shopping mall; one expects to see the robe-clad extras sporting cups of Starbucks and Gap bags.
This turkey is a train-wreck not even Peter O’Toole can save.
Excellent point regarding leaving out the most interesting part of the story. When Achilles gets an arrow shot in his heel by Paris near the end of the dreadful seige of Troy sequence, I said to Bill “wait, did I miss something? We never heard them talk about the heel or Paris being a good shot with an arrow, how did this happen?”
And Bill growled, “by all means, let’s not let the fascinating mythology interfere with the endless battles and love scenes.”