Monday, June 19, 2006

May



--Reviewed by Lindy Loo


Plotline: Crazy chick has no friends except for a doll. One day she happens to catch a glance of the most beautiful boy she's ever seen. Smitten, she decides to don some corrective lenses to fix her lazy eye and spruce herself up so that she can try to grab his attention. It works, also catching the attention of a female-coworker. But quickly things start to go very wrong...

Scariness factor: No jump-in-your-seat moments. More of a psychological scariness, if that.

Gross-Out Factor: Is gross. Not vomit-in-your-lap gross. But they show stuff. Bloody stuff.

Complaints: This movie was a bit too stereotypically "goth" for me at times. I mean, really, who has a dark and gloomy-looking doll and actually converses with her in her dark and gloomy room? No one. Not even crazy people. My big complaint, however, is really just the ho-humminess of this movie. You can (for the most part) see where it's going the whole time. The acting is by no means bad, but the characters are just kinda eh. I didn't really *feel* particularly bad for the girl, seeing as we've all had to deal with rejection and feeling like an outsider at SOME point in our lives (which is presumably why the creator probably thought we *would* feel a connection or sympathy for the main character, and yet, if that's the case, their goal fell flat). I dunno. I just got through the movie, reached the end, and was kinda like, So?

High Points: It has a certain bizarrely romanticized fairy-tale quality to it that was somewhat intriguing. If it had been drawn out more, this might've made it a bit more interesting. The very very end of the movie (not the beginning of the end, but that very final startling moment) was freaky in that it was strange and unexpected and kinda haunting. But everything else leading up to that? Well, it's been done before. And better. Like 75 years ago. I'd blather about that right now, but perhaps you'd rather not have me give away the ending.

Overall: It was really just kinda blah. It wasn't bad, by any means. But then again, it wasn't really *good* either. It was just kinda meh. If you're aiming for something fun and fairy-tailish and yet creepy, as always, let me point you in the direction of a *better* contemporary fairy-tale of a movie: Ginger Snaps--much more entertaining, and a lot less angsty (or at least self-aware and self-deprecating in its angstiness).

Grade: C

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1 Comments:

At 3:52 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm sorry but "May" is easily one of the most original, haunting and tragically beautiful films made for years.

Angela Bettis portrays the character as fragile and damaged, we've all had rejection but she has no training in the social world to recognise it or to cope. This film is a popular choice amongst my rocker and goth buddies and for the ultimate object of May's affection, Jeremy Sisto as "Adam" is perfect, brooding and mean while keeping an angelic smile.

If you want a disturbing film with a character you actually give a damn about, that might make you cry at the end...this is perfection

 

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