Tuesday 15 November 2011

Two Minutes and Thirty Seconds of Pain

It's been a good couple of days for Tarem Singh; as his "Immortals" - despite having no major stars and an R-rating - opened in first place ahead of presumed boxoffice-frontrunner "Jack & Jill." But now, the trailer for his follow-up "Mirror, Mirror" (set to be the first of next year's two competing Snow White movies to reach screens) has debuted and threatens to blast all that good will to smithereens; thanks to one of the all-time unstoppable forces of movie-sucktitude:

Julia Roberts.



The principal difference between this and "Snow White & The Huntsman" is tone: They're both dropping most of the workload onto a celebrated "actress of a certain age" in a broad villain turn versus a neophyte actress, and both are positioning the heroine as an action girl, but otherwise they're different beasts - "Huntsman" is aiming for LOTR-style high-fantasy, while this wants very (very!) badly to be "Shrek."

That's not necessarily a bad pitch, and I don't hate the idea of reworking the princess/wicked-queen relationship from vanity to romantic rivalry... but wow, does Roberts look awful in the part. She's not a terrible actress, but she's never been especially GOOD and the stuff asked of her here - physical comedy, mugging, some kind of unplaceable campy accent - is waaaaay the hell outside of her limited skillset. This looks like a disaster, though not necessarily an unprofitable one given that it'll be first to the gate.

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