THE MOVIE JARHEAD IS GETTING A LOT OF BAD PRESS,
Instapundit
and according to the Los Angeles Times, it's not likely to make much money:
Not only did critics offer a mixed response to the film, audiences did, too. The picture earned a "B" grade from CinemaScore, which polls opening night moviegoers. A "B" may sound okay, but people tend to be kind in such polls. . . .
Marketing made "Jarhead" look like a profound war movie, with action and dark humor - an image buttressed by the use of rapper Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" in the trailer - as well as a perceived social relevance to the current war. The only thing "Jarhead" delivered on was the dark humor. Whenever there's a disconnect between what the audience expects and what the movie actually delivers, poor word-of-mouth will ensue.
Froggy Ruminations thought it sucked:
They might also have named it, "Cliché: The Movie" because it was basically the Gulf War edition of "Platoon" recycling tired military urban legends and patently false anecdotes. . . . This movie wasn't so much a slander as it was a farce.
Marine Corps veteran Tom Neven has a similar take. And Donald Sensing isn't terribly impressed, either: "Perhaps as a retired Army officer I am at a disadvantage since I sat there mentally scoffing at some of the baloney. . . . Jarhead fails to meet Alfred Hitchcock's number one requirement for a good movie: 'You have to have a story.'"
You know, I think Hollywood has been making cynical movies about the military -- movies that are supposed to be a corrective to the gung-ho John Wayne-era films about the military -- for longer than the gung-ho John Wayne era lasted. It's not fresh anymore, folks. (Some of Jarhead, apparently, is so stale that it came from someone else's book).
These viewer reviews are pretty unfavorable, too. I think I'll skip it.
After all, "Why watch a movie about war when you see it happening right now in the blogosphere?" Though in that particular war, all the combatants seem to be Andrea See wannabes.
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