Movie Review
'Go' ... but please, just see any other movie
Campus Times
April 23, 1999
While standing in line to purchase a ticket to the new movie "Go,"
I pulled out my wallet and retrieved a $10 bill.
As I pulled out my money it felt as if something fell out of my wallet.
Glancing down to make sure that I had not dropped anything important, what
do my eyes behold? A condom. Not my own but rather I think it belonged to
the gentleman who was standing in front of me, who appeared to be on a date.
But the condom was a sign from the Gods above.
This movie is, simply put, full of pure craziness. It covers all the
bases complete with a threesome in a burning building, a couple attempted
murders, a car chase, a set-up by a homosexual couple and an ecstasy trip,
talking cat and all.
It is directed by Doug Liman who did "Swingers" and was very
similar to "Pulp Fiction" in the effect that the storyline was
told out of sequence, beginning with the end and ending with the beginning.
But to compare these two movies would be like comparing VanDeKamp's fish
fillets to Red Lobster's fresh halibut. These movies are just not of the
same quality. "Pulp Fiction" is, in my eyes, a much better movie.
"Go" is the story of two guys and two girls who work at a
grocery store and their crazy after-work shenanigans. Although the movie
seems to be centered around these four characters, Simon (Desmond Askew)
Mannie (Nathan Bexton), Ronna (Sarah Polley, "The Sweet Hereafter")
and Clarie (Katie Holmes, "Dawson's Creek"), there is one guy,
Todd (Timothy Olyphant, "Scream 2") who is the needle that holds
the thread that weaves all of these separate storylines together. Scott
Wolf ("Party of Five") and Jay Mohr ("Jerry Maguire"),
the homosexual couple, Adam and Zack is also apart of this hysteria.
The tagline is "life begins at 3 a.m." and boy, is life at
3 a.m. exciting. The four main characters are introduced in their own personal
segments that shadow only their chaotic escapades. It is not until the credits
are rolling that one realizes how the night actually went, in chronological
order and the how relationship of all the characters interact. And I was
left with that "Okay, tell me that was not it" feeling.
The acting was mediocre, nothing all that amazing, and definitely not
worthy of any Oscars. I have seen much better acting from Wolf and Holmes
in their regular shows, in which they have much more depth and chemistry.
Granted, I know that this was not a movie that was intended to have deep,
thought provoking characters, but it is a helpful suggestion that characters
in a film make some sort of development.
The "Go" storyline reminds me of another movie I recently
saw and that was "Very Bad Things." In "Very Bad Things"
it seems that every turn is a wrong turn and it is one bad thing after another,
until the end when one just has this sick feeling sitting in the pit of
their stomach. This also happens in "Go," but throwing a little
bit of a dazed hit from left-field feeling and maybe that is why I did not
care for "Go" that much. The whole thing was one crazy night of
junk, in which people make very stupid mistakes.
I must admit however, that there were parts that were hysterically funny,
like the white guy who thought he was black, because his grandmother's grandmother
was black. One thing to realize about this guy is that he is a compulsive
liar. He is a wannabe who was trying so hard to be something that he was
not.
And then there was the cat. This cat was very funny. It was as if it
was almost a human being trapped inside of this little black feline, with
humanistic characteristics. It was actually only in two scenes, but one
scene he had a conversation with Mannie during his ecstasy trip about a
game of Dead Celebrities that went unresolved early in the film.
And my favorite part has to be, hands down the scene in the grocery
store in which tripped out Mannie does the tango with the checkout lady.
"Go" is definitely a guy movie, though. What guy would not
enjoy the naked women with triple F bra sizes that randomly pop up, no pun
intended, left and right? This is something that I did not enjoy, and felt
the movie could have done without.
It was not a bad movie, but it was not great either. I did not have
good feelings about it when I walked out of the theatre, and it is only
now sort of growing on me.
I do not think that this movie is worth seeing on the big screen, it
can very easily wait until it comes out of video.
Michelle Thornton, a junior journalism major, is editorial director
of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at mthornto@ulv.edu.
