Monthly Archives: March 2018

Book Review: The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“The Secret Life of Bees” is a cute novel that delves weakly into complicated social topics in order to give it a wanted depth that it never quite achieves. Strip that out and you’re left with an enjoyable read about a teenage girl trying to find herself and discovering power and acceptance in the hands of a cadre of strong, independent minded women. The book wanders into Magical Negro territory to do so, which is a shame, but it only mildly does so.

The book is set in South Carolina at the time of the Civil Rights Act being signed into law. And since the South has long since reconciled with their deep-seated racial hatred, everything in the book is daisies and daffodils. Ok, just kidding. There’s lots of racism. And unlike the racism we practice here in the North, there’s nothing subtle about it. I am of two minds about how Kidd portrays the racism in this book. There are two instances of verbally abused Black people enacting violence on the abusive White person. One is far-fetched, but at least used to push the narrative in a way that it wouldn’t be able to get to otherwise. The other is more believable, but doesn’t really add to the story in any way except to have another “racism bad” moment and to have a Black character turn hardened by the interaction when you know he’s had to have experienced much the same his entire young life. There are lots of missed opportunities to just talk about what happened, but then again, those who deal with racism on a daily basis mostly just have to endure it and not talk about it.

Mental health is also used more as a pointless plot point than an examination into the states of mental health. This one is especially a shame, because until the pointless plot point, it was a pretty effective look into both dealing with mental health issues and accepting people with mental health issues.

I guess I am being extra critical of the book because it is on many “must read” book lists and it really doesn’t belong there. It’s a good story and I enjoyed reading it, but I do not see how it’s any better than the hundreds of other good books I’ve read. I would definitely recommend reading it, especially from a female empowerment point of view, but I don’t think it’s going to be a book that alters anybody’s perceptions of the world. Unless, I guess, you didn’t realize that the South could be so openly racist.

Movie Review: Tomb Raider

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Good Tomb Raider. Bad script. Run Lara, run!

You would be hard pressed to find a more perfect Lara Croft than the muscle ripply, super athletic, perfectly skin toned Alicia Vikander. And she does a pretty good job of bringing Lara Croft to the screen. Sadly, there’s not much of a story for her to work with to really shine through. What you have with “Tomb Raider” is a shoestring plot designed to progress Lara from scene to scene where she is either chasing or, much more often, being chased. Some of those scenes are pretty darned cool, like the bike chase scene at the beginning for instance, but most are of the lackluster “look at me, I’m running through the jungle!” type. What this movie really needs is Jackie Chan choreographing the chase scenes. Now THAT would be a movie well worth watching.

The progression of the movie is as follows: Lara finding herself, lots of fun! Lara going on her mission, eyerolling because every problem would have been easily solved by ubiquitous technology. Lara arriving, eyerollingly damsel in distressy, Lara finally getting down to some Tomb Raiding, enjoyable. The movie ending, wow, that was about the laziest set up for a sequel I have ever seen.

What’s equally disappointing is Vikander has some pretty solid backup and they’re wasted too. Dominic West of “The Wire” fame finally gets to use his natural British accent as Lara’s father, Richard Croft, but is pretty lackluster in the role. Then there’s the villain, Mathais Vogel, who is played by one of the greatest villain portrayers of all time, Walter Goggins, but his entire raison d’etre is diluted to “I just want to get off this island”.

In the right hands, the Vikander led “Tomb Raider” vehicle has some great promise. These are not the hands we are looking for. There is just enough enjoyment in this movie to make it passable, but there’s certainly not much to make it recommendable. Unless, of course, like the video game it’s based on, you’re just in it for Lara Croft.

Movie Review: A Wrinkle In Time

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Not an easy book to translate to a movie, but a reasonably good job was done. A little too much CGI fluff for my taste.

“A Wrinkle in Time” was probably my favorite novel growing up. I have read it countless times. Meg was my first literary crush. So when I found out a movie version was coming out, I was excited! I didn’t have high hopes, of course, because how in the world do you turn “A Wrinkle in Time” into a movie? But still, excited. What would they do? Who would they cast? How will they mess it up? The answer to the latter is they did about as good a job as can be expected for such a complex, idea driven book. Still doesn’t make it a good movie, though.

My biggest complaint about what they did was throw in way too much useless CGI scenes into the movie. All at the expense of taking out actual story lines! There was no Aunt Beast! How can you get rid of Aunt Beast!? I have read that they actually shot the Aunt Beast storyline and decided to remove it to preserve the mood of the movie. A poor decision in my mind. The rest of the movie wasn’t even good enough for me to care at this point if they ever do release an uncut version. Ok, that’s probably not true. I’ll still probably hunt down the Aunt Beast scene and watch it.

As for the casting, it’s pretty solid. Meg (Storm Reid) was much of what I thought Meg would be. Perhaps not quite mousy enough, but her stubbornness and insecurity shown through wonderfully. I couldn’t even begin to have an opinion on how you cast the three Mrs.’s, but Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) were about as good of an interpretation as I can come up with. Mrs. Witch (Oprah Winfrey) was…meh. There was always a lot of mysteriousness wrapped up in Mrs. Witch, even fear, but instead we get a benevolent giant Oprah Winfrey. Calvin (Levi Miller) was pretty spot on. Charles Wallace (Denc McCabe)? Way off! Well, that’s not true. The IT possessed Charles Wallace was awesome! Regular Charles Wallace was way too cheery. His weirdness was there, but he just wasn’t weird enough. He exhibited more emotion that I pictured the book character to be capable of.

There is not a lot to recommend for the movie version of “A Wrinkle in Time” unfortunately. I’m not even sure there’s much to recommend for children. It doesn’t have the feel of a good children’s movie. That’s not to say the movie is bad. It’s fine. It’s just adrift in that weird Black Thing where it doesn’t quite fit categorizing.  There is still lots to recommend for the book, though! Go read that instead. Then read the other books in the series. Then read them again!