It’s one of those days where I am in the mood to layer sweaters, huddle under a blanket and watch mindless, and I mean MINDLESS DVDs. My friends’ DVD library is perfect for that. They have a lot of silly stuff. Today I wanted an action flick and I chose Lara Croft Tomb Raider. Yes, I knew exactly what I was getting into, I never went to watch this film in the theatres with friends, because I had heard how bad it was. But in my film making class our professor always said you can learn as much from something that is poorly done as a well crafted piece of work. So I decided to watch it.

Well this certainly was not well crafted, but he was right, I learnt from watching it. Bad movies skirt a fine line between being awful and having the potential to being something better. This one had potential that was totally wasted, it could have been a good movie.

The single most important thing in film making, in my opinion, is taking the time to work out issues. Trying to rush things just ends in a half assed lousy effort. Like this movie.

First of all, the idea was solid. An action hero who was a hot woman, who can kick the bad guys’ asses. Girls need to see women do more than just be helpless victims. I WILL BE HAVING SPOILERS SO FUCK OFF AND WHO CARES, IT IS NOT LIKE I AM RECOMMENDING YOU WATCH THIS. I’m using it to make a point or two. The Lara Croft character was not a helpless victim. She was a rich girl who was the boss. In the end when the caves are collapsing, she goes to have a final show down with the main Baddie. Her friend and rival (played by Daniel Craig of all people, I did not know he was in this piece of shit uh, movie), tells her she needs to get out, she yells at him to get two other guys out (one being her nerdy geek of an assistant) and he does it.  No, “Let me beat up this big bad man for you sweet pea”, he just says “OK, hurry” and takes off. She is totally competent, and the men around her recognize this. This is a good thing.  It also doesn’t hurt that she has quite some rack and is easy on the eyes, so guys can watch this and enjoy the view without angsting about a babe being the dominant fighter. It’s a win win for the audience (there is equal opportunity in the eye candy department too, there is a nice long scene where the Daniel Craig character is in the shower, steps out, walks around the hotel room, engaging in a conversation while being mostly naked,well, he is naked except we do not see the important bits, no nudity in this film, only near nudity, both male and female, equally, another plus in my book).

So it has a good base to work from, next, the acting is decent. This movie has good actors in it. Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight and Daniel Craig to name a few. There were very few clunkers in the casting department. 

The plot? The premise? It is solid. A quest to save the world, that is not totally stupid. Bad guys who are bad enough and good guys who will save the world and ambiguous characters who you are not sure of. 

The directing and cinematography and special effects were not atrocious. So where did it go wrong then? 

Somewhere between the initial development of the plot and the final script something went totally wrong. There was very little character development and even less development of the connections and relations between people. The story about the Father and Daughter being cheated out of time together was good. The whole Time Travel is wrong was also positive (I liked this, because I hate TIME TRAVEL stories with a passion, but that is a rant for another day). 

We needed to see the bad guys be a little more bad. We needed to see a connection, some flirting, hints at some kind of sexual attraction between Lara and her rival (I normally hate that kind of thing, but they were hinting at it in such a lame half assed way, what a waste of two attractive people who would have looked very good together in a nearly naked scene). Motivations needed fleshing out, and action needed to be made more challenging and tense. Things just happened too easily and were not necessarily explained well. 

Well, I am surprised I watched it until the end (I think I was hoping for more nearly naked Daniel Craig shots, oh well), but I did. With just a little bit more tweaking, I think that the film makers could have had an enjoyable action film (not high art, but enjoyable) instead of a messy pile of doo doo. Why the rush to get this out? Would it have cost that much more to work out the bugs in the script? 

You get spoiled when you watch something like a PIXAR film, they work it out over time, and it totally shows in the final work. More studios should consider this.

kimkac watched this very bad movie, but at least it was not Underworld (which was a truly horrendous movie, with no nearly naked Daniel Craig to somewhat save it).