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Chico and Rita
Feb. 11th, 2012 07:57 amNow that I'm not glued to my desk every waking hour, I can see movies again! Just in time, too, as they're screening the nominees for Best Animated Film at work. The only one I hadn't seen so far was Chico and Rita, so I marked it on my calendar and headed down yesterday afternoon.
Now, I believe in supporting 2D animation, especially 2D animation which is a)of a more sophisticated adult hue and b)not mainstream American, but I have to confess that my only honest opinion on this movie is that it was really, really boring.
A quick overview: the film follows Chico (surprise!), a genius pianist in 1940s Havana, and his on/off passionate relationship with Rita (surprise!), a brilliant singer, as they work their way up to fame in the Havana nightclubs, New York, and eventually the world. I was prepared for it to be That Sort of Movie – episodic, meandering, dwelling on the personal moments with very little of what one would call 'plot' – but what I was not expecting was for a movie that depends so heavily on the emotions of its characters to give them almost no facial expressions at all. As a result I found it very hard to sympathise with them, which in turn made it very hard to care about anything that happened in the movie, and I actually found myself considering walking out a couple times simply because it would be more interesting to sit at my desk listening to Radio 4 while tidying up life drawing scans than it would be to see the movie to completion. If I had a passion for mid-century Cuban jazz, that might have carried me through, but I don't; I have a passion for compelling characters and performances, which are possible in 2D animation (even 'crude' limited 2D, as Persepolis proved) and on that count it definitely came up short.
On the plus side, um ... Rita was very pretty? And there was a mostly successful use of CG within the graphic world of the film. If you really like Cuban jazz, the soundtrack will probably delight you, but I really couldn't say ...
Now, I believe in supporting 2D animation, especially 2D animation which is a)of a more sophisticated adult hue and b)not mainstream American, but I have to confess that my only honest opinion on this movie is that it was really, really boring.
A quick overview: the film follows Chico (surprise!), a genius pianist in 1940s Havana, and his on/off passionate relationship with Rita (surprise!), a brilliant singer, as they work their way up to fame in the Havana nightclubs, New York, and eventually the world. I was prepared for it to be That Sort of Movie – episodic, meandering, dwelling on the personal moments with very little of what one would call 'plot' – but what I was not expecting was for a movie that depends so heavily on the emotions of its characters to give them almost no facial expressions at all. As a result I found it very hard to sympathise with them, which in turn made it very hard to care about anything that happened in the movie, and I actually found myself considering walking out a couple times simply because it would be more interesting to sit at my desk listening to Radio 4 while tidying up life drawing scans than it would be to see the movie to completion. If I had a passion for mid-century Cuban jazz, that might have carried me through, but I don't; I have a passion for compelling characters and performances, which are possible in 2D animation (even 'crude' limited 2D, as Persepolis proved) and on that count it definitely came up short.
On the plus side, um ... Rita was very pretty? And there was a mostly successful use of CG within the graphic world of the film. If you really like Cuban jazz, the soundtrack will probably delight you, but I really couldn't say ...
