couple of flics

For some reason i watched a couple of films over the past 24 hours. During the opening credits of the first, I was thinking to myself, "Arnold Schwartzenegger and Wilt Chamberlain co-starring, what could possibly go wrong?". 90 minutes later that question was answered with a resounding "plenty". The previous conan film, Barbarian, was good naive fun, and essentially worked despite generally poor acting and a fairly thin premise. The same cannot be said for the second, Destroyer - the acting is much, much worse (Wilt Chamberlain is the least of the problems, despite probably being the only member who at the time had a credible other career), the premise is thinner, the pacing is terrible, and it all just doesn't work at all.

Then, this morning, on a whim, before going to work I put on "How To Lose Friends and Alienate Poeple", with Simon Pegg and some other people. I suppose it was written as a comedy, and it kind of has some grin moments, but very few laugh-out-loud ones, so I guess it doesn't really work as a comedy. It kind of works as a movie, though - the little plot tumbles along nicely, and Pegg and co-stars (Kirsten Dunst) are amiable, so it makes for a distracting flick, and I left for work feeling good about the day.

I don't know what it is that makes films work or not. What made Conan the Barbarian work for me, and Destroyer feel like rubbish? What makes HTLFaAP work for me, even when its raison d'être isn't really satisfactorily met?