Camp is not dead

GRAN TORINO (Clint Eastwood, USA, 2008, 6)

I don’t have for Clint Eastwood the boundless contempt that I do for Jean-Luc Godard, but I have the same rating problem with GRAN TORINO that I had with SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL last year, namely how does one rate a movie that is terrible by every possible objective standard, but which you yourself had a high ol’ time laughing at.

In fact, I enjoyed GRAN TORINO so much that I nearly did a Mike D’Angelo last night and retitled my blog in its honor. I was told by Craig Lindsey of the Raleigh News-Observer via Twitter that I wasn’t “a part of the crew” until I contributed an alternative title for the film based on its jaw-droppingly awful dialog (plenty of samples coming). I eventually decided on “OVEREDUCATED 27-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN” and decided I’ll renominate my sight that, at least for the temporariliness. But alas, the font size on the WordPress template’s header was too big to make it work.

The problem with GRAN TORINO is very basic. The acting is appallingly bad, from top to bottom; the script is worse. We’re not talking weak — we’re talking jaw-dropping, head-grabbing, “I can’t believe I’m seeing this” bad. It’s the story of a very grumpy old man Walt Kowalski, played by Eastwood. A Korean War veteran and retired Ford factory worker, he can barely tolerate his family (the film begins with his wife’s funeral) and he sees his working-class neighborhood being “taken over” by “Hamung” immigrants, whom he calls by every ethnic slur in the book. Not that he discriminates, mind you; he refers to everybody by such lingo.