The Spirit

The Spirit is Hud's movie. I was just kind of along for the ride on this one. I should have gone to bed instead of staying up late to watch, since I have to be up super early for work tomorrow, but I figured I need to hang around with my husband every now and then. So why is it that he went to bed halfway through the movie and I stayed up until it was over? I guess because I'm stupid. He'd seen the movie before and realized how worthless it is. I had to stay up and see for myself.

I had seen previews for The Spirit, and I had never intended to actually watch the movie. I have nothing against movies created from comic books, but this one never really caught my interest at all. I headed into it with the preconceived notion that I would regret staying up instead of going to bed. Surprise, surprise... I was right. Believe it or not, the movie itself is far worse than the previews let on. This entire movie can be summed up by one of its characters' lines. Octopus says, "There's shot to hell, and then there's just plain ridiculous." This movie falls much closer to "just plain ridiculous" in that spectrum. There are serious movies, and there are funny movies, and then there is The Spirit, which somehow got lost in limbo between the two genres. It is far too cornball to be either serious or funny. 

I guess I can relent and say ONE good thing about this movie. It was frequently visually stunning, as if a comic book had come to life. I am sure that was intentional, and they did a good job in that case. However, this one quality was nowhere near buoyant enough to keep an entire movie afloat. 

Too bad there will probably be a sequel, judging by Scarlet Johansson's last line as the character Silken Floss (yes, the entire movie was THAT corny--she was among good company, like Sand Seraf and Plaster of Paris), which was, "We start from scratch. Who knows what I'll do." I can only hope that this movie was such a flop that someone will realize they should use the money that might have gone towards a sequel and feed the starving children in Africa instead.