Thursday, October 18, 2012

1963 Tom Jones

1963 Tom Jones



Tom Jones lovers, read no further. 

Wow, where to begin?  What can I say about one of the stupidest movies I have ever seen?  Tyler proved himself an amazing husband by sticking with me through this one. 

It starts out, oddly enough, with a five minute section filmed as a silent film, in which the lord of the manor finds a baby in his bed and decides to adopt him (this is Tom Jones).  No idea why this portion needed to be silent. 

Next, Tom Jones is grown up into a good-hearted scoundrel, going around womanizing and being wild.  Then there's a really, really long hunting scene that doesn't develop the plot in any way, except that at the end the main gal Sophie's horse runs off and Tom has to save her life, winning her affections.  How much of a hunting scene did we need to build up to this plot development?  Maybe a minute. 

Sophie's family disapproves of the match (big surprise, since Tom is a well known womanizer -hell, I disapprove of the match), and Tom's cousin conspires to get Tom's adopted father to kick him out of the house.  Then follows some dull adventures (they sound interesting, but trust me, they're not), in which he is almost killed by a soldier while defending the name of Sophie, gets robbed, rescues a maiden in distress, carouses some more, meets his supposed parents (spoiler alert: they aren't), carouses some more (all the while pining after Sophie????).  Meanwhile, Sophie is trying to track him down on her own little voyage.  What a sucker.

Then he almost gets hanged, but doesn't, which really wasn't any relief to Tyler or myself, as we didn't much care what happened to good ol' Tom by this point.  The last 45 minutes of the movie are a bit hazy to be honest, as I had pretty much stopped paying attention.  All ends well for Tom.  Yay. 
I think the worst part of the movie was the "celebrated" scene in which Tom and the girl he rescued eat a meal (like, literally, eat a whole meal) in silence while giving each other come hither looks.  It was fascinating getting to watch two people sit and eat a meal.  Really.  Seriously, what is the scene "celebrated" for?  Stupidest scene in movie history? 

Tyler thinks it was a 60s thing -that people liked rebels back then, and Tom is a rebel I guess.  An 18th-century hippie, perhaps?  How this movie ever won ANY award (except maybe a Razzie), is beyond me.  If this was the best movie that year, if must have been a pathetic year for movies.  Stupid and boring.

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