The Best Films of 2009: A KuddelSaus Retrospective Exclusive (9 – 10)
Being the original blog that we are, we came up with an idea over here at KuddelSaus to run through a list of our favorite films of 2009. If things go well, I’m hoping that other blogs/magazines/film critics will pick up on this concept and compile their own top-10 2009 film retrospectives. We’ll see.
Keep in mind that we’re not paid movie critics at KuddelSaus, so we haven’t seen all of the movies that were released in the last calendar year. We have non-film writing jobs and responsibilities and stuff. You know how it is.
In any case, on we go with slots 10 and 9!
10. THE HANGOVER
For those film viewers out there with a sense of social conscience (a good thing), the Hangover may have rubbed you the wrong way with its he-man women-hating worldview and general sociopathic fratboy ethos. If that didn’t do it, then the gay-sounding Asian man as a central villain, with an exaggerated Chinese accent that could easily qualify him for a minstrel show, might have pushed you over the edge.
However, these aspects of the film are what I believe qualify it as what is known as a “dark comedy”. The Hangover presents a misanthropic vision of the world, wherein men are hateful, irresponsible, sex-crazed man-children, and women are nagging spite mongers, ditzy strippers, or utterly bland and irrelevant brides-to-be. The thing is, you’re not supposed to like these characters. These are characters portraying horrible human traits and stereotypes as a means of furthering comedic scenarios. Like it or not, pleasant, socially-aware and happy people are simply not funny. At all. I think at some point, we have to trust our audience as being with it enough to know that what they are seeing is not actually somebody’s idea of reality, but an intentionally obscured reality, tilted and stretched in various ways so that people and situations seem more funny.
The main characters are douche bags, and part of the fun is watching them get what they deserve. They are tasered, attacked by a tiger, punched by Mike Tyson, involved in various auto accidents, and jumped by Chinese gangsters, among other forms of torture. They have the time of their lives during their friend’s bachelor party, but do not remember any of it, which is a fitting tribute to binge-drinking and the fantasy surrounding Vegas.
For me, what makes the Hangover a great comedy, and what lands it here on my list, is that it is consistently funny throughout. There are very few attempts at humor that illicit groans. As I mentioned in a previous post, I didn’t care for the wild animal waking up in the car whilst the characters are driving, but we’ll forgive them that. This movie seems like a nice maturing moment for the recent trend of American comedies, which are improv-heavy and feature as many scenes falling flat as scenes that are legitimately funny. The Hangover has a very good script, which does include moments of improv, but doesn’t have the piecemeal and half-assed feel of, say, many of the Adam McKay/Will Farrell movies. The audience is invited to piece together the events comprising Doug’s bachelor party along with our fuzzy-brained heroes, and there is as much enjoyment derived here from the story as there is from moments of off-the-cuff riffing (mostly courtesy of Mr. Galifianakis).
9. TYSON
In 1986, having just turned 20, Mike Tyson was the most famous and feared athlete on the planet after he became the youngest boxer ever to claim the heavyweight crown. Fast-forward 23 years, and he is a pudgy, face-tattooed shadow of his former self, with his most recent knockout victim being Zach Galifianakis in the previously mentioned film. (Incidentally, Mike Tyson’s inclusion in The Hangover is a nice testament to the intimidating status that this man once held. For white suburban kids of my generation, you would not be having a truly nightmarish night in Vegas unless Mike Tyson showed up. Mike Tyson and Freddy Krueger were probably the most feared entities on the recess playground of my youth. And Freddy Krueger is fictitious).
James Toback’s 2009 documentary, Tyson, analyzes this remarkable fall-from-grace, and in a novel manner: through the thoughts and words of the man himself: “Iron” Mike Tyson. Mr. Tyson gives us his thoughts and ideas regarding his life, from his lightning-quick rise to glory, to his stint in jail for rape charges, to his famous cannibalization of Evander Holyfield, to his current life as the father of many children. (By the way, I watched the Holyfield-Tyson II fight live on pay-per-view at a friend-of-my-parents’ house when I was 15 years-old. It was clear that Holyfield was intentionally and repeatedly head-butting Tyson as a means of getting Tyson’s head to bleed. The ref was not calling it, despite Tyson’s many pleadings. While I’m not saying Tyson should have bitten the guy’s ear off, Holyfield did have a dirty strategy from the get-go and should be not be considered 100% innocent in this incident. I’m just sayin’. Surprisingly, in Tyson, Iron Mike has nothing but nice things to say about Holyfield.)
When Mike Tyson was 15 years-old, he was not watching pay-per-view boxing matches at his parents’ friends house. Having been arrested 38 times by the age of 13, Tyson was being trained at age 15 by his beloved manager Cus D’Amato after Tyson’s natural talent was discovered in the gym of the Tryon School for Boys in Johnstown, NY. In the doc, Tyson has this to say of his early days as a street fighter:
In a fight, in the streets, not like the ring, it has to be almost to the death because you never know. If you don’t knock them out cold or you don’t beat him half to death, he’ll go home and come back with a gun or come back with a friend with a gun, or gang of people. Normally a fight on the street is deadly.
In Tyson, the viewer gets the story of Tyson’s early life as a stickup boy to his transformation into pure boxing machine; and what the POV from the man himself provides is something that many don’t have when discussing or considering Mike Tyson: context.
One of the more interesting aspects of Toback’s documentary is the inclusion of archive footage of Mike Tyson news coverage. This provides an enlightening look into the media’s handling of this man, who was often treated with a sneering mixture of both fear and ridicule. He was possibly the most famous African-American alive in the late 80s not named Michael Jackson, and it is clear that this raw, ripped and uncouth street kid was very difficult for the news media to interpolate. The media and the general public were unsympathetic to this brash kid, because they were scared of him. They were scared of his physical power, they were scared of his race and they were scared of his origins. What we learn from the unsparingly honest ex-boxer in this documentary is that Tyson was also scared. Of course he was: he may have been the most famous and intimidating adolescent on earth in 1986, but he was still an adolescent. Tyson is able to imbue the boxer with a human essence, which is no small feat for a man that is seen by many as an inhuman monster; granted, sometimes fairly, but most often not.
It’s easy to write Mike Tyson off as a maniac, because of what of the way he’s acted and the things he has said, but this film at least provides some background and depth through which to judge one of the most iconic personalities of the 2oth century.
Stay tuned: films 8 – 1 to come!
