Review: "I Kill Giants"; "Set It Up"
Oct. 28th, 2022 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_los"I Kill Giants": Everyone important in this move--everyone with so much as three lines to their name--is a girl. That's interesting, but it can't fully expunge the gendered expectations I myself bring to the text as a reader. It's a little hard not to find the protagonist of "I Kill Giants" frustrating for behaviour I don't think I'd be as inclined to judge a male character for. Said main character is the youngest of a set of siblings with dead (or, spoiler, still dying) parents. The older sister is stuck holding down a career, making dinner for her thankless younger siblings and doing care labour. Her younger sister, the protagonist, doesn't help her so much as wash the dishes: she just experiences her grief regarding their mother's illness via the metaphor of rushing around trying to fight supernatural beasts. All right, fine. When does her older sister get to experience her grief?
Their teen middle-brother is absolutely negligible and useless, but I guess I don't expect him to be anything but a hindrance. These character interactions are supposed to form a backdrop for an 80s film styled Bildungsroman for a character who, in the 80s movie version, would have been male. The fusion of this narrative shape with a more active focus on women is actively stressful. I can't help seeing the older sister, pointedly, in every scene where she takes up real estate: how bitterly unfair the shape of this story is to her, and how the narrative would need to fundamentally shift to change that.
This is one of those queer "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" style, Henry Jamesian transatlantic co-productions. Noel Clarke from "Doctor Who" is here in New England, for some reason. The main character says of her new dubcon best friend, "she dresses like she’s from a magazine, but she’s English, so it’s to be expected." I'm not sure this muddiness actually ever works rather than producing something for and of neither culture rather than about both (see "Sex Education"). The movie is also very, very similar in both vibe and plot matter to the English cancer fantasy book and film "A Monster Calls", and suffers by the comparison: the climax of "I Kill Giants" isn't as well managed because the integration of its fantasy element is more confused and less meaningful.
This is a mostly well-written movie, with a lot going for it. It takes an intriguing, purposive approach to its treatment of gender. It comes close to really working in a way I respect.
"Set It Up": Katy loves a romcom, and finds the post-90s dearth in western cinema frustrating. This semi-"Cyrano" has good dialogue, but it's kind of frustrating that Creepy Tim is the most fun character in the movie by a good margin.
Katy thought that the script needed a real polish, and that the film could have been funnier throughout. Most of the major players are quite normal, and it's difficult to say much of the two leads. She believed that early Richard Curtis would have done a better job with the gay flatmate, and that even in "Yesterday" he still manages that sort of character well.
Essentially, she thinks (and I agree) that the film has two key structural issues:
- The film is initially keen to parallel the two bosses and their assistants' relationships with them. It feels like the team decided halfway through the project that actually, Lucy Liu's character was going to be a substantially more sympathetic person. This doesn't carry through the whole storyline in a natural-feeling way. It no longer quite makes sense for Liu to have been a huge, ambivalent jerk about the blue jacket, for Harper to feel like she'll be fired if she can't get Liu's dinner to her (unless that's all in Harper's head: more on this later), for Liu to have turned down every personal event she's invited to by her loved ones (later we get a little more information on where Liu is coming from here, but it could be more cleanly delivered), and for Liu to be deeply nepotistic about university connections in a way that has material impact on the careers of people working for her.
It's hard to believe Liu when she says she rides Harper hard because she values her. In the moment, it's hard to know whether the film actually wants us to think that's true. It's especially hard to credit this when Liu hasn't really given Harper professional opportunities that we actually see. 'Preparing you for the real world' is mostly an excuse people who take advantage of you use to mitigate their own vague, useless sense of guilt regarding fucking you over. Making Harper work past midnight regularly in a way that is, according to each and every management study ever conducted, ultimately unproductive over long periods was "preparing her for the industry"? Sounds like perpetuating its most unreasonable demands. How about making Harper fetch her dinner when things were closed as a result of Liu's own poor planning? Was that, too, salutary?
There are script-level ways to make Lucy Liu difficult to live with which would have given us a more cohesive sense of her as a decent person with poor work-life boundaries and irritating traits. Liu isn't actually playing Streep in "Devil Wears Prada": decent people can be hell on each other. This ask is pound for pound doable in terms of room in the script, but fiddly to execute. Another, related question is, is Harper in danger of being fired simply because she believes she is? How complicit is Harper in taking on additional work to avoid writing (actually engaging with which threatens her whole sense of self) or to impress Liu? Is this in part a problem derived from Harper's own personality? Does Liu believe that Harper is another fellow workaholic with no boundaries because Harper is bad at articulating and enforcing boundaries? The script flirts with this material, but doesn't actually engage with the questions it starts to ask. It opens these doors, but won't then walk through them. I wouldn't even expect these things if the film hadn't hinted at an ability and willingness to deliver them.
In contrast, Taye Diggs' character's sins include a flat, sexist "women are gross if they don't get bikini waxes" moment, among other such. This is realistic enough, but it made the eventual reveal of his bigger, related moral issues feel overdue to Katy. (The movie does lampshade this: Lucy Liu is admirable, Diggs is just Some Guy.) She couldn't sustain her belief that Diggs might be annoying but all right until the crisis point, when the film wanted that to break and for the audience to be invested in the male lead's disillusionment.
- There's some confusion as to what kind of relationship the romantic leads have. Katy thought the male lead's best friend's early comment that "your girlfriend should be your best friend" resonant, and wanted to see that pay off more strongly than it did. The later introduction of "I love you despite" felt less successful to her.
What does the main couple have in common? They have some bants, and they like one anothers' friends. This is good! But in some ways this film suffers from heterosexism disease: the leads are together because they're members of the opposite sex who can stand one another. Bingo, baby. That's hot stuff.
The awkward corollary to this is Harper's relationship with Liu, which does revolve around meaningful common interests, respect and shared work. Is this ultimately the film's core relationship? If so--why isn't it the romantic focus?
Their teen middle-brother is absolutely negligible and useless, but I guess I don't expect him to be anything but a hindrance. These character interactions are supposed to form a backdrop for an 80s film styled Bildungsroman for a character who, in the 80s movie version, would have been male. The fusion of this narrative shape with a more active focus on women is actively stressful. I can't help seeing the older sister, pointedly, in every scene where she takes up real estate: how bitterly unfair the shape of this story is to her, and how the narrative would need to fundamentally shift to change that.
This is one of those queer "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" style, Henry Jamesian transatlantic co-productions. Noel Clarke from "Doctor Who" is here in New England, for some reason. The main character says of her new dubcon best friend, "she dresses like she’s from a magazine, but she’s English, so it’s to be expected." I'm not sure this muddiness actually ever works rather than producing something for and of neither culture rather than about both (see "Sex Education"). The movie is also very, very similar in both vibe and plot matter to the English cancer fantasy book and film "A Monster Calls", and suffers by the comparison: the climax of "I Kill Giants" isn't as well managed because the integration of its fantasy element is more confused and less meaningful.
This is a mostly well-written movie, with a lot going for it. It takes an intriguing, purposive approach to its treatment of gender. It comes close to really working in a way I respect.
"Set It Up": Katy loves a romcom, and finds the post-90s dearth in western cinema frustrating. This semi-"Cyrano" has good dialogue, but it's kind of frustrating that Creepy Tim is the most fun character in the movie by a good margin.
Katy thought that the script needed a real polish, and that the film could have been funnier throughout. Most of the major players are quite normal, and it's difficult to say much of the two leads. She believed that early Richard Curtis would have done a better job with the gay flatmate, and that even in "Yesterday" he still manages that sort of character well.
Essentially, she thinks (and I agree) that the film has two key structural issues:
- The film is initially keen to parallel the two bosses and their assistants' relationships with them. It feels like the team decided halfway through the project that actually, Lucy Liu's character was going to be a substantially more sympathetic person. This doesn't carry through the whole storyline in a natural-feeling way. It no longer quite makes sense for Liu to have been a huge, ambivalent jerk about the blue jacket, for Harper to feel like she'll be fired if she can't get Liu's dinner to her (unless that's all in Harper's head: more on this later), for Liu to have turned down every personal event she's invited to by her loved ones (later we get a little more information on where Liu is coming from here, but it could be more cleanly delivered), and for Liu to be deeply nepotistic about university connections in a way that has material impact on the careers of people working for her.
It's hard to believe Liu when she says she rides Harper hard because she values her. In the moment, it's hard to know whether the film actually wants us to think that's true. It's especially hard to credit this when Liu hasn't really given Harper professional opportunities that we actually see. 'Preparing you for the real world' is mostly an excuse people who take advantage of you use to mitigate their own vague, useless sense of guilt regarding fucking you over. Making Harper work past midnight regularly in a way that is, according to each and every management study ever conducted, ultimately unproductive over long periods was "preparing her for the industry"? Sounds like perpetuating its most unreasonable demands. How about making Harper fetch her dinner when things were closed as a result of Liu's own poor planning? Was that, too, salutary?
There are script-level ways to make Lucy Liu difficult to live with which would have given us a more cohesive sense of her as a decent person with poor work-life boundaries and irritating traits. Liu isn't actually playing Streep in "Devil Wears Prada": decent people can be hell on each other. This ask is pound for pound doable in terms of room in the script, but fiddly to execute. Another, related question is, is Harper in danger of being fired simply because she believes she is? How complicit is Harper in taking on additional work to avoid writing (actually engaging with which threatens her whole sense of self) or to impress Liu? Is this in part a problem derived from Harper's own personality? Does Liu believe that Harper is another fellow workaholic with no boundaries because Harper is bad at articulating and enforcing boundaries? The script flirts with this material, but doesn't actually engage with the questions it starts to ask. It opens these doors, but won't then walk through them. I wouldn't even expect these things if the film hadn't hinted at an ability and willingness to deliver them.
In contrast, Taye Diggs' character's sins include a flat, sexist "women are gross if they don't get bikini waxes" moment, among other such. This is realistic enough, but it made the eventual reveal of his bigger, related moral issues feel overdue to Katy. (The movie does lampshade this: Lucy Liu is admirable, Diggs is just Some Guy.) She couldn't sustain her belief that Diggs might be annoying but all right until the crisis point, when the film wanted that to break and for the audience to be invested in the male lead's disillusionment.
- There's some confusion as to what kind of relationship the romantic leads have. Katy thought the male lead's best friend's early comment that "your girlfriend should be your best friend" resonant, and wanted to see that pay off more strongly than it did. The later introduction of "I love you despite" felt less successful to her.
What does the main couple have in common? They have some bants, and they like one anothers' friends. This is good! But in some ways this film suffers from heterosexism disease: the leads are together because they're members of the opposite sex who can stand one another. Bingo, baby. That's hot stuff.
The awkward corollary to this is Harper's relationship with Liu, which does revolve around meaningful common interests, respect and shared work. Is this ultimately the film's core relationship? If so--why isn't it the romantic focus?
