This film is garbage, no, wait, that isn't fair to garbage. Garbage can break down in compost heaps and go back to the Earth, while Tiptoes role on this planet is neither welcomed nor explained in full. This movie has no redeeming value of any way, shape, or form. It's thoughtless, disgusting, humorless, and
surprisingly so since all expectations are shattered when the poster features some of Hollywood A-Listers. The film (if that's what we're calling it) stars Matthew McConaughey (Steven) and Kate Beckinsale as a couple with an unplanned pregnancy, startled by the secret that McConaughey's whole family are dwarves...that's right, the central point that brings the whole movie around is a matter of political correctness that doesn't make sense. Steven himself has lived his whole life with little people, and yet the thought that his unborn child is one makes him so angry that he tilts his head up and opens his mouth a little (McConaughey's version of anger) is intolerable and nonsensical. The worst thing (yes there's a worst thing) about this whole debacle is the role of Steven's brother, played by none other than Gary Oldman. That villain from every decent film of the 90's? Yeah, he's a dwarf now. The aesthetics to create the dwarf persona include fake legs dangling off edges whenever he sits, and an obvious camera angle to hide the fact that he's on his knees. Besides that, there is a subplot between another little person who travels with Oldman, and his hippie girlfriend, played by Dinklage and Arquette. Both characters are repulsive and their stories go nowhere, as they suddenly leave in the last ten minutes of the film, as if to escape it. The film also carries an R-rating, which really screwed itself over, not including the two types of people who would enjoy this: small children and teenage boys. Shallow, too short to form a concrete idea, and just too weird to be of this world, this, I promise you being real, is one film that's always reaching.
July 24, 2011
Top Critic
