The Spirit

I like Frank Miller. The Sin City movie was great. Never before, or since, have I seen a comic book movie that has made me be interested in the graphic novel behind it. Granted, we probably owe more to Robert Rodriguez for that than Frank Miller; but still- it was great.

That has left big shoes to fill for a lot of other comics he has done. 300 was acceptable. I still don’t want to run out and get the comic, but it was ok. Here, now, we have his latest called The Spirit.

Now keep in mind, he actually did not write these comics. They were written and drawn by someone else, he just wanted to bring them to the big screen. And now that he has, I am concerned that there will be a lot of people who will not get, well, the ‘sense of humor’ of this movie.

To be quite honest, by most standards, it’s terrible. The acting is bad, the plot is bad, everything; bad, bad, bad. But there is a subtle tongue-in-cheek tone to this movie that most will not pick up on, and it will keep them from liking it as much as they could.

There is humor in it. Much more than people will see. It pokes fun of itself, and of the entire genre of comic books and movie crossings. It’s absurd, visually fun to watch, and I think has the potential to be the Evil Dead of comic book superhero films. The unfortunate thing is that most won’t get this, and if that was the intent of this movie, it didn’t get across well enough to catch on. I think instead of everyone just going to see a silly, goofy noir comic hero not take himself or anything too seriously, they are going to see a cinematic disappointment of great magnitude.

All in all: Noir and Nonsense.

Lives up to the pre-views? No; quite different.

Stars (out of five): 3.5

T