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April 02, 2007

The End

Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew

By Ben

Having organized the White Elephant Blogathon I feel pretty lame posting my entry a day late. I also feel as if I've fallen victim to my own diabolical urges because while many of the films that were reviewed seem fun in a masochistic way, the film I had to review was just flat out awful. Maybe I'm overreacting but Burt Reynolds' The End was just a painful painful experience.

Directed by and starring Burt Reynold's during the pre-Cop and a Half era of his career, The End is about a man who learns that he only has a couple months to live and decides that he's going to kill himself. After his first failed attempt at commiting suicide he's commited to a psychiatric center where he meets a crazy guy played by Dom DeLuise who takes it upon himself to help Reynolds kill himself.

According to IMDB, the script was originally intended for Woody Allen and it's pretty clear watching it that Allen's sensibility and neurotic personality would have fit the film and would have at least made it enjoyable. As an actor, Reynolds is just a completely different type of person. He was perfect for his role in Deliverance, he's wrong in every way for this role. To make matters worse, he's a terrible director and all the other performances are equally painful to watch. Aside from his handling of the actors he also tries "clever" things like the sophomoric dialogue between himself and the doctor that plays over the opening credits and the obnoxiously long ending of the film where he's swimming to the middle of the ocean while his internal monologue (in which Reynolds is always hysterically yelling) pleads with God to just give him another chance. Ten minutes into the movie when he's smooshing his face against an aquarium while crying, you too are going to want to kill yourself.

For a comedy the film is surprisingly lacking in laughs. In fact, I laughed exactly zero times. However, there was one moment that I rewound to watch again. It's one of the most shockingly horrifying scenes I've seen in recent memory and it involves Burt Reynolds and Sally Field having sex. Because I don't want to relive the scene by describing it, I'm just going to paste the notes I was taking while watching it (I swear these notes are real and unedited):

Sally Field. She's quite upset. Comedic overacting that's falling flat. Burt tries to kiss her breast. "Sonny not now."

Ew, really gross shot of Sally Field's cleavage and stomach.

Burt: "This is going to be my last meal." Starts kissing her thigh. "SONNY NOT NOW... you're using your death!" "You're right, I guess I was going for a pity fuck."

She asks him what she can do to make him feel better.

EW! Shot of their sweaty naked bodies against each other. EW EW EW EW.

He's breathing heavily while on top of her while he watches one of those hawaiin doll's hips rotate.

She didn't orgasm. He describes the part where her back arched and he thought she may have. He's really upset that she didn't climax. "Did you at least like it!?" What a stud. "Oh Mary Ellen the least you could do for a dying man is cum."

Rereading those notes, they hardly do the scene (and especially the awkward shot of her cleavage and stomach) justice.

Other moments that fall flat include Reynolds confessing to a very young Catholic priest who just keeps asking about his sex life, Reynolds crying in an elevator and scaring off the other riders, and the line "I'm in love with the idea of killing myself. When I think about killing myself I get a hard-on."

Once Dom DeLuise enters the scene the film just gets worse. What more do I have to say? It's Dom DeLuise acting crazy trying to kill Burt Reynolds. The one thing in the film that did provide some food for thought was Reynolds' preoccupation with the manliness of his character, mostly in the form of being obsessed with pleasing Sally Field sexually. Whether this is just because Reynolds is so macho that he can't separate himself from his character or if it's self-conscious satire, the brief moment that I pondered the question provided a welcome distraction.

The good news is that the film is only an hour and forty minutes long and you'll probably never have to watch the film... unless you take part in the next White Elephant Blogathon because it would be a shame to keep this awful awful experience to myself. To whoever it was that submitted this, this wasn't a contest but nevertheless: you win.

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