Thursday, September 3, 2009

Chicken or egg script analysis

If you scroll down to my post "Why The Hangover Sucks" you can find a comment from someone denouncing my post in somewhat crude language. While I don't think I deserved the name calling for my opinion, he did make me remember why I felt the way I did. I think, parsing his profanity, that he felt I'd imposed a preconceived expectation on the film and because it didn't conform to my idea of what makes a good script, I didn't like it.

But that IS NOT what happens.

What happens when anyone, I think, but at least I, respond to a work of art, analysis is always after the fact. I can't help see something first and respond to it intuitively. Once I understand WHAT I feel, then I can begin to figure out WHY I feel that way.

With The Hangover, I was bored and unamused most of the time. That's my reaction. Now, because I've spent most of my adult life trying to understand how scripts work when they do work, then I apply my experience and opinion to my reaction in order to determine, if I can, why I was bored and unamused.

If you want to know why, you can reread my OP.

But I just am not schizophrenic enough to analyze first and react later. I don't think anyone is, even if they want to be. Sorry to disappoint the commentator of my earlier post, but it just doesn't work that way. Unlike the chicken and the egg conundrum, I definitely know what comes first--my reaction to a movie. WHY comes second. And only if the movie is interesting enough to be worth figuring that out. In the case of The Hangover, it's huge popularity demanded I try and figure out why I didn't conform to everyone else. But then, I'm usually swimming against the tide.

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