‘FUNNY GAMES’

There is a scene in ‘Funny games’ in which Naomi Watts, after being put through a horrendous ordeal of torture and psychological abuse by two men where she asks one of her captors ‘why don’t you just kill me’. His reply is ‘you shouldn’t forget about the importance of entertainment’ and that’s something that somebody should have told the makers of this po faced mish mash of half baked ideas masquerading as a film.

‘Funny games’ is the worst kind of art house tripe and an early contender for worst film of the year.. A film that regards its audience as simpleton’s who need to be slowly preached to. Its true most movies do contain some kind of message but there is also craftsmanship and entertainment value. And it’s the movies that achieve the perfect balance between the two that are usually the best. There is nothing like that here however. Characters seem to do and say stupid things merely because the plot requires them to do so.

The plot (and I use that term loosely) concerns Ann and George as an upper class couple played by Naomi Watts and Tim Roth vacationing in their summer home with their son George. And it’s here that they are held captive by two psychotic young men who have seemingly watched ‘A clockwork orange’ far too many times because both of their performances seem to be some kind of imitation of the title character from that film. Both of these actors do well but the but the film makers have clearly forgotten that although in ‘A Clockwork orange‘ Alex was menacing he was also likable. These two just come across as boring rich kids with nothing better to do over the summer. Anyway they put this family through unspeakable hell presumably for kicks until the film reaches its bland conclusion.

It is of course ludicrous but then again so are most movie plotlines. Director Michael Haneke seems to be attacking Hollywood’s sugar coating of violence but his ideas are lost in this bland, pretentious and begging to be unwatchable film. Movies like this thrive on provoking controversy and debate but my bet will be that no one will notice and rightfully so. The film also has a whiff of desperation to be different and in a couple of scenes a lead character talks directly to the camera which might be cool if we cared about anything he had to say. But we don’t.

The whole exercise is entirely predictable and renders any set ups for suspense laughable. In one scene at the beginning of the film we see the camera focus on a knife that may just come to our protagonist’s aid towards the end. Does it? Of course not. This movie is not going to let us off the hook and give us a routine happy ending. Nothing wrong with that except we know that this is a film that is clearly out to attack the banality of usual storytelling except it just repeats the same mistakes as the movies that do exactly that. We can see how much of a failure ’Funny games’ is when we compare it to ‘21’ another picture released this week which is a routine Hollywood assembly line piece that still contains more surprises and enjoyment then this joke.

One wonders why such usually talented actors like Naomi Watts and Tim Roth were attracted to be involved in this charade. For their sins they add nothing new to their resume’s with Watts doing her tortured woman routine last seen in ’Mullhulland drive’ and Roth seemingly imitating the Dustin Hoffman character from straw dogs. Apparently ‘Funny games’ is a remake of a film the same director made ten years earlier. I probably should have watched that piece to research for this article but I just couldn’t bring myself to sit through anything else remotely like this film. Not that it’s overly violent or even that disturbing just nasty and exploitative to both the actors and the audience.

‘Funny games’ is an ugly film and sometimes that is what is needed. But this is more ‘Last house on the left’ and ‘I spit on your grave’ than ‘Straw dogs’. In fact it’s hard to think of anyone who could enjoy this. It’s not particularly well made and anyone expecting a competent thriller will be left wanting. Perhaps true sadists could enjoy it but they should just probably go and watch a snuff film as it might just contain more artistic merit. How do you sum up ’Funny games’? Well you know a film is bad when you come out if it thinking that maybe Mary Whitehouse did have a point all along.

Avoid