Wow, we were unprepared for just how laughably bad and preposterously retarded Frank Miller’s “The Spirit” was going to be. We figured it wouldn’t be good, but my god, this thing is likely going to figure in prominently when the 2008 Razzie Awards are finally announced.
Everyone is pretty much terrible in it, but Samuel L. Jackson achieves a new low or new high in ridiculousness, depends on how you view it, but his spectacularly absurd performance is a laugh riot of grandiosity. At this point in his career, we’re pretty sure he just takes the roles that are the silliest, so he can just be completely over-the-top and have fun.
Eva Mendes was pretty horrible as well. We’ve wasted too many words on this cheesy, cornball and inconsistently stylised bomb already. Easily one of the worst we saw all year and if it wasn’t a critics screening with PR there, we would have walked out after 20 minutes. Robert Rodriguez should pretend he doesn’t know Miller after this and not take his calls. [F]
I feel like Rodriguez giving Miller co-directing credit is like if your dad gave you fake plastic tools to help him make a tree house when you were a little kid, just to be sweet and bond a little and make you think it’s just as much yours as it is his…and The Spirit is after you’re so impressed with how well the tree house came out that you decide you’re going to break out the real tools and make one by yourself without the help of dad, even though you’re 7 years old and have no concept of how to put together a decent tree house.
I wouldn’t argue there.