Monday, March 15, 2004

ANOTHER REVIEW OF A MOVIE I VAGUELY REMEMBER: I just read Irvine Welsh's Porno, the ten-years-later sequel to Trainspotting, which I never read. I did see the movie, though, and Porno jogged just enough of a recollection for this:

Trainspotting is basically Sex and the City (or Herman's Head), except instead of sex it's drugs, and instead of New York it's Leith, a neighborhood in Edinburgh (pronounced "Edinbaurauagagh"). Carrie, or, if you will, Herman, is played by Ben Kenobi. This was the first time I saw him without the Carl Bernstein 'do he wore in "Shallow Grave." Carrie/Herman has three imaginary pals, each of which represents one facet of her personality. Sick Boy (or Miranda, or Genius), played by Mark McGrath, lets his o'erweening ambition interfere with his human interactions. Spud (or Charlotte, or Angel), played by DJ Qualls, has a romantic optimism and simplistic world view. Monty (or Samantha, or Animal), played by Kitty Carlyle, is less of a character than a repetitive action, that being promiscuous and insatiable violence. The movie follows Carrie through a series of vignettes that pose the question: Can a girl kick smack and settle down without losing herself in the process?

Unlike in SATC, however -- and perhaps thankfully -- the answer is "yes," and to do it she doesn't even need to settle down with a turd like the Dancing Latvian Barbituate. (So, unlike SATC, the moral is not "you are trapped in a Sisyphean hell consisting of unfunny banter with three other unlikeable egomaniacs, edging for 29 minutes toward some kind of character improvement that will be snatched away on the next-ons.") As a caper film, it doesn't really work. As an escape fantasy, it winds up more optimistic than "Thelma & Louise" or "Catch Me If You Can" (depressing! I sentence you to a lifetime working for the government!) but less so than Witch Mountain. As an art project, it was too orange and brown.

By the way, Porno was funny enough. Nice to see that Welsh's publisher -- I forget who -- actually created a pornographic web site for the movie to which the title refers.

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