WikPik

Created Nov 13, 2009 05:26PM PST • Edited Jan 23, 2010 09:06AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Moviestar movies get no better than this one. Super hot, totally cold, and dead bang funny, this huge hit could have been overwhelmed by the fusion of its soon-to-be-coupled stars. Instead Brangelina’s debut perfectly serves this power couple satire, even more so in hindsight given how their real-life relationship has prospered. Credit Simon Kinberg’s perfect script for harnessing such big guns to such great effect.

   The movie deftly satires today’s marriages of equals, especially those where both spouses are high powered strivers willing to settle for nothing less than perfection in their marriage as with the rest of their perfect lives. In setting and style, the movie resembles a tongue-in-cheek updating of the Westchester life of Mad Men’s Don and Betty Draper.

   Perhaps they can make a sequel on Brangelina’s tenth anniversary…

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Brangelina are each adept at playing droll and beautiful, making this the perfect joint vehicle for them. Their palpable chemistry on screen infamously kindled off, making this Hollywood history of a sort.

   Mrs. Angie has long since proven herself an extraordinary femme fatale, here mixing that velvety killer instinct with suburban domesticity to hilarious effect.

   Mr. Brad has long since proven himself the quintessential easy-going stud, here mixing that studmuffinhood with perfectly delivered tongue-in-cheek comedy. Inglorious Basterds led me to compare him to Paul Newman. Here he’s a post-modern, post-Wild Bunch Cary Grant, if you catch my suave, ultra-violent drift.

   Vince Vaughn plays one of his patented overgrown juveniles in brief and therefore effective fashion.

   No other individual stands out, though Angie’s ultrababe posse demands attention: Kerry Washington, Stephanie March (better known as A.D.A. Alexandra Cabot from “Law & Order:SVU”), Jennifer Morrison, Theresa Barrera, Perrey Reeves (a famous screen Mrs. herself: Mrs. Ari Gold) and Melanie Tolbert. Talk about a queen and her court!

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Consistently droll, with several LOL moments, the film perhaps suffers from being over-long at two full hours, but it never drags or lacks ideas. An example of the latter: It fetishizes weapons just as strivers fetishize multiple showerheads and stainless steel appliances.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Dialogue Perfect 5.0

    Spot on satire of contemporary relationship language through the courting, honeymoon, unspoken frustrations, broken dreams, and out & out marital battles.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    From the huge suburban house complete with all the trimmings, to the retail shoot out, to the sleek spy headquarters, the look of the film matches the characters: upscale perfection.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Mild 2.3

    Seems like it should be R instead of the PG-13 it received. Between Angie’s dominatrix assassin scene and the house destroying make-up sex that she and Brad have, it goes beyond titillating into mild eroticism.

    Then there is the copious violence, mostly of the comik variety (i.e., almost no blood or guts shown), but still the body count gets pretty high.

17. Sex Erotic 2.7

18. Violence Fierce 2.0

19. Rudeness Salty 2.3

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.4

    How surreal?

    Almost 200 FX specialists plus almost 150 stunt players yields two and a half times normal reality. Almost.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.6

23. Biological Surreal 3.0

24. Physical Glib 1.6