FUNNY GAMES (2008) * ½
Two polite young golfers scheme their way into the vacation home of a rich couple (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts) and begin to play mind games with them before holding them prisoner and slowly torturing them. The two Country Club killers beat them with golf clubs, kill their dog, make
Michael Haneke‘s remake of his own 1997 film isn’t the first time a foreign director has remade his own work for mainstream American audiences. Hitchcock did a remake of his The Man Who Knew Too Much way back in ’56 and it was especially en vogue during the 90’s when remakes of The Vanishing and Nightwatch flooded American multiplexes. This wasn’t even the first time
The problem with Funny Games is that it’s just not very good. I’ve never seen Haneke’s original film and watching this crap, I don’t think it’ll find it’s way into my DVD player any time soon.
Haneke starts the film out slowly and mundanely (he never really gives the main characters an appropriate close-up and relies heavily on static shots of their arms and legs instead), but since the film runs a too long 111 minutes, you pretty much know from the get-go that it will take awhile for the film to GET ON WITH IT. Once the psychotic preppies arrive though, the abuse they dish out isn’t exactly as torturous to the characters as it is for the audience. I’m not saying it’s hard to watch because it’s gruesome (it’s not), just because it’s so damn banal and tame.
Speaking of
Haneke also thinks that by keeping key scenes of violence, torture, and nudity (no dice on seeing
(Skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to have the movie thoroughly ruined.)
The third act reality reversal via RCA DVD remote control. Even if this movie did suck, the ending was at least semi-clever, but again, Haneke botches things big time. I understand completely what he was trying to accomplish with this scene. Haneke wants the audience to cheer as the villain gets his comeuppance. When the other dude uses the remote control to rewind back through time so he can save his pal’s life and efficiently murder Watts, it zaps the audience out of the Hollywood-ized version of what we’re used to seeing in incidents like these and thrusts us into the reality of the situation and say, “Okay this is what would REALLY happen in real life.” The problem with that is, he hasn’t earned the ending yet. The main characters aren’t especially endearing to the audience (although Haneke drew out their introduction scenes for FOREVER), and when Pitt uses the remote to alter things from a movie situation to “reality” it plays more like a WTF than anything else. Having the two characters chit-chat endlessly about alternate realities doesn’t help any either. By all the prattling about black holes and shit, Haneke ruins the whole effect by over-explaining his intentions. If he had ended the film without all the incessant banter about pseudo-dimensions and let the audience figure out his message themselves; it would’ve worked much better. Doing it this way dilutes the remote control Deus Ex Machina of it’s potential effectiveness and turns it into an annoying, showy and amateurish thumb-nosing of the audience.
The film DOES have one awesome moment: the excellent opening credit sequence that deftly mixes opera and punk rock music over the soundtrack. After that though, it’s all downhill. If you’re looking for a halfway decent home invasion thriller (one that won’t chastise it’s audience and actually entertains), check out The Strangers instead.