Smooth Moves
The story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates is not usually taken for being a funny story. Yet Smooth Talk the movie based off it received many chuckles during our in class viewing of it on Tuesday. The movie is not supposed to be funny but some of the acting and dialogue led to awkward and comedic scenes. Even one of the most serious scenes, Arnold and Connie’s confrontation, was one of the funniest scenes of the entire movie. The story does a good job making Arnold and Connie’s confrontation believable. Arnold’s character in the story is a rather persistent and persuasive creeper. Arnold’s character in the movie is poorly acted and manages to help ruin the most important scene of the movie. His dialogue is very similar to the story which proves that some things are just better left on paper. It is easy to argue the dialogue should have been revised for the movie with lines like “I’m Arnold Friend and that is what I’d like to be to you.” This line ended up being possibly the funniest lines of the movie. His character was more awkward then it was creepy.
Ellie’s character is also much less believable in the movie. In the story he is just described as Arnold’s shy friend. In the movie the camera stayed on Ellie for decent amount of time and he was completely motionless. He seemed dead or like an actual puppet until he finally moved and pulled the antenna out of his radio. Ellie does not come off as Arnold’s shy friend he just seems like a funny mocking of an unnecessary character.
The best actor in this whole movie was Laura Dern, who played Connie. For the most part Connie seems like a believable young girl. Her downfall was in the scene with Arnold Friend. Her acting in the scene was fine until Arnold tried to come in the house. Connie ran from the door to behind the stairs similar to how a six year old plays hide and go seek. She takes one of the more serious scenes of the movie and turns it into a laughing matter.
Unfortunately Smooth Talk did not live up to the short story it was based off of. A poor dialogue and even worse acting led to a serious story being made into a cheesy and unrealistic movie. I doubt that even with good acting and dialogue this movie would be worth watching unless more background information was known about Arnold’s character.
Bobby Pleines
Bobby, I like how you talked about how this serious and potentially scary story became a laughing and light hearted matter during the viewing of it on Tuesday. One important thing to note is that this movie was released in 1985, and the message and tone of this movie may have been different during this time period. It seemed completely ridiculous to us today in 2009, so perhaps it needs to be re-made with a modern spin, with the right tone and characters this story/film can be truly scary.
ReplyDeleteI think that this blog was very effective in recapping my emotions during the viewing. I walked into class nervous to view the film because I truly was creeped out by the short story. I was relieved and honestly a little annoyed at the lack of acting skills in the film. It may be due to the fact that it was released in 1985 as Kyle said. However, I also think some scenes could've been better produced even in the 80's. Altogether, I think Bobby did a very good job at describing how I felt while viewing.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the short story is in no way comical.However, the film if not intentionally comedic is funny. I felt that the entire tone of the movie was a bit off compared to the climax scene where Friend comes to Connie's house.
ReplyDeleteI too thought the choice of characters was a bit fishy. There is no way that Connie's character was supposed to be fifteen years old. She looked like a giraffe and made the film difficult to believe. I also agree that the short story was far more successful than the film in which it inspired.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this blog entree. Many people in the class were laughing at the scene when Arnold comes to Connie's house. That should of been a scene filled with fear not comedy. I definitely think the movie did not do a good job portraying the events of the short story.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the blog entry more specifically about the part with Arnold Friend and Ellie. It was very poorly acted and Ellie was even wierder in the movie. I think that it was pretty unrealistic that Ellie stayed at the house when they left as well.
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