Word: diaryã
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Dates: during 2005-2005
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...plants itself firmly in the venerable shady-side-of-showbiz genre. This particularly sordid little tale centers on the Martin-and-Lewis-esque 1950s musical/comedy duo of Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth, distancing himself from his “Bridget Jones’s Diary?? nice-guy image), who perform a yearly telethon to benefit polio victims. Behind the scenes, they indulge in plenty of sex, drugs, fights, and mob connections.The dead girl who opens the film is Maureen O’Flaherty (Rachel Blanchard), a college student working at a Florida hotel...
...this really the case? Were the intentions of Diary??s detractors really so sinister? I don’t believe so. The problem, as I see it, lies in the critical establishment’s failure to consider the film in its appropriate cultural context. Diary connects with its target audience on a variety of levels—social, spiritual, and aesthetic—often inaccessible to the viewer approaching the film tabula rasa...
...When Diary??s critics do become engaged, the tone borders on malevolence, most of which is directed against the grandmother Madea character. Perry acts the part himself—in drag—with such reckless abandon he makes Robin Williams’ Mrs. Doubtfire appear a model of subtlety and restraint. During the course of the film, Madea brandishes a pistol, vandalizes a mansion with a chainsaw, and smokes copious amounts of marijuana...
...Diary??s detractors correctly acknowledge that Madea is a crass and unbelievable caricature. What they miss is that her complete lack of verisimilitude is deliberate and critical to the aesthetic that Perry endeavors to create...
Without Madea’s brazen comic relief, the film’s darker themes and overt religiosity would be intolerable. Perry strives not for emotional consistency but for a harmonious blend of disparate emotions. Diary??s tone is a compromise between the tragic and the ridiculous...