Word: spielbergisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Spielberg went to outer space. Spielberg went to Egypt. Spielberg went to suburbia. Now, drunk with success and hubris, Spielberg has imposed his high-tech humanity on the myths of another age. The Sherlock Holmes stories, the embodiment of understated, subtle Victorian British refinement, come at us with all the sophistication of an Indiana Jones bullwhip in Young Sherlock Holmes, which is guaranteed to hit the jackpot this Christmas season...
There is no mistaking this movie as a Speilberg creation, even if the mass-market messiah is only one of three executive producers listed in the seemingly endless movie credits. Holmes is almost a Spielberg parody. Outrageously expensive special effects trot across the screen screaming aloud, "We cost millions to make you piss in your pants," as terminally cute characters engage in chaste romance and enormous props explode and collapse in a display of Hollywood consumerism so grotesque they make The Blues Brothers Movie look like a college thesis project...
...Spielberg and flunky Chris Columbus--who also wrote Gremlins and Goonies (see accompanying story)--have not expanded the modest vision of past Holmes films and the original Doyle stories to fill the epic scope required for Spielberg mega-effects. They have stomped all over the original, creating not a Holmes aided by millions in props and special effects, but a Holmes pulverized by orgasmic Spielbergisms that make anything the hero does seem thoroughly boring...
Cute fuzzy creatures come to life, the kids magically fly through the air, evil is conquered when the hero learns to believe in himself, and we are living another high-tech sitcom from the suburban psyche of Spielberg and Lucas (whose firm had a part in the film's extensive special effects...
...success and talent, Spielberg's weaknesses are prominently displayed in this foray beyond the safe climes of thrill-a-minute B-movie homages and suburban kiddie flicks. He is a craftsman, not an auteur, and one hopes his artistic imperialism will not cause him to stomp all over Anglo-Saxon culture's other golems...