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September 24, 2007

Turgid Movie Reviews

David Germain is the Associated Press's go-to guy on all matters cinematic. He writes movie reviews and covers the box-office side of Hollywood, as well. As far as Gelf can tell, one of the few aspects of the celluloid business Germain avoids is the porn industry. Which is strange, considering how often he uses the word "turgid" in his reviews.

Of course, turgid is a perfectly fine adjective to use when describing things besides penises. But to Gelf's 13-year old brain, the word always triggers a giggle. See if you can overcome your pubescent hindbrain to decipher which movies Germain is describing. (Hint: they're in descending chronological order.)

1) The action sequences are so turgid it's sometimes hard to tell which 'bot is doing what, but with Bay steadily hurling fireworks you won't really pause much to think about that, or about how truly inane the story is.

2) Director and co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo presents a strained story and a barrage of turgid action that looks like inferior outtakes from the first movie.

3) Through madcap, turgid action sequences, Selenia and Arthur lead an expedition to foil a plot by a warped villain to destroy the Minimoys.

4) The film also is cursed by its own excesses, the rich humanity evident in earlier Zhang epics lost amid a turgid glut of bad computer-generated effects and the characters' self-absorbed blood feuds.

5) This fictionalized tale of two Los Angeles detectives assigned to the gruesome 1940s murder of a real-life wannabe starlet begins as a slow but intriguing character study that gradually unravels into a turgid mess.

6) But the story is a long, tall glass of seawater, with characters who are mostly unlikable for their annoying self-absorption and supreme stupidity and action sequences as turgid and mucky as an offshore dredging operation.

7) The North Pole is a turgid mob scene, with elves so ominous and off-putting all they need are drabber garments and some scars and lesions to fit right into the dark army of Mordor in "The Lord of the Rings."

8) From there on, the movie is mostly turgid visuals as the [redacted] races through the desert or leaps from mountain peak to peak pursued by heavy armaments.

9) Thomas Newman's rich orchestral score, augmented with funky percussive sounds, nicely propels Pixar's turgid, constantly moving undersea world.

10) Huffing and puffing with ponderously self-important notions of reality, destiny and cause and effect, the movie barrages viewers with [redacted]-type action and style, which has been copied so often that it's become monotonous. The images are intense and turgid, but so cartoonish and over-the-top, they're almost a caricature of the original.

11) Schumacher tries to flesh out the skeletal concept with noise and fury: Urban chaos outside the phone booth, media mayhem sparked by the standoff, turgid editing that includes tiresome images inset within the main action.

12) Clooney plays Chris Kelvin, a psychologist in some indeterminate future when humanity has ventured to other planets. One of them is [redacted], where a small group of scientists has gone bonkers while studying the turgid, incomprehensible alien intelligence that coats the planet's surface.

Answers: 1) Transformers, 2) 28 Weeks Later, 3) Arthur and the Invisibles, 4) Curse of the Golden Flower, 5) The Black Dahlia, 6) Into the Blue, 7) Polar Express, 8) Hulk, 9) Finding Nemo, 10) The Matrix Reloaded, 11) Phone Booth, 12) Solaris







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