106 out of 166 people found the following review useful: Wondering
if you should watch this film?
1/10
Author: Anonymous from United States
18 March 2014
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Don't. Your time is far too valuable.
This film features unsimulated sex of pornographic actors digitally edited onto the parts of the real actors. So if you're looking for smut, you should instead watch a production from the "Silicone Valley" (or wherever it is the porn industry heads out of now). At least you won't have to labor through pretentious dialogue just to see some real action. It gets painful--the dialogue. There's a part in the movie where Skarsgard's character tries to rationalize the protagonist's nymphomania via the Fibonacci sequence. It really doesn't add anything meaningful to the plot, it's just von Trier trying to convince you that he went to college. No, I'm only half kidding. Read the spoiler.
*SPOILER* Assuming you don't heed my warning, and still decide to waste your time watching this film, then I won't won't give away too much, but Skarsgard's dialogue is supposed to build you up so you can be shocked by the, like, totally ironic ending of Vol. II...As if you couldn't see that coming, or as if you'll even care at that point. Just be glad it's over so you can go back to watching real porn ;) *END OF SPOILER*
And if you're looking for a film that debases contemporaries and challenges social taboos, well...I guess you can say this film does that, or at least attempts to. It's all pretty shallow, though, and really comes off as an excuse to feature unsimulated sex in a movie full of renowned actors. I would not feel so strongly about this if the actors' performances weren't so laughable. I might have even forgiven von Trier if the characters were redeeming or at least believable. For start, LaBeouf's character speaks with an accent not of this world. And Slater's performance as the aged father is comparable to a parody straight out of SNL. Without giving away spoilers, I'll just say I couldn't find one character I could sympathize /empathize with, because they were either too dull, too deplorable, or too comical.
Want to see a real art film? Un Chien Andalou, because this isn't art. And from a contemporary film's standpoint, there's really nothing to justify the extremes it has to reach in order to tell its story.
Don't do it. Or do it, I don't care. I did my good deed for the day.
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