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Uniting People With Film
B-Movie Blurbs: Elves (1990)
I wish everyone could see ELVES in their lifetime.
There are some great monumental films out there that challenge your perception, your values, and how you think about and see the world.
There are movies that are just fun to watch that have no real lasting substance or are completely void of memorable or thought-provoking moments.
There are those films that have great sounding concepts, but the finished product shows you where exactly the producers and/or filmmakers stopped caring or didn’t put as much thought into past its overall “gimmick.”
There are those movies that are made by the truly deluded auteur who is totally convinced that their ultimate vision is one that is emotionally, morally and (at times) sociopolitically challenging, while it’s regarded publicly as a gigantic creative failure that brings enjoyment to all those who consume it on this basis alone.
And then there is the movie ELVES.
ELVES tries to be everything that a movie can be, but without realizing that by putting everything into a movie, creative direction seems like a moot concept. The clichés stick out like a sore thumb. The dialogue sounds like a computer deleted a random line every few pages and the director just went with it. It seems the editor lost hope during various sequences and decided to make the movie more entertaining to watch where it might otherwise just be depressing or boring as all Hell. The acting has its own lifecycle; it’s honest-to-god hopeful for a good performance but falls flat early on, dies a pained and horrible death, then spins a caricature on itself. The special effects reveal how everyone wanted the film to be, but the obvious budgetary constraints surrounding this aspect of production highlight specifically where this movie is grounded in its own self-delusion, and then swiftly turns into solid gold comedy.
For these reasons, I do urgently recommend that ELVES be seen for what it is, and enjoyed as such.
André Couture is a known nerd living in the great city of Seattle. He watches ungodly amounts of failed cinematic works, writes music, records himself speaking about the flawed logic of terrible films, eats occasionally, reads incessantly, edits video, and sometimes goes to work.
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