WTF?

Giles, you have let me down.

Tonight, The Mysterious X and I went to see a film called Repo: The Genetic Opera! What a disappointment! I expected marvels from Anthony Stewart Head, but the man can only work with the material he is given, and he was not given a damn thing to work with. Not a shred of good material.

Once, I mentioned the abysmal lyric writing of one Richard Rodgers. Okay, more than once, but once I devoted a post to it. Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich, composers and lyricists for Repo, leave ol' Dick in the dust, as far as worthless lyrics go. Their idea seems to have been that ordinary speech can simply be set to music. That's "authentic," that's more "real" than some phony "musical" with "lyrics." Did you see all those sarcastic quotation marks? The result was cringe-worthy to the max, more so than the gout of fake blood and piles of squishy human organs.

I'm not going to get into the plot of the movie, which was oddly fascinating, as I believe any favorable description would detract from the sheer horror of the lyrics and the acting. Tony Head was great, as was (oddly) Sarah Brightman, but the rest of the cast was utterly unbelievable and painful to watch. Including, but not especially, Paris Hilton. Especially Bill Moseley. Man, what a lousy performance.

Here is the redeeming bit: it may have been intended to be this bad. I don't think this level of shittiness can be an accident. However, I did not have the appropriate mindset to be able to appreciate this film through that lens. Perhaps once I've licked my wounds and my faith in Giles is restored (possibly by means of Band Candy), I will be able to enjoy Repo as it was intended to be viewed. We shall see.