Doomed by the Premise

So, the other day I off-handedly referred to Ryan Gosling as this generation's De Niro, and I got six Google hits searching for him specifically. Now, in the storied history of this blog, that's a lot of traffic.

I was of course then tempted to spend an entire week on Ryan Gosling, just to shamelessly bid for more traffic- I would even be excused in that he has a new movie out, Lars and the Real Girl.

But unfortunately, it looks ridiculous- another example of a film with a great actor that's doomed by the premise. A man that falls in love with a sex doll is either going to make for a crude, annoyingly base film that hammers the same joke into the ground, or an overly precious, whimsical movie that hammers the same joke into the ground. From the early reviews, Lars and the Real Girl is the latter. Of course it doesn't help that it's from the director of Mr. Woodcock.

So I probably won't see that one. Much like last year I didn't see Venus, because I love Peter O'Toole, but not Peter O'Toole chewing scenery and perving it up around a nineteen-year-old.

Then there's movies with reportedly great lead performances that are just too depressing to even be tempted: Angelina Jolie will probably get an Oscar nomination for A Mighty Heart, but I'm not a big fan of beheadings. I love Don Cheadle but I never worked up my enthusiasm for genocide enough to watch Hotel Rwanda. I'm not even huge enough into atrocities from the Iraq war to have made it to Tommy Lee Jones's recent In the Valley of Elah.

I can't imagine any actor or actress that I would see anything starring them, can you? But maybe that's because I understand that movies are more than star vehicles, if they're done right. I'll never forget all the people complaining about the lack of Jim Carrey's hamminess and crazy facial expressions walking out of the theater from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a future Obscurity Hall of Fame member).

Well, maybe George Clooney. I've got a ticket for Michael Clayton tonight, and I've seen all of his starring roles in the theater except for The Good German.