Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Hitch (2005)

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-10-2005, 07:22 PM:

There's nothing like a crappy movie to start the year off right, and this serves that purpose nicely. The story is lame, the acting is bad, the director is in a coma, the sound mixers are deaf and the biggest offender of them all...the DP is blind. Yes indeedy, not only is the content of this movie crappy, but so are all of the technical aspects of it. You will find yourself wondering why your favorite auditorium just doesn't quite sound as good as it normally does, and you will be making repeated trips to the projector to try and clean the muck off of your lenses, which are as clean as they can be. This movie sucks in every way possible.

I give this one a nice big sloppy 1 out of 5 stars.

Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 02-10-2005, 09:57 PM:

I thought we started off the year about a month and a half ago?

Oh, and this movie looks lame, so Brad's probably right.

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 02-11-2005, 01:49 AM:

Is the film like the trailer in that it looks kinda hazy? If so, [puke]

.

AJG

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-11-2005, 01:13 PM:

Yup, but not quite as bad as those trailers. Still it was an incredible distraction. It is clear that this was not the fault of the printing lab because every once in awhile there is a flashback that has decent contrast without the cloudiness.

Maybe the intent was to make an image with such low contrast that pirates could get a better bootleg off of it. [Razz]

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-11-2005, 01:38 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
Yup, but not quite as bad as those trailers. Still it was an incredible distraction. It is clear that this was not the fault of the printing lab because every once in awhile there is a flashback that has decent contrast without the cloudiness.

I agree. When some scenes look okay, and others are poor quality, it usually is a problem with the cinematography (although sometimes it's a deliberate artistic decision like using a "fog filter").

Posted by Jason M Miller (Member # 2597) on 02-12-2005, 01:15 AM:

I thought this movie was depressing, the whole relationship thing and me not in one. [Frown]

(Don't worry I will stop there and not make this into my next LiveJournal) Other then that I thought the movie was ok, it was kind of cheezy in some parts, but over all I thought it was entertaining.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 02-14-2005, 08:35 AM:

I noticed the cloudiness as well, but wrote it off as being done on purpose. Not that that makes it any less annoying. I also noticed that a few lines of dialog were over modulated when they were recorded. I'm not sure why they didn't fix that in ADR.... or maybe it happened in ADR. Who knows.

In any event, it was the same old tired love story of...

* * * GENERIC LOVE STORY SPOILER ALERT! * * *

Boy meets girl. They fall in love. They have a misunderstanding. They fight and break up. They apologize. They get back together. They live happily ever after.

* * * END GENERIC LOVE STORY SPOILER ALERT! * * *

All that being said, Will Smith was a hoot, and I'm not sure if anyone else could have pulled it off quite like him. Probably not, I suspect. I saw this last night with my girlfriend, and we both laughed and enjoyed it very much. Great date movie. [thumbsup]

Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 02-14-2005, 03:12 PM:

I thought it was alright. It has a lot of funny scenes and a lot of nice eye candy. It is totally predictable but overall a fun movie.

Posted by Stewart Anderson (Member # 1809) on 02-14-2005, 08:13 PM:

I agree with Chris. From the trailer it looks like just a simple funny movie, and I think that's exactly what they delivered. [Smile]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-16-2005, 03:31 PM:

Normally I don't see these kinds of movies in theaters unless I'm on a date and the lady picks the show. Our local Carmike was doing a grand re-opening thing to celebrate completion of their stadium retrofit. As part of the event, Carmike donated the day's box office and concessional sales take to the Army Family Relief Fund. I wanted to help and this was the only show currently playing there I had any passing interest of watching. Anyway......

The movie wasn't "great" but I thought it had enough funny moments to be decent. Kevin James was the best thing about it. Some parts of the show made me think about a few ex-girlfriends. Some of those memories are funny (but not all).

I do agree, the cinematography really sucked ass. Some scenes, such as the one with Will Smith falling asleep on the lady's couch had about as much contrast and shadow detail as a Xerox of a newspaper photo. Pretty dim and weak looking.

I have the strong suspicion this movie was really shot just "good enough" for a 1.85:1 release, but blown up for 2.39:1 at the last minute. Another reason why I wonder about this is a few CGI scenes were of really low quality as well. The edge detail of masked foreground elements really stank.

Bad CGI example: Take a look at a few of the shots where Will Smith and Eva Mendez are riding those Polaris jet skis in the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay. You see the actors in the foreground, but the actual background is removed and the lower Manhattan skyline is dropped in via CGI. The masking/rotoscoping work is probably the most noticably blurry and messy I've seen since "The Mummy Returns".

You might ask, "why would a studio go to the trouble of doing CGI work on some jet ski stuff in New York Bay." Well, would you want to ride one of those things there? I wouldn't. I even thought about that before the two actors got onto those water craft. I'd hate to wipe out a jet ski in New York Bay. Crash in there and you might come out of the water wearing a few "Coney Island Whitefish" and be stuck with a few hypodermic syringes.

Posted by Richard Greco (Member # 2032) on 03-02-2005, 12:21 AM:

I liked it.

Allegra Cole and Caseyh were really hot!!
Eva Mendez was smokin'!!!

I thought it was entertaining all around.

3.5/5