truthfully Keanustine wasn’t THAT bad

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a dozen times: Constantine is a perfectly good little urban fantasy movie that is unfortunately named after a largely unrelated comics character.

I feel the same way about I, Robot.

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Constantine really wasn’t bad. Really, the complaints everyone seems have about it boiled down to “he’s neither blonde nor British!”
There are other levels to criticize it (Rachel Weisz was, well, not interesting. It was trite and smarmy in places.), but on the whole, it’s a decent film.

Of course, I still like the Ben Affleck Daredevil (at least the Director’s Cut). So, appropriate NaCl dosage.

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My first response to “he doesn’t smoke” is “but how do they do Dangerous Habits, then?!” But I guess that was also the general plot of the Reeves movie, so maybe they’re sparring us a rehash.

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The big problem with Keanustine is that they completely botch the Big Moment in which he flips the devil the bird, and the clever plan that he put in motion to get to that moment. The fun isn’t simply that he flips off the devil, it’s that it’s the payoff for an incredibly ballsy bit of brinksmanship. The movie’s resolution is just boring redemption stuff.

No, it’s not a bad movie taken entirely on its own merits and if you’re able to pretend the source material doesn’t exist, but by the same criteria, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy isn’t a bad movie either.

A movie should be allowed to deviate from the source, but that’s only if it actually comes up with something interesting on its own. Constantine’s changes to the original story aren’t about adding interest or making it more cinematic, they’re just about making it simpler and blander.

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