The Gone Girl Movie

I loved the book and I love David Fincher but I did not love this movie.

The tone was wrong.

The book is a romp. A devilish delight that you cannot put down. You ride the plot twists like a roller coaster and forget about it when it's finished, just like your afternoon at the amusement park.

Fincher wanted to make a statement.

And he does pretty well re tabloid journalism. We live in a funny gotcha culture where if it bleeds it leads, even better, if it's ethically wrong, we want to parade it all day long, but if we want a moral tale we'll turn on Fox News.

What we want when we go to the movies is entertainment. And not so much the real truth as an aspirational truth.

Yes, marriage is hard, that's another theme of this movie. But we're not married to people who look like that and act like that and if you go to this movie and don't feel inadequate, you're rich, famous and beautiful.

That's why we're interested in the stars, who are often two-dimensional uneducated nitwits, they play these roles. And they live in these houses. And they have that sex. And why in the world can't it just be me!

If for some reason you haven't read the book, the whole story hinges on an unexpected twist. And if you consider that a spoiler, you lose points for not reading 2012's book of the summer, deservedly so, and for watching this film and not knowing something is up.

And the twist is based on the manipulation of Amy.

But we just don't believe Rosamund Pike in the role.

We believe Tyler Perry as the lawyer. I won't say he steals the movie, but his performance is so note perfect it makes you want to run out and see his flicks, because anybody who can get it this right deserves our attention.

And Carrie Coon as Ben Affleck's twin sister is also a revelation. She exudes inner attractiveness. She's the kind of girl you not only become friends with, but marry, despite not wearing any makeup.

But we're looking for Frances McDormand to be the cop, not Kim Dickens, Dickens radiates no intelligence, she's neither bigger than the story nor a pawn within it, she's just wooden, like the Dunnes fifth anniversary which kicks off this picture.

David Fincherized the story, ruining it in the process. The best director in the world may be wrong for your picture. Fincher gets the look down, you get enthralled by this world immediately, with the heavy Trent Reznor/Atticus Rose score and the dark cinematography. Only this is not "Zodiac," my favorite Fincher flick, an exploration of a true story wherein every twist and turn is pregnant with unknown factors that might scare you as well as being a revelation. "Gone Girl" is a Midwestern frolic.

But I went.

Because I'm in search of greatness. And sometimes Fincher delivers it.

Too many flicks are sold on the high concept, the comic book upon which they are based. I want something deeper, that touches my soul, and Fincher is able to do this, but he's not a writer, he can only work with other people's material.

Which proves once again that the writer is king.

That's why we revere these techies, they come up with this stuff.

And we used to revere our film creators and music makers for the same reason. They constantly wowed us. Listen to last week's Smokey Robinson interview on Howard Stern, when he tells how he wrote his hits your jaw drops and you pray they don't change the subject, you're privy to a genius at work.

But there's very little genius in the world today.

And most of our geniuses are not directors, or producers, but writers. The people who create this material to begin with.

Like Gillian Flynn. How did she come up with this stuff?

And Flynn does not look like Rosamund Pike, she's not movie star beautiful. But we're all looking for our Flynn, we're all looking for that person who surprises us, who utilizes their personality each and every day to make our lives interesting and exciting.

So I'll wait for her next book. Although I'm worried the eyes of the world and the resulting pressure will inhibit her. It's hard to receive the accolades and still produce. Which is why actors can continue to be successful, but writers not so much. To dig down deep inside and come up with fantastic material is so difficult.

But that's all we're interested in today, the fantastic.

Unfortunately, the "Gone Girl" movie is not.

P.S. This movie needed its Sharon Stone, the one who spread her legs in "Basic Instinct," who manipulated us and attracted us simultaneously. We wanted to know Catherine Tramell, despite being fearful of her sting. Stars draw us closer, the longer you watched Rosamund Pike in this picture not only did you realize why she had no friends, but you had no desire to hang with her, never mind sleep with her yourself, she radiated one note intelligence and almost no humor, and attractiveness is always more than skin deep, it's an alchemy behind the eyes that can be aided by beauty, but does not depend upon it.

P.P.S. Affleck jumps from genteel to manipulative when he's interviewed by Sela Ward, who's both enticing and despicable as a high class TV interviewer, Sela embodied what Pike aspired to, but for too much of the movie Affleck's a lunk, but not quite one we can believe has corn-fed roots but was still able to score this high class Harvard graduate.

P.P.P.S. David Clennon always delivers, but it's shocking to see the lines in the face of Miles Drentell, the evil advertiser of "thirtysomething." Aging is a bitch, but it happens to all of us, be sure to see the evolutionary pictures in today's "New York Times Magazine," they'll haunt in you in a way this flick aspires to but is unable to achieve: "Forty Portraits in Forty Years": http://nyti.ms/1nW2miS

Smokey on Stern - start at 24:20 and listen through "Tears of a Clown": http://bit.ly/1rQbxzE


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