“Wanted”: Sexist, sizist, stupid.

I just walked out of a movie; this was the first time. I wanted to see “Wanted” for an admittedly shallow reason – it has James McAvoy in it, and I think he’s hot. I didn’t expect that the movie would be so awful I’d rather pay for a ticket to get out of seeing it. I only regret that I didn’t walk out sooner. (Possible spoilers ahead, if you care about that.)

My first clue that this would not be an enjoyable experience was in the very first scene. McAvoy’s character is standing in an office watching his boss stuff her face. His boss is an approximately 300 pound woman who he characterizes as extremely annoying, also describing her sarcastically as “anorexic.” Isn’t that great? In the very first scene we get a whole heaping helping of stereotypes.

Let’s count them:
1. Fat people are annoying and loud
2. Fat people stuff their faces with donuts and cake and junk food
3. Everyone hates fat people, so much so that for McAvoy=Gibson, pretending to like her for a minute is “the hardest work he’ll do all day.”

Later, we’ll come back to the office for Gibson’s big moment of telling off his fat boss, where he basically says that middle school must have been tough on her (cause she’s, you know, fat) and that if she wasn’t such a bitch they’d feel sorry for her (poor fat lady) but as it is, they want her to fuck off. She’s speechless, which apparently is a win. Yay, the woman shut up! (Oh, in case, you’re wondering what made the boss such a bitch, it’s that she seemed to expect Gibson to actually get his work done! That’s right! She had the nerve to ask him to do his work!) Then Gibson walks out and smashes his former best friend in the face with a keyboard, cause that’s how real men act.

The next female we encounter in the film is his girlfriend – oh my gosh I think we have some more stereoptypes! We quickly find out that his girlfriend is fucking his best friend, also really annoying (so much so that he’d prefer to listen to the sound of the train roaring past than her voice), as well as emotionally needy and expects him to LISTEN to her and REMEMBER conversations they had! ain’t that so GIRLY!?!?!?
So, to clarify, girlfriends:
1. talk a lot
2. are really annoying (must be ignored)
3. make you have stupid conversations about your relationship and then want you to remember them
4. always have bitchy attitudes
5. cheat on you with your best friend
6. are selfish and self-absorbed
7. have a prissy white cat named annabel

Great.

Well, okay, Angelina Jolie is in this film! And she’s pretty kickass, right? Let’s go meet her. Oh, hey, look at those arms, which are about two inches wide. My, my, admire all those bones sticking out of her body all over the place. And the way her eyes sink into her face, her lips the only soft thing about her but thank god they’re so huge. Jolie is so fucking skinny in this movie it’s scary. She seriously looks like a walking skeleton. This goes way beyond the point of just having (yet another) slim female as the sexy star, Jolie seriously looks like she’s a few pounds away from death. And yet there she is, playing the sexy femme fatale role. Women, you’re never sexier than when you’re practically dead. Keep on starving!

Oh, but wait – I forgot the gratuitous nude scene. We can’t forget to further objectify women by having Jolie rise out of a bath, and have the camera zoom up and down the back of her nude body. And for some reason Jolie’s character just can’t keep that towel on her butt. Maybe it’s too heavy for her frail skeletal arms. Granted, I did walk out before the movie ended, but somehow I don’t think we’re gonna get a nice long pan of McAvoy’s naked ass.

So then we get a bunch of violent scenes with bullets zooming slow motion through people’s skulls. Now, obviously I knew this was going to be a violent movie. That’s fine. That’s its genre. But seriously….do we really need to slow-motion it every single time a bullet hits someone, and see bits of skull and brain matter fly off, still slow motion, into space? Do we really need to see blood flying, again slow motion every single time, in long strings from people’s mouths and noses? Enough already.

For that matter, I’m sick of action movies like this one completely disregarding any sense of ethics whatsoever. How am I supposed to cheer for the good guys to win when they constantly kill and maim innocent people, not to mention cause massive car crashes and destroy property left and right? Or how about when they STRAP BOMBS to thousands of rats and set them loose to be mini suicide bombers. Seriously? Yeah, that’s really cool.

But even if you try to forget all the sexist, sizist, unnecessary violent behaviour, this movie is still stupid. The dialogue is stinted and awkward, there are plot holes everywhere, and the character development is practically non-existent. There’s not much more to say. It sucks. It just…sucks.

(By the way, sitting behind us in the theatre was a family with two little girls aged about five and two. I’m shocked that they brought them to an R movie in the first place, and shocked that they didn’t walk out at any of the scenes that were highly inappropriate for children, like where they show Gibson’s best friend fucking his girlfriend. Or you know, the CONSTANT VIOLENCE. Whatever. I feel sorry for those two girls, hopefully they were at least young enough not to understand the sexism.)