Possible one-word reviews for RocknRolla

Tripe. Shite. Crap. Crockoshitta. Blusterfest. Inert. Exasperilla. Tedious. Arrhythmic. Yawn-inducing. Dull. Thumping-dickfest. Fun [and here, by using the term “fun,” I explicitly mean not fun]. Not-awful.

This film was about three-and-a-half hours long, and it moved like a steam train going up a very steep, very long hill. It had all these recognizable elements of a fun movie, and yet rather brilliantly cooked them together into a not-fun movie. I suppose it’s not dreadful. That’s about as effusive as I’m gonna get.

To counteract its impact on my brain, I watched two episodes of Steve Coogan’s wonderful “Saxondale,” about an aging ex-roadie now working as an exterminator in one of Britain’s trademark brick-flat shopping-mall dead-end small cities (cf. Slough). Coogan is meaner and funnier than any seven of Ritchie’s characters, and his show is a far slyer send-up of masculine posturing, and he even deploys guns and violence (albeit with pigeons and animal-rights protesters) more pleasurably. Skip Rolla and head immediately to “Saxondale.”

4 thoughts on “Possible one-word reviews for RocknRolla

  1. I watched 16 minutes of Ritchie’s film last night and stopped. The Australian Open was far more exciting. They closed the retractable roof! It was 136 degrees on the court! Serena kicked Russian ass! That’s rock n roll, baby.

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