Some Perspective, Please

Say what you will about Americans.

Say that they’re fat and ugly and stupid and selfish and always causing wars and hypocritical in their Middle East politics and short-sighted and entitled and ignorant and smelly and hairy and hairless and inconveniently culturally diverse and bad at rugby and reckless with their abundant natural resources and that they’re lecherous and thieving and unpoetical and prone to unnecessary revolution and under-appreciative of Tom Waits who has consistently sold more albums abroad than in his home country which should theoretically provide more than a cult base for an artist widely considered to be one of the best living songwriters.

Say all this. Say more. Say whatever you want.

They make good movies.

Great ones. The greatest films ever made by anyone.

And unlike other grand filmic traditions that have since died—the Swedes ran out of sorrow, the Italians refocused their efforts on being stereotpyed—the Americans are still going at it, year after year producing at least a handful of films that don’t just fill our theaters, but massage our hearts and minds.

This is not to say we don’t also make bad ones, such as Tommy Wiseau’s brilliantly terrible “The Room,” which has “the passion of Tennessee Williams” and the narrative coherency of a sloshed toddler.

But terrible films aside, at the end of the day, no country holds a candle to the flicks of the American canon. If anyone ever tried to, Michael Bay would just engulf that candle in an apocalyptic CGI flame fest while rocking out to the screaming strains of System of a Down’s “B.Y.O.B.”

It’s this consumptive national pride afflicting so many Americans, be they stock brokers or broke stockers, that makes the Academy Awards such a big deal.

And not just for the networks that air the ceremony. A quick Google search for “Oscar Buzz” returns a full two-thirds of the hits of “Iraq War,” and the fourth hit when Googling “Iraq War” is an article about “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker.”

But there’s one more thing we haven’t said about Americans: that they have bad taste. That they don’t want to be moved by great films. That they only want to be amused.

Just look at the success of such critical masterpieces as “Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel,” which placed second and ninth respectively at the 2009 box office. What does this say about the current American public if not that its theatrical tastes are cheapening? And what does this portend but the imminent and inevitable decline of the movie as a legitimate art form?

Since some recent self reflection has led me to realize that movies are the only non-edible things I care about, I’ve been having something of a life crisis over this.

If I love movies, and movies only, and movies of quality are quickly becoming an unlucrative thing of the past, then what becomes of little old me? Don’t tell me I’ve got to get into ear-movies, colloquially known as “music.”

To solve my crisis, I decided to rewatch my favorite film, “Ratatouille.” And the character Anton Ego reminded me that my problem, like so many in life, was simply one of “perspective.”

Take “Transformers II.” Admittedly, it screwed the pooch, but its success was just a natural and understandable consequence of “Transformers,” a movie that many thought effing rocked—this reviewer included.

Even “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” while admittedly an abomination, at least finished far behind the top grossing animated feature “Up,” a movie that grabbed an Oscar nomination for best picture and best animated picture.

And the story gets even better. The year’s top grossing film, “Avatar,” was by many estimates the best film of the year, and “The Hangover,” “Star Trek” and “The Blind Side,” the sixth, seventh and eighth top-grossing films respectively, were each critically acclaimed.

So how about we all just relax and grab some perspective. And you know what helps with that? Here’s a hint: it ends with “-ovies.”