I had the displeasure of watching this film on Thursday when it opened here in Australia. I was quite surprised to find that myself and my boyfriend were the only people in the cinema (perhaps I should have taken that as a hint!). As demonstrated by my previous post (An Analysis of Glee’s Fall from Grace) I have mixed feelings about the show – specifically, that it has disappointed me since the start of its second season, and that it tries too hard to send corny messages which, in my opinion, it doesn’t effectively portray. And yet people obsess over it anyway, go figure.
Anyway, I was excited about the film because I like watching the cast perform, and because from watching the trailer I gathered that the performances would be intercut with footage of the cast. I must say that watching the cast performing was not a letdown. It was great to see that they are all talented, and much to my relief, the performances were not overly cheesy nor were they too long.Whoever your favourite cast member or character is, I doubt you will be disappointed by their performance. And despite being a 3D hater, the 3D was quite good for the performance segments because parts of it enhanced the feeling of being in attendance at the event.
Those are my positives. Now, onto the good old negatives. The cast was obviously supposed to be in character, and whilst they were reciting lines that their characters are likely to say, there did not seem to be any real conviction behind them. This weird hybrid of the cast being half in character does not bode well – it makes one wonder why they couldn’t make a decision to be either a) their character or b) themselves, in order to make it seem more real. The dialogue appeared heavily improvised, so perhaps having scripted dialogue would have improved such scenes. Springing a camera on the cast and expecting them to recite lines that sound like they could have come from their character’s just didn’t work.
Predictably, my least favourite part of the whole film was the ‘real life’ stories of Glee fans which were thrown in at various times throughout the film. I had no idea that the film would feature storylines like this, and this was definitely a clever move on the part of the makers, because it would have certainly made fans like me think twice about seeing the film. You want the truth? I just don’t care. I can enjoy Glee (sometimes), but it doesn’t affect me in any way, and hearing people discuss how its changed their lives makes me feel like an outsider, and truly makes me think they’re a little sad. What made these storylines worse was that they came across as disgustingly orchestrated as though they were some kind of advertisement or marketing campaign to sell the show (as if they aren’t making enough money as it is!) To top it off, these scenes had no 3D effect whatsoever. I don’t mean that the 3D wasn’t particularly good, I literally mean that they were not 3D at ALL. So not only do you fork out extra cash to see the film in 3D, but half of it (and the worst parts too) aren’t even 3D!
Ultimately, the film is a shoddy marketing ploy that is getting far too much attention than it deserves. I sincerely hope that Gleeks everywhere will be able to step outside of their Glee bubble long enough to realise that they are being played for fools.