Movie Review: A Winter’s Tale (2014)

 All I can say following this movie is wow. It certainly lives up to the hype and will make me appreciate probably every other movie around. Winter’s Tale is a movie that, just when I thought it finds it’s groove, proceeds to promptly lose it and then somehow get worse. The only consolation is that Colin Farrell doesn’t go full paedophile at the end with the young girl he is meant to save from cancer. As a disclaimer, I went into it expecting it to be bad but was buoyed by the new Guardians of the Galaxy trailer that morning which caused me to have a slightly more optimistic view on movies.

A Winter’s Tale is meant to be a love story. And at the beginning we are introduced to our hero, Colin Farrell (or Peter Lake) running from some people. He then proceeds to slit one of their throats, but it is okay because there is no blood and no body. Then we see it is Russell Crowe’s gang chasing him and Russell himself is there, complete with face scars to show that he is evil. But Colin is saved by a white horse who his stereotypical native American spirit guide/foster dad say is his spirit animal.

There is also a girl who is dying of consumption who Colin Farrell falls in love with, plot-amnesia and Will Smith as the devil himself. But at this point I had contented myself that this was one of the worst movies ever and started listing things in my head I would prefer to do for 2 hours:

1.       Watch the Guardians of the Galaxy and Winter Soldier trailers for 2 hours straight.

2.       Cook a delicious roast dinner for that night.

3.       Go on dodgem cars.

4.       Check out my village in Animal Crossing.

5.       Watch 3 random episodes of House.

6.       Go to the beach.

7.       Sleep.

8.       Clean my apartment.

9.       Listen to INXS while bouncing a 2 tennis balls (one each hand, of course).

The only good parts about this movie are Will Smith, playing a cheeky out-of-time devil, and Russell Crowe hamming it up. This is more than offset by a story that alternates between making no sense or, when it does make sense, is so completely stupid it makes JackAss look like it deserves an award for Best Story. But then again, I did expect it to be bad so what am I complaining about. They already got my money and the bad movie didn't disappoint.

1 Cold Waffle out of 5.