Not as bad as it could be, but still pretty incomprehensible. Denby is generally kinder to women than Lane, but is also more likely to write about comedy and thus do it poorly, so it was always gonna be a toss-up. He manages to say that Kristen Wiig wasn’t as funny as she could have been, because she doesn’t, I don’t know, scream and make crazy faces like she does on SNL? Perhaps I have a more nuanced appreciation of comedy than Denby (ha ha “perhaps”) but I found Wiig to be absolutely fucking hilarious throughout. I will say I appreciate him pointing out how brilliant Melissa McCarthy is–whereas Lane would have raged about how dare she force her hideous bulging flesh upon our delicate sensibilities. But still, seriously, this?:
“[Wiig] has a drunk scene on an airplane which is almost scary in its unleashed libido. As skinny as she is, she suddenly becomes a mass of seething flesh, as sinuous as a snake.”
UMMMMMMMMM yeah. I would say most viewers did not find that particular scene to be terrifyingly erotic.
These kinds of dudes always reveal more about their own Freudian neuroses and boner-impetuses (impeti?) than they do about the ladies they write about.
It reminds me of the amazing Idols of Perversity, by Bram Dijkstra, in which he argues that 19th century painters were so obsessed with painting dead women because it enabled them to contemplate sexy ladies with their terrifying sexual agency contained (by death), thus allowing a state of “restful detumescence” in the viewer (Dijkstra knows he’s being hilarious; it’s a great read). It’s like if a woman is drunk and flinging herself about, your boner might accidentally fall into her, and she might bite it off with the teeth that live inside her vagina, and THEN how would you write about movies? Whoever said “the pen is mightier than the sword” was clearly a sissy.
“As skinny as she is”
It’s a tepid review for kind of a groundbreaking (and very funny) film, so even though it’s not as bad as it could have been, it’s not nearly good enough. Thus I continue my hectoring cry for both Lane and Denby to step down, and for the New Yorker to hire someone to review movies who
a) was born after 1907
b) has a sense of humor
c) isn’t a raging dillweed
d) has boobs* **
*this one’s never gonna happen, so lets hope for a-c.
** EDIT: however, as Jonah points out in the comments, I should really have talked about Pauline Kael, who had boobs and wrote for the New Yorker for millions of years. I will freely admit that the nuanced argument is not my strong suit. However, if you exclude simply the asterisk of “d” from this entry I believe the entry stands, so lets just pretend I restrained myself from d’s asterisk. You know what I would really like to know though? Did Pauline Kael think Lane and Denby were legit? I would love to know. Unfortunately she died in pre-September 11th 2001. Oh the things she never got to see.
My favorite Denby faux feminist moment was when he wrote a rather great, perahpse definitive critique of the bromance genre, and then two weeks later followed up with a glowing review of Superbad (to be fair, I agreed with both pieces).
Hate to break it to you, but Pauline Kael – who, in addition to having boobs, might be the most famous film critic ever – was on the New Yorker’s staff for 23 years, alternating for some of that period with the also-boobed Penelope Gilliatt.
I know! I almost talked about Kael but then I didn’t. It’s true that her existence somewhat hamstrings my vitriol, but I still stand by most of it in principle. Kael rules. Perhaps this falls under the “Alien” rubric of “shit being weirdly better for women 20 years ago than it is today.” Because how you could ever put somebody like Anthony Lane in Kael’s position is pretty much beyond me, although he does have a certain flair.
p.s. “the also-boobed” made me laugh