Everybody Loves The Spirit
Of course, by “everybody” I mean “a very few people” and by “loves” I mean “barely gave a shit about.” Frank Miller’s The Spirit earned $10 million over the long holiday weekend, making it the least popular of the Christmas Day-opening movies and #9 box office over all. Hilariously, this is less than ’90s superhero failures The Shadow and The Phantom, according to Box Office Mojo. The film has a strong 16% approval rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, with most critics saying while the film certainly has an interesting visual style, everything else–the plot, the acting, the dialogue–sucks eggs. I think the best review is from Nathan Rabin of the AV Club:
In comics, it took Miller decades to devolve into embarrassing
self-parody. In film, he’s made that leap over the course of a single
disastrous film.
Whee! Oh, the mock poster above comes from Dark Piranha, which I thought was swell. Also, in case you’re wondering, I didn’t review the film for TR because I don’t hate myself.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.