But when it's a movie I dearly love, I wish she could. Here's A.O. Scott presumably padding the ol' word count in his ill-considered review of Breaking and Entering:
"It seems to be an axiom of Mr. Minghella’s practice as a filmmaker that, in each of his movies, exactly one person is allowed to be funny. (Rueful irony, of the sort practiced by both Will and his partner, Sandy, played by Martin Freeman, doesn’t count.) In “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” the job fell to the lucky Mr. Law; in “Cold Mountain,” Renée Zellweger got the assignment. (“The English Patient” would appear to be an exception to the rule.) Here, happily, the task belongs to Vera Farmiga, playing a Russian prostitute who shows up in Will’s car to drink coffee, squirm to some loud music and discuss the themes of the movie."
So Freeman is being ruefully ironic when ineptly flirting with the cute girl from the building's cleaning crew? And Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn't funny at all in The Talented Mr. Ripley? And we'll just leave out Truly, Madly, Deeply, in which several people are funny, because... Scott either hasn't seen it, or, most likely, it invalidates the entire silly paragraph, which is just a snide and unwarranted swipe at a filmmaker too often dismissed by critics putting on airs?
That's some dynamite criticism, A.O.! Remarkably thorough. Then again, he's one o' them dullards what thought Little Miss Sunshine was a real hoot, so what's the use in fulminatin'?
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