During the course of a film sometimes there comes a reaction or idea so strong and so right that it can encapsulate perfectly the essence of the moment without the need for afterthought or analysis. It begs to be exclaimed on the spot, bursting out at the seams in tourette like fashion, sometimes border lining on being extremely inappropriate.
I’m proud to introduce a series to my blog entitled creatively enough, “Random Thoughts” where I will state my gut reactions to some of the films that fly across my radar on a weekly basis, ignoring completely any previous knowledge or love I have for them, shooting straight from my hip directly down at my foot.
Random Thought # 1
Good Will Hunting – Somebody kick that kid’s ass!
Most people are well acquainted with the film in question here, Matt Damon plays an over intelligent kid from a hard knock lower middle class life in south Boston. He reads a lot of fucking books and is basically the human calculator. We the audience are meant to feel for him and his shit hole of a life in the projects of Southie, and come to grips with the themes of wasted talent and opportunity. I get it and some part of me maybe even enjoys the film, Ben Affleck does smoke a lot of grits and that’s pretty sweet and all, he also kind of looks like what I would imagine a henchmen sporting a Carhartt jacket would look like, but that’s not really here nor there.
Its not politically correct but I really have to say watching the film last night something really irritated me. A simple thought or question if you will, why didn’t Robin Williams character just kick that kid’s ass? You know the scene where they sit down in the park and Robin Williams seems to be apologetic, somewhat angry but still really overly sympathetic to Will’s asshole-like attitude. Will in this scene, see profile shot above, reminds me a hell of a lot of that one kid everyone knew growing up who had a one way ticket to juvenile hall, a kid who begged on a constant basis for a punch to the face along with removal from his current home by child services. Perhaps as an example and effort to conjure up those memories for you I’ll throw out a name like Randy, in this specific case a name supposed to connote sexual arousal but in reality ultimately just a name and a figure that solicits anger. I realize Randy would not have worked for the context of the film’s title but to me Will is a Randy, the film now for me forever known as “Good Randy Hunting” from here on out.
For the sake of cathartic purposes and a conclusion here I’ll once again propose the question exactly as I expressed it last night, “Why didn’t he just kick his fucking ass?”, “Somebody anybody for the love of god kick that kid’s ass”. No, apparently Robin Williams was velcroed to himself in his study and Ben Affleck was preoccupied smoking grits in the dooryard.
