← Back to Reviews
in
Fargo
Crime Comedy / English / 1996
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Been meaning to watch it for a long time. All I know about it is the hyper-exaggerated Minnesota accents and woodchipper memes.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
I have it on good authority that NOBODY speaks like the Minnesotan characters do in this movie, but I've met one or two people who casually dip into the "yeah, you betcha" stereotype a bit. I do find it amusing and it's kind of an adorable manner of speaking, but it's not an accurate portrayal of reality whatsoever and that's one of many things in the movie that undercuts the "THIS IS A TRUE STORY" blurb that it, like many other movies, cannot help but insist on at the beginning of blatant fiction.
I mean, the Coen Brothers themselves were both born in Minnesota, and neither of them speak that way, so that's kind of a ****in' shitty.
The movie kept me engaged, it seemed paced okay, but at the end of it all I simply didn't see a point to the movie. That seems to be my issue with each of the Coen Brothers movies I see. The Big Lebowski is such a purposeless movie and I get the same feeling here.
It'd be one thing if it was actually entertaining, let alone funny, throughout, but the majority of """comedy""" in this movie comes from the exaggerated, but not over-the-top accents. Like, it's mild quickiness at best. That just doesn't make me laugh.
It also doesn't do itself any favors by apparently presenting the Pregnant Cop as the protagonist, when she doesn't even show up in the movie for the first 30 minutes. You couldn't establish the conflict by then? We needed the long drawn out scenes of the bad guys staring daggers at each other?
The dude who kicks off the movie by organizing to have his wife kidnapped is rationalized as having money problems, but it's never established what those money problems even are. Why is he in debt? Who is he in debt to? Why does the movie consider this unimportant information?
Eventually his wife is killed, his dad is killed, and nothing at all comes of it. What was added to the story by killing them, other than to contrive some additional blood splatter into the scenes? What is lost by these characters surviving? These hardly feel like characters than they do disposable plot devices.
Yet somehow this movie gets some of the most ungodly ****ing praise, just like The Big Lebowski, and I'm just here have spent over 2 hours on something I'd have had a better time spending on literally anything else on my movie shelf.
It's bizarre to me, because I have to imagine the sort of person that loves this movie, but I can't imagine the person unless they have unrealistic cackling fits anytime a character opens their mouth, or some inexplicable headcanon that gives the story an actual ****in' point.
When I think of story progression and what they accomplish I judge what the difference in the characters is from start to finish, or what the difference in the world is from start to finish.
Pregnant Cop treats this movie like any other day. That's her character, she's entirely personally ambivalent towards the perpetrators and victims in this case up until she gives the killer a patronizing lecture about how "there's more to life" at the end.
There's no character development from the Husband character, just about everyone else dies, and the characters that died didn't have any character arc either.
So what's different about the world post-movie? There's a suitcase full of cash buried in the snow in rural nowhere now. Whoop-dee-****in'-doo.
The movie closes on Pregnant Cop's husband in bed remarking on how he got himself on a stamp or something? Who cares? Why should the audience care? This guy's had almost no screentime.
I genuinely just can't figure out what value there is in this movie, let alone the apparent incomparable value that landed it on a 100 Greatest Movies list and in the Library of Congress.
It got people to parrot "you betcha" memes for a few years, that's all it takes? ****ing Predator is more referenced, even to this day, and that movie's not in the Library of ****in' Congress. I hate this pretentious shit.
This is one of those movies I want to rate very very low because it is FAR below the expectations it's popularity has set for it, but it was just a "meh" movie to me.
Final Verdict: [Meh...]
Fargo
Crime Comedy / English / 1996
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Been meaning to watch it for a long time. All I know about it is the hyper-exaggerated Minnesota accents and woodchipper memes.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
"Oh yeah?"
I have it on good authority that NOBODY speaks like the Minnesotan characters do in this movie, but I've met one or two people who casually dip into the "yeah, you betcha" stereotype a bit. I do find it amusing and it's kind of an adorable manner of speaking, but it's not an accurate portrayal of reality whatsoever and that's one of many things in the movie that undercuts the "THIS IS A TRUE STORY" blurb that it, like many other movies, cannot help but insist on at the beginning of blatant fiction.
I mean, the Coen Brothers themselves were both born in Minnesota, and neither of them speak that way, so that's kind of a ****in' shitty.
The movie kept me engaged, it seemed paced okay, but at the end of it all I simply didn't see a point to the movie. That seems to be my issue with each of the Coen Brothers movies I see. The Big Lebowski is such a purposeless movie and I get the same feeling here.
It'd be one thing if it was actually entertaining, let alone funny, throughout, but the majority of """comedy""" in this movie comes from the exaggerated, but not over-the-top accents. Like, it's mild quickiness at best. That just doesn't make me laugh.
It also doesn't do itself any favors by apparently presenting the Pregnant Cop as the protagonist, when she doesn't even show up in the movie for the first 30 minutes. You couldn't establish the conflict by then? We needed the long drawn out scenes of the bad guys staring daggers at each other?
The dude who kicks off the movie by organizing to have his wife kidnapped is rationalized as having money problems, but it's never established what those money problems even are. Why is he in debt? Who is he in debt to? Why does the movie consider this unimportant information?
Eventually his wife is killed, his dad is killed, and nothing at all comes of it. What was added to the story by killing them, other than to contrive some additional blood splatter into the scenes? What is lost by these characters surviving? These hardly feel like characters than they do disposable plot devices.
Yet somehow this movie gets some of the most ungodly ****ing praise, just like The Big Lebowski, and I'm just here have spent over 2 hours on something I'd have had a better time spending on literally anything else on my movie shelf.
It's bizarre to me, because I have to imagine the sort of person that loves this movie, but I can't imagine the person unless they have unrealistic cackling fits anytime a character opens their mouth, or some inexplicable headcanon that gives the story an actual ****in' point.
When I think of story progression and what they accomplish I judge what the difference in the characters is from start to finish, or what the difference in the world is from start to finish.
Pregnant Cop treats this movie like any other day. That's her character, she's entirely personally ambivalent towards the perpetrators and victims in this case up until she gives the killer a patronizing lecture about how "there's more to life" at the end.
There's no character development from the Husband character, just about everyone else dies, and the characters that died didn't have any character arc either.
So what's different about the world post-movie? There's a suitcase full of cash buried in the snow in rural nowhere now. Whoop-dee-****in'-doo.
The movie closes on Pregnant Cop's husband in bed remarking on how he got himself on a stamp or something? Who cares? Why should the audience care? This guy's had almost no screentime.
I genuinely just can't figure out what value there is in this movie, let alone the apparent incomparable value that landed it on a 100 Greatest Movies list and in the Library of Congress.
It got people to parrot "you betcha" memes for a few years, that's all it takes? ****ing Predator is more referenced, even to this day, and that movie's not in the Library of ****in' Congress. I hate this pretentious shit.
This is one of those movies I want to rate very very low because it is FAR below the expectations it's popularity has set for it, but it was just a "meh" movie to me.
Final Verdict: [Meh...]