Sunday, October 01, 2006

Forest Whitaker Quote of the Month: October 2006

Ah, what people do for their friends. Move a couch? House-sit while you're on vacation? Costar in your ill-conceived crappy sci-fi vanity project just because you were in Phenomenon together?

Yes, my droogies, we're talking about the dreaded Battlefield Earth. Whitaker plays Ker, sidekick to big alien honcho Terl (John Travolta) in all their underhanded and sadistic activities. Reviewer Ken Begg over at Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension actually makes some specific comments about Whitaker in the "Afterthoughts" section of his review:
"Unsurprisingly, Forest Whitaker provides the closest thing to a decent performance here. A real and actual actor, he gamely attempts to bring his role as it's written to life. Which is as someone who, despite being incredibly dense, persists in believing that he's slyer than those around him. (And considering how smart Terl and the rest come off, you can't really blame him.) Rather than helping, however, Whitaker's efforts serve instead to throw the film further off-kilter. The problem is that the cast brings so many different sensibilities to their performances. Whitaker, for his part, nobly tries to bring some depth and weight to his role. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast, all pretty much novices except for one obvious exception, brings a stolid, uninspired seriousness to their roles. This, in turn, serves mainly to amplify the script's already prodigious unintended humor factor."
That's pretty much spot on. But I suffered through this whole mess for a reason, and that was to bring you folks a quote. Alas, the only thing really quote-worthy spoken by Whitaker is the film's last line, which is spoken to Terl after he has been imprisoned by the humans inside of Fort Knox.
Ker: "Look at the bright side: You may not be wallowing in luxury on Psychlo, but at least you finally got your gold!"
And lest you think that everybody is a little too hard on this silly sci-fi film, I point you to the trivia section over at IMDb that says, "Forest Whitaker expressed his regret for participating in this movie". Ouch. I guess John Travolta was moving his own damn couch after this one.

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