united states, 1970, englishWhat an absolute waste of time. Don’t watch this, it’s bad. Let me have watched it for you, and spare yourself the wasted time.
JACK NICHOLSON
Drive, He Said
This is a rather unusual situation. I first watched this film back in 2016, with the intention of writing about it for the site. I didn’t like the film at all, and I struggled to find anything to say about it, to the point that eventually so much time passed that I no longer felt I could write about it.
Since then I’ve been avoiding rewatching it, but I want to watch the next film in the BBS set, so I finally revisited it.
As I got ready to watch it for the second time, I wondered if the last four years of movie watching would have any impact on my feelings. As it turns out they did. I didn’t like this last time, and I hated it this time. I think maybe I was just more charitable back then, less willing to completely write something off.
This is a terrible movie. It’s badly acted, badly written, badly directed. The message is somehow incoherent and offensive at the same time. It is badly dated in so many different directions. We almost certainly wouldn’t be talking about it at all, except for it being a part of the BBS story, and it being the first film directed by Jack Nicholson. These films that are only included to round out a historical moment are a mixed bag, as is to be expected.
I suppose at least I can say that this certainly provided some context into what BBS was doing at this point, even if I didn’t enjoy the film at all.