 Critics are attempting to massacre the new version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But most box-office analysts doubt that they'll succeed. Indeed, many are predicting it will not only kill Kill Bill, last week's winner, but everything else at the megaplex this week. That hasn't stopped reviewers from taking their best shots at the film. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times calls it "a contemptible film: Vile, ugly and brutal. There is not a shred of a reason to see it." To Lou Lumenick in the New York Post, it's "a splatterfest remake that relentlessly assaults the senses and mind with no discernible redeeming social value." Dave Kehr in the New York Times says that the movie is devoid of thrills and suspense and amounts to "a long march to the slaughterhouse that seems to take forever to get going and, once it does, goes nowhere that hasn't been visited before by more talented filmmakers." Ebert, by the way, remarks that "those who defend it will have to dance through mental hoops of their own devising, defining its meanness and despair as 'style' or 'vision' or 'a commentary on our world.'" No such defense is included in any of today's reviews. |
