Review - The Insider

Movie theaters should be built with toilets in the seats. It's already dark in the theater, so taking a piss in an exceedingly long movie shouldn't be too much of an ordeal. Unless, of course, you're sitting next to a complete stranger- that could get a bit embarrassing. At any rate, it would help getting through pompous, over-long movies like The Insider.

One must understand that if you are a member of the Oscar Academy, you get video screeners to watch of all the films up for nomination and nominated. Therefore, they can stop the tape, do their business, and come back to have not missed a thing. I assume this is how Insider ended up getting nominated for Best Picture of the year. Certainly it's a wonderful film with intriguing performances, but I feel it would have been better taken in short doses. It clocks in at nearly three hours, and that's just too damn long. I was squirming in my seat, not wanting to miss what happened next to Jeffery Wigand (played by the superb, Oscar-nominated Russell Crowe), but having an uncontrollable urge to just MOVE. I must have tried about thirty different positions in the seat, unable to get comfortable.

Another gripe I have with The Insider is its inane closeups of various parts of the human anatomy- Crowe's nose, Al Pacino's ear -as if that's supposed to give us a great insight into their character. It ended up looking like a bizarre educational film. I half expected to be shown pictures of the bloodstream and respiratory system.

I suppose Insider is a good movie; it's just excruciatingly long and dry, with too many ECUs and not enough of a pay-off at the end. You feel as though you've wasted three hours of your life that could have been better spent picking your nose or playing Mario Party. I can look on the bright side though: that creepy Pepsi girl with the crater-sized dimples is in it, but she manages to use her own voice the whole time. I knew she could do it!

Grade - C-

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