Winter's Tale Review

As of now, my most popular review was my Top 10 Worst Movies of 2013, and I can understand why that's the case. We're really fascinated with the idea of something bad existing. It makes you appreciate all of the good movies, games, or even music even more. My list last year included a variety of different kinds of bad, like boring bad, annoying bad, insultingly bad, and disappointing bad. One kind of bad that I failed to mention on that list was the complete fail kind of bad. The bad that does nothing right and just falls flat on its face in the first five minutes. Birdemic 2: The Resurrection was self aware badness, but Winter's Tale is a complete and utter failure of a movie. It sucks in every regard and has little to no redeeming values except for one thing: this movie is absolutely hilarious. 

The year is 1915, and Peter Lake is a thief that's trying to escape from his adoptive father Pearly Soames, who's in charge of an evil band of bowler hat wearing gangsters. Somehow, don't ask me why, he meets a magic horse that apparently is a guardian angel that's trying to fulfill a miracle for Peter, and that miracle is saving the life of a woman with consumption named Beverly. They fall in love, the angels intervene to kind of save her, and Pearly Soames is revealed to be a demon working for Lucifer. The movie is split into two halves that have barely anything to do with each other, and in retrospect only a few plot points from the first half of the movie are even mentioned again. For all intents and purposes, it's a love story for the first half, and God only knows what for the second half. 

But screw it, it's not the plot that's worth talking about, it's everything else that fails so spectacularly. In fact, screw doing a legitimate review, I'm changing this into a Top 5 list! If you want the short end, this movie sucks, but is so hilarious to watch because of its pure WTF level of fail. I'm spoiling the rest of the movie from here on out, so now prepare yourself for The Top 5 Biggest WTF Moments of Winter's Tale.

5) Anything with Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe is a comedian's gold mine for material. His terrible performance in Les Miserables might be a bit debatable (it isn't he was just awful all around), but no one can deny that he sucks here. Everything that the man does as Pearly Soames is too good to not to make jokes at. He can tell where Peter Lake is through a bunch of jewels on a tray. He wants to eat a pan fried owl. When he gets into a fight with Peter, he just headbutts him for a good minute instead of throwing a punch at him. Everything about him is just laughably awful.

But by far, the worst thing that Russell Crowe did in this movie that made me tear up with laughter was one scene fairly early on in the movie. He goes into a restaurant with a few of his cronies and orders some food. When the waiter tells Russell Crowe that they don't have any pan fried owls, Pearly just turns into a demon and kills him! Yup, just punched the waiter in the face and killed him. What makes it better is that he takes the waiter's blood and makes a brief and tiny little sketch on a napkin that's just a red smear with a line coming out of it and tells his men to "find this red haired woman!" What?!?! He makes a little smear, orders his men to find the woman in the smear, and then leaves. You wanna know what makes it better though? His cronies actually do find her! I just... suspension of disbelief doesn't even begin to cover this!

4) There's a horse on the roof!

This comes in a later part of the movie, but my oh my does it not make any sense. In a "climactic" chase scene in a NYC apartment building, Peter Lake and his new girlfriend from 2014 (just roll with it), are escaping from Pearly and his gang. As soon as they reach the top of the building, without warning, BAM, a white horse is there waiting for them! It was standing there minding its own business. 

Now, one may have several questions to this, with the first one being "How did a white horse get onto the roof of an NYC apartment building?" And that would be a very valid question. The answer? Magic! And the power of love! Now look at the pretty horse sprout wings and fly into the night! WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! It's even more bizarre when Peter says "I was wondering when you'd show up."

3) Will Smith is Lucifer

....Nope, that pretty much sums it up. Will Smith is Satan. Moving on.

2) Willa's alive?!?!

Okay, this requires a fair bit of explanation and spoiling a large chunk of the plot, so if you were even slightly interested in seeing this movie and experiencing the plot for yourself, turn away now. This and number 1 are complete spoilers for the movie, so be fully aware.

So, Willa Penn is the little sister of Beverly Penn, the woman that Peter loves. They meet in 1915 when Willa is about, say, 9 or 10 years old. At the end of the first half, there's a 100 year time skip where Peter bums around NYC after succumbing to amnesia. He slowly starts to get his memories back with the help of a writer named Abby that works with a newspaper called The Sun. Get this. After Peter remembers who Beverly was, Abby takes him to see the editor in chief of The Sun, who is little Willa Penn, now all grown up... to 110... and still the editor in chief of The Sun... and still alive... and still having perfect recollection of Peter...

Let's just get over the fact that she remembers who Peter is after 100 years. The much better question is, HOW THE HELL IS SHE STILL ALIVE??? Okay, I can understand a person living to 110, because there are people who can do that, but can you say that those people are healthy, in charge of giant corporations, and look 40 years younger than they should be? No! No you can't. The fact that she's still alive after 100 years, and in charge of the newspaper company that Peter happens to go to is just impossible. How someone wrote this with a straight face is beyond me. But it's not the worst moment of the movie. The moment where I literally went and called it quits on the movie and gave up all hope that this would ever be a good movie. 

1) Being f***ed to death/ flying into space

I couldn't decide between these two parts honestly, but they share similar faults. Both are endings to each half of the movie, the former being for the first half and the latter the second one. That, and both moments want you to be emotionally moved by what you're seeing. Instead, I was laughing out loud at the screen.

For the first one, after Peter and Beverly have had sex for the first time in her life, her consumption kicks in and immediately after she has sex with him, she dies right there. After orgasm and all. Just dead. Looking right at him too. Sad? In a way, yes. But it loses all impact and sadness as soon as you realize that she was literally sexed to death. His penis killed her. That's gotta be a good story for her when she goes into the afterlife. "How did you die?" "A guy f***ed me to death" "Classy!"

As for the second one, at the very end of the movie, when Peter defeats Pearly and saves a girl with cancer, he and his horse decide that they've done enough good in the world, and proceed to fly into space. Peter just gets on the horse, and they fly into space to be with the stars. I can only say how stupid this movie is so many times, but that takes the cake. They fly into space at the end of this magical love story. I think the writers have maybe had a bit too much cocaine during the writing process and no one wanted to tell them just how insane the script was. 

Winter's Tale is just awful, but a beautiful kind of awful. It's the same kind of awful as watching Breaking Dawn: Part 2; it's terrible to watch and you can't believe that people thought it was a good idea, but it's too much fun to hate it. That doesn't excuse how awful the movie is, but it doesn't give me a burning hatred in my stomach unlike, say, Identity Thief. Winter's Tale is a mess of a movie in all sense of the word, but it fails so majestically that I actually would recommend it for those that have morbid curiosity. Hell, I didn't even mention the other stupid moments in this movie that made me question all forms of reality and sanity like how the horse is actually a dog. I give Winter's Tale an insanely benevolent 2 out of 5, if only because it's too inept to hate unequivocally. 

This was written by the same guy that wrote Batman & Robin. That is all.