Cloverfield
Directed by Matt Reeves
Starring Lizzy Caplan, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman
Paramount Home Video
Release date: April 22, 2008

My complete misanthropy, combined with the large fictional beasts that make such a worldview fun occasionally, dictated that I would love Cloverfield on a complete instinctual level. And I do. I eye it with the same relish and love that vegans visualize the rotting corpse of Ted Nugent.

But after it came out, I noticed whining, bitching, pissing, and moaning from the people who saw it. Normally the rest of the world doesn’t agree with me, who liked Primeval and hated Juno, so the fact is that I wouldn’t come out on top with this one. But the complaints leveled at it were pretty angry for gripes so, well, asinine and stupid.

So instead of a conventional review, allow me to respond in kind and convince all of you who haven’t seen it to take the plunge and not listen to anybody who complains about it. Just imagine the following bold-faced statements in a nasal whine and you’ll get the right idea…

The camera’s too shaky!
- Really? The simulation of running is too much for your poor little stomach? That’s what it is, being as the movie is functioning as Hud’s (T.J. Miller) eyes, him looking through a camera and all. It’s nice to know how fat and stupid this country is getting when folks can’t handle SECOND-HAND FUCKING EXERCISE!

Cloverfield is 9/11 exploitation!
- Who better to broach a sensitive subject than me, the most insensitive man alive? When a giant monster is rampaging across a populated island, buildings are gonna fall down, and when they do, they don’t fall down in one fucking piece, you simpering jagoff! If it was presented as such in the movie, you’d have complained about that. There is no making you happy. Don’t breed.

They don’t know about New York geography and the batteries last too long!
- No, it does not take a blink of an eye to get from Spring Street to Columbus Circle. But Cloverfield takes place from the time a party is in full swing (in which they make great pains to show us a clock at 12:20 A.M.) to the time an evac helicopter lifts off at 6:00 A.M.). Being as there are cuts all over the film, it’s evidence that Hud (Gasp! Shock!) TURNED THE CAMERA OFF every once in a while to skim over the boring parts of the journey and conserve battery power! It’s an eighty-four minute movie set across six hours. It’s neither my fault, nor Cloverfield’s fault that YOUR dumb ass didn’t pay attention!

It’s just Dawson’s Creek with Godzilla in it!
-O h come on, this is the ULTIMATE blue-collar movie! Who hasn’t wanted to see some Type-A pretty boy Yuppie get eaten by something? Who hasn’t wanted to eat a Yuppie themselves..? Don’t judge me!

The monster isn’t iconic enough!
- This just mystifies me. I guess some folks were looking for a definite “something,” like how Godzilla is a lizard and King Kong is an ape. They’re not looking to be wowed or mystified, they just want another action figure to put on their shelves. Yet if it WAS just another textbook monster, they’d have complained about that, even though they won’t admit it. You’re weak-minded and easily amused. GET THE FUCK OFF MY INTERNET!

I also moonlight as a motivational speaker. But being as my editor urged me to go more in-depth on the special features of this DVD at the request of Paramount, gather ye round, children for…

-FEATURES ‘N’ SHIT-

- First there’s the commentary by director Matt Reeves. I hate commentaries because they either tell us things that we can find on the special features, or they provide an “official” view on the movie, for those of us that can’t think for ourselves. This commentary is no exception, but it’s coupled with the voice of Reeves, who sounds like the nicest Tech Support guy on God’s green earth. He told us about the improvisational acting technique, where his editor hid his cuts and THEN he helped me reformat my computer. THANKS, MISTER REEVES!

- There are alternate endings which feature… Wait, I’M NOT TELLING YOU WHAT THE ENDING IS!

- “Document 1-18-08: The Making of Cloverfield” shows us all the rigors of the actual shoot. Most of this very convincing Manhattan film was shot on the Paramount backlot in Los Angeles. Apparently, they’ll be shooting in shoeboxes next.

- The Deleted Scenes, like so many other deleted scenes on so many other DVDs, show why they were deleted in the first place: They were pointless and slowed the movie down. Cloverfield is only eighty-four minutes for the precise reason that they don’t need eighty-five.

- “I Saw It! It’s Alive! It’s Huge!” documents the conceptual art of Case Designate Cloverfield itself. I’m not going into this one in-depth, being as some of you haven’t seen the movie yet.

- “Cloverfield Visual Effects” is a painstaking look at how Double Negative and Tippett Studio made New York fall down and go boom. It’s standard issue, except that the women of Double Negative are actually kinda hot. And I know that has nothing to do with anything, but dammit anyway.

There’s another thing on here as well, a link to www.cloverfieldfiles.com that, well, isn’t up yet.

But the REAL unsung feature isn’t even in the menu, but rather the ten-minute orchestral overture by Michael Giacchino over the end credits, which is beyond awesome. I’ve gone on YouTube to look it up, only to find that it was recorded in noisy theaters on cell phones. Now there’s a listenable version. The cherry on top of a truly kick-ass popcorn movie.

***1/2 out of 4