A Fake "Total Recall" Review :)

    You learn a lot about writing and different styles in which you can write as a blogger, this blog for instance has a variation of topics ranging from very serious to silly to movie reviews to displaying good music from an age long forgotten, after a while the flow of each article becomes second nature and something interesting occurs, you gain the ability to write your way through articles that you know nothing about, I've never done this and though the temptation is there I feel like it would be a waste of anyone's time to read me write about something I know nothing about, which brings us to today's topic. Well here's the truth, I had a lot on my mind yesterday and needed some time with friends so I did not get to watch "Total Recall" as originally intended and I won't be able to give you a proper review of the movie here, but instead I will show you the steps one would have to take in order to write a blind review of this flick, basically a bs/fake review, following this logic you can write you own awesome review and never leave your seat, I find this to be unorthodox but hey, I'm not everyone right?

    The first step in writing a good review is being familiar with the actors within a movie and the crew in charge of the movie, this will tell a lot about the movie already (IMDB is your friend). Every actor and director has an m.o., they have a pattern which they always follow and for the most part will always do. Very rarely do we see a lower class actor giving us a pro's performance, as in there is no way that Colin Farrell will ever give us a Gary Oldman performance on the big screen, it's never been done and will never be done. This tells us a lot about the flick already, if you have seen any Colin Farrell movie then you know that Colin is a fun actor to watch but he's not the best actor in the world, every movie he's in seems fake somehow like something is missing, like no matter what he does it always feels like he's playing the same character in a bad movie, thus we can expect the same type of performance from him here.

     Jessica Biel is beautiful no doubt but she's also not the best in show, she's pretty to look at but she's not the best female actress out there, she's no Scarlett Johansson, but she does get the job done, so we can expect her to do alright in this flick, kind of a "eh" performance, so her and Colin together already make this movie lean towards the "fun but not great" side. Kate Beckinsale is the wild card here, she's fantastic, a true star and a great action movie actress who is not only radiant but lovable, as in most people just can't help but to love her, she's awesome. Anyway, Kate is big into Sci Fi stuff so we know what to expect from her, probably another "Underworld" performance which is a good thing really, "Underworld" was great, so maybe she'll be the saving grace to this movie, in a scale from 1 to 10 the movie without her would be leaning to a 4 right now but with her we're looking at a 6.

     Before we go to the director let's keep in mind that this is a reboot as well, by watching the original movie you already basically know the full story before going to watch the new one, even if he changed a lot of stuff the movie will basically have the same flow throughout it, this helps us in being able to write about the movie even though you haven't seen the new one for you'll know some elements of the first movie that will be in the reboot, little details that would only be known to someone that has seen the movie were in the original so taking a bet and placing some of those elements in your review will give it some legitimacy, when doing this though look to the previews to find the elements that are the same and go from there, that would be the best way to go about it. K, on to the director.

    Len Wiseman  has pretty much one movie under his belt, well one movie franchise I guess, "Underworld", the guy wrote the five movies and the video game, which means that he's a good writer and he knows a good bit about directing. Taking on a big project like this one might be difficult for him though, it's a big project with tons of money and more well known actors that require more "attention" then his previous films, plus it's a reboot so that's even harder. With Len placed in the scene the movie, in my mind, would jump from a 6 to a 7, this is only the first step out of four though (one being watching the original and previews for the new one) keep that in mind before writing anything. Now that you basically have a good feel for the movie the part comes where you put the already formed theories in your head against already existing reviews, the core thing here is that you won't be copying a review, plagiarism is repulsive, but you'll be putting their perspective as a rival to yours, take some of the good points and agree with them but disagree with other points as well, here's an example, watch this review and then we'll talk.

    So our buddy Jim here thought the movie was good but not impressive, he disagreed with us on Colin and feels that he was the best in the movie and that Kate was a far second in show, IGN gave the movie a 6/10, which is exactly where we had the movie pegged to begin with, in order to not cheat I didn't watch the review prior to writing this whole post just to prove that a blind speculation is possible, it's tough but it is possible. Anyway, so here's your choice now, you can either write a review praising this movie and give it no more than an 8 or you can write a negative review and go no lower than a 4, that's a good scale to go by cause even though this movie wasn't a fantastic flick it also wasn't a horrible one, a score between 4 and 8 would be adequate. So now you can just spend a paragraph or two talking about the actors and third one praising the director, the fourth paragraph would be where you would compare this new movie with the old one and in the last paragraph give your little two cents, like "I really enjoyed this movie it was entertaining to boot, but in the end it's just not a blockbuster", use big words and people will generally just think you're legit, make sure to include some pictures from movie as well, pics are always a good choice.

    And there you have it, this is how one would write a good review about a movie you had not previously watched, congratulations you now can deceive the masses and get more pageviews in the process. I don't actually recommend this, I think it's a bit unethical but I get tired of reading bad blind reviews, now you know how to properly do it, go out there and write gold. For aspiring writers out there though this might be a fun exercise, just to see if you can do it, it'll help with your writing for sure and it's a challenge, writing blind is always a challenge, just include something like "J/k I didn't watch the movie, gotcha :)", I have found that if you add a smiley face in the end of a sentence people are more prone to not be angry, you could text something like "you look ugly today :)" and get away with it because of the smiley face, it doesn't apply to all situations but it's a random observation I've recently made, just sharing some knowledge.

    Hey, I hope your week was good and that this coming weekend will be a restful one for you, if you watch "Total Recall" you might regret it, but if you don't watch "Total Recall" you might also regret it, watch it or don't watch it and you might regret it, so do whatever you feel like and have a blast this weekend.

  Love from your humble blogger,