This is a charming children’s movie, my friends, that scrubbed out every trace of Roald Dahl and put the American sensibility of 2023 in his place. Some parts of that sensibility are good. For example, the frontier mentality of a persevering individual is at the core of the movie. It’s like a Wild West flick but cute and for kids.
On the negative side, there are the now obligatory racial hangups as the movie populates the Europe of 120 years ago with crowds of African-Americans. No explanation is offered for how they got there in such numbers. As with the Claudine Gay story, the blacks chosen for the parts in the movie are extraordinarily talentless. The lead part is played by an unattractive, overweight girl with a speech impediment and the affect of a dead fish who should have never gone into acting. (No, I’m not being mean to a child. I’m expressing my opinion about a product I paid for). I’m sure a crowd of mega-talented black tweens was available but DEI doesn’t like brilliant non-white people. They spoil the savior fun.
Timothée Chalamet is delightful, as always. He’s the perfect example of why it’s dumb to equate very feminine masculinity with gayness. Not the bougiest of gays can affect Chalamet’s easy and natural femininity. And it’s only because he’s so girly that his on-screen friendship with a child doesn’t seem creepy. Just a touch of masculinity would have made the movie weird and uncomfortable.
We have such a terror of discussing things relating to “diversity” that many people believe that gay men are wannabe women. This is utterly stupid, as gay men don’t want to be women at all and are not particularly feminine. Some affect femininity but it’s a parody, and not usually a very kind one. The proportion of feminine men among gays is the same as among straights because you’ve got to have the physique for it.
Going back to Chalamet, the phenomenon of women being attracted to very feminine men has always existed and is historically well-documented. I’ve seen no equivalent of men being attracted to masculine women. Maybe Xena, the Warrior Princess had some male fans but this was not a character aimed at a female audience. I find the outrage of men against the fact that Chalamet is a sex symbol to be very funny. They’ve been reacting this way back in the 1550s, as well, and it just goes to show that for all our sexual liberation we have not advanced much in our understanding of sexuality. We swapped one bunch of prejudices for another and arrived in the same place.
I didn’t go to the movie for myself, obviously, but if I have to sit through a children’s film, I want to get something out of it. So I got these musings about sexuality.
Clarissa's Blog 
“As with the Claudine Gay story, the blacks chosen for the parts in the movie are extraordinarily talentless. The lead part is played by an unattractive, overweight girl with a speech impediment and the affect of a dead fish who should have never gone into acting. (No, I’m not being mean to a child. I’m expressing my opinion about a product I paid for). I’m sure a crowd of mega-talented black tweens was available but DEI doesn’t like brilliant non-white people. They spoil the savior fun.”
She was exceptionally bad, like terrible terrible. Her delivery was just so dry, no expression, nothing. Just bland all around. She did come off as a diversity hire, unfortunately. Fortunately, I think the other actors made up for it a bit, because they were great.
Slugworth (Peterson Joseph), on the other hand, I thought was great. I like his mannerisms, he knows how to act, and does plays the bad rich guy very well. I knew him from a British show called “Peep Show” where he was also stellar.
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Joseph is a great actor but there’s still no explanation how he, and all the rest of the African American crowd, got there in the first place.
And the girl, jeez. What a fail. Nobody doubts that black people can act. So why not choose a lead actress who is actually good?
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“why not choose a lead actress who is actually good?”
Two part answer:
first – leftists hate meritocracy (lots of complex reasons)
second – it’s part of the parade of humiliations for everyone else, hire someone kind of crappy instead of someone good and force everyone (on pain of being publicly ostracized) to pretend it’s great! I tell you…. great!!!!!
(for an older generation,modern leftists are the kid in the twilight zone forcing the public to exclaim what a good thing the latest abomination is or get sent to the cornfield).
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I understand why women are into feminine men (so am I!) but I will never understand the appeal of Chalamet. He exudes an anti-sexual energy (which does make him an ideal actor for a kids movie)
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And that, my friend, is even more proof that you are not a girl. :-))
Not that we needed any.
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It’s funny because on paper, he’s exactly my type
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I just went and looked him up so I could see what y’all are talking about (I am so out of the pop culture loop). And I’m with Demotrash: I can see why teenage girls might go gaga for him, but… meh. He’s got that soulless creepy-eyes thing going on. And I like men with beards.
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“Chalamet. He exudes an anti-sexual energy “
I barely know who Chalamet is and I’m sure I haven’t seen anything he’s in
A long time ago I read an article that discussed male idols of adolescent females. The type then was sometimes referred to as the “non-threatening male”.
The idea was that when girls are just entering (or in the midst of) puberty they’re discovering an attraction to boys but apprehensive (for good reason) but what appeals to them initially are male figures but with overt feminine traits. Partly this referred to physical apeparance, so a muscular look or facial or body(!) hair was too much to process. But it also referred to overall demeanor so adolescent girls can’t get enough of non-threatening boy idol staring dreamily into the camera, and pr about how sensitive he is. K-pop uses this a _lot_….
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