Year: 2008

  • The Onion Movie (2008)

    The Onion Movie (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2008) After years of being hidden on studio shelves, the long-rumored The Onion Movie has finally been quietly released on DVD and the final result is… uneven. Blame the structure of the film for some of the problems: The screenwriters have chosen to build the movie as a series of sketches loosely held together by a dull story about corporate interference at a news network. (The ending, which tries to bring it all together, is far too long for its own good.) Some sketches are better, and some of them aren’t (the whole “rape mystery party”, for instance, is a long resounding thud.) But I suspect that the fault is also due to the source material: The Onion’s usual shtick is to present the punchline first in the headline, then work out its implications in the following article. This works in a scannable medium like text, but it’s deadly on-screen. Here, whole sequences drag on and on until the final joke: The “Wizards and Warlords” segment is particularly awful in this regard. It’s too bad, really, because the production values of the film are surprisingly good and a lot of the material does work –including a slickly-produced cute/raunchy take-off on Britney Spears which, along with the Rodney Dangerfield cameo, shows the late-2003 origins of the film. Like its source material, the film isn’t afraid to let loose with profanity, violence and glimpses of graphic gay sex: This is one of those movies that really tries to offend everyone. (Including movie reviewers, in amusing self-referential segments.) It’s a bit of a problem that the “deleted scenes” on the DVD are just as good, or bad, as the rest of the film. Otherwise, well, it’s a curious rental for those who already like The Onion. And frankly, it’s still far better than stuff like Epic Movie.

  • Kung Fu Panda (2008)

    Kung Fu Panda (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2008) Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about this film is what’s missing from it: Pop-culture references. As PDI/Dreamworks progresses beyond the Shrek franchise, its animated films are becoming more universal and less rooted in their own place and time. Kung Fu Panda isn’t there yet (the first few moments of Jack Black’s “Awesome!”-heavy dialog are jarring), but it’s an improvement over past PDI films, and the result is generally pleasant. The script includes quite a few nods to fanboy wish-fulfillment (much like the recent The Forbidden Kingdom, this film proves that kung-fu has now reached referential mainstream consciousness) and if Black’s deliberately-irritating shtick as a lovable doofus is starting to wear thin, there are a few good moments in this film. Sadly, the film focuses too much on the titular panda and not enough on the other characters, some of whom are stunt-cast with famous voices… that barely get more than five lines and twice as many grunts. (Seriously: did Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan spend more than half a day in the studio?) The best sequences involve training-by-dumplings, a prison escape, a fabulous-five bridge fight and a final brawl that leave no buildings unscathed. In the background, the quality of the CGI is spectacular enough to pass unnoticed. Not that the film will pause long enough to let anyone appreciate the scenery. Kung Fu Panda may be too blunt and simple to be transcendent like Pixar’s features, but it’s good enough for lazy summer evenings.

  • The Incredible Hulk (2008)

    The Incredible Hulk (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2008) The good news are that this “reboot” is much better than the dull yet repellent Ang Lee 2003 film. Of course, that’s a low bar, and the best that this one can do is to score near “better-than-average”. Edward Norton may or may not be better than Eric Bana, but his Bruce Banner is compelling, and in fact more interesting than The Hulk itself. Much like Iron Man (also produced directly by Marvel rather than licensed to others), The Incredible Hulk‘s main strength is its thorough knowledge of the character and its familiarity with the basics. As a result, we skip past the whole origin story in an efficient credit sequence, then pick up later on with a more interesting plot about keeping things under control (or not). The Brazilian favelas make for fantastic scenery that set the tone for a well-controlled, well-delivered experience despite occasional blips of confusion caused by enthusiastic over-editing. (The tie-in novel reportedly covers the missing bits.) The action scenes, ironically, are where the film breaks down most visibly: They go on for a while, but always seem to end too-quickly, without much by way of resolution or built-up climax. But having mastered the art of delivering a satisfying Hulk film, Marvel may want to look at making up something that goes beyond that: Since “the cure” would destroy the character, it’s obvious that this is a goal that will always be frustrated. This particular instance of The Incredible Hulk may be okay, but it doesn’t go beyond that. At least it blurs memories of the previous attempt at the character, and sets up a next one.

  • The Happening (2008)

    The Happening (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2008) Sometimes, one has to step back and admit error. But after Lady In The Water and the mess that is The Happening, there is not shame in saying that M. Night Shyamalan has blown whatever credibility he had accumulated so far as a writer/director. As a writer, everything has been downhill since Unbreakable. As a director, it’s been a steady decline since The Village. With The Happening, Shyamalan takes his self-importance and applies it to a silly conceit, burdening a B-Movie with A-level pretentiousness. The result is hilarious, but not in a good way: There’s only so much you can do with ominous shots of wind blowing through trees: “Oh no! The trees are going to kill someone else!” Trite, dumb, predictable and empty, The Happening‘s plot isn’t nearly as flawed as its individual scenes: Characters never react like human beings (Watch Mark Wahlberg do science!) and never take rational decisions –even granted that this is the point. Even my growing crush for Zooey Deschanel and her mesmerizing big blue eyes aren’t enough to hypnotize me into liking this film. The Happening is like an endurance contest between a power-mad director convinced of his brilliance and an audience looking for a good time. Instead, we get an unconvincing premise, awful staging (Those suicides? Funny rather than creepy) and insipid dialog voiced by incompetently-directed actors capable of far better. Intensely predictable (I defy you not to think “uh, oh, someone’s going to get shot!” before its happens) this is one of those movies that let you wonder how it ever got made without adult supervision. In almost any other hands, it might have been interesting (the idea of humans forced to separate in smaller and smaller groups, if followed rigorously, could have been narrative dynamite). But this is M. Night Shyalaman we’re talking about, someone who’s still coasting on long-gone fumes and wasted opportunities.

  • Neuropath, Scott Bakker

    Neuropath, Scott Bakker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Penguin Canada, 2008, 306 pages, C$26.00 tpb, ISBN 978-0-14-316871-3

    Scott Bakker’s Neuropath is a heck of a book despite not being much of a novel. Despite being marketed as a futuristic thriller in which a psychologist is asked to fight a serial killer, it’s really more of an argument, a game between the author and the reader. It’s an attempt to undermine the very foundations of the thriller, to deny the very possibility of a free agent in a genre that is predicated on an active protagonist. I admire it a lot despite not caring for it very much as a thriller.

    The first fifty pages are as good as the first few pages of a thriller ever get: Thomas Bible is a psychologist, a teacher and a divorced man trying to make the world better from his children. But everything changes once FBI agents set foot in his office one August morning: They want his help in tracking down a particularly sadistic serial killer who just happens to be Tom’s best friend.

    The twist here is central to Neuropath‘s central theme: Our serial killer knows enough about neurology and technology to hack into his victim’s brain and make them kill themselves with glee. But there’s more, because Tom knows that his friend Neil is not killing other people as much as he’s proving an ongoing argument about the nature of consciousness: For someone convinced that consciousness is an illusion, there can be no guilt in murder. And Tom is the audience for the demonstration.

    If it seems like an intriguing justification laid atop a fairly standard thriller plot, you’re not too far off from the novel’s intent. Bakker is using the latest real-world discoveries in the field of neurology to argue about whether consciousness really exists as a decision-maker, or if it’s rather a set of confabulation and justifications for a set of unconscious behavior. As disturbing as it may sounds, the more we understand about the inner working of the brain, the less consciousness-as-driver seems likely. Neuropath is an attempt to work out the consequences of such a conclusion, and apply them to the framework of a serial killer mystery.

    For the seasoned thriller reader, Neuropath occasionally seems to be doing everything wrong. The novel lathers repetitive exposition sequences, stops dead in its track in-between plot beats, features a main character who can’t be called a protagonist by sheer lack of initiative and reaches a climax thanks to the actions of third parties. Tom has to pop pills to alter his brain chemistry so that he can act, and even that can’t help him but being a witness to the novel’s final moments. You really have to look at the novel at a certain angle in order to appreciate all the genre-tweaking that Bakker does.

    Some flaws remains unforgivable no matter how pernicious the rest of the novel wants to be: Neuropath‘s rhythm stops dead between its first third and last half. The females characters tend to have clichéd plot functions. Much of the exposition repeats itself. The ending seems overly abrupt, missing an extra-sarcastic epilogue. In his rush to overturn the conventions of the thriller genre, Bakker seems to forget that they exist because they work, and that shooting them down carries its own price.

    My suspicion (and hope) is that the novel will find its audience not among the beach readers looking for another crime thriller, but with seasoned critical readers with a good understanding of genre protocols. The philosophical argument carried by the novel is more interesting that the story it tells, and that may not, indeed, appeal to everyone.

    Such is Neuropath: a complex, not entirely comfortable book whose weaknesses aren’t nearly as damaging as you may think, and in fact form part of the novel’s appeal. It may not work all that well as a thriller for various reasons (intentional and unintentional, conscious or unconscious), but I have a hunch that once I’ll tally up my most memorable books of 2008, this one is going to rank fairly high despite its flaws.

    [September 2008: No review of Neuropath should exist without at least a glance at Peter Watts’ Blindsight and a few stories such as Daryl Gregory’s “Second Person, Present Tense”: This “neuropunk” sub-genre of science-fiction is doing some pretty interesting things with the latest research in consciousness, clawing back further and further the notion of free agency and active consciousness. I predict a lot of buzzing around these areas over the next few years.]

  • Get Smart (2008)

    Get Smart (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2008) Spy/Comedy hybrids usually have more potential than success and this film is no exception to the rule. While several of the conceits from the “Get Smart” TV series are still ingenious, their incarnation here never seems to be exploited to its fullest extent. Steve Carrel is irreproachable as Maxwell Smart, presenting an endearing mixture of competence and inexperience. Anne Hathaway, surprisingly enough, isn’t as charming: her character is quicker to become abusive than exasperated, and despite the in-story justification for her false youthfulness, there’s seldom a sense that she’s got the maturity required for that type of character. The rest of the plot isn’t much better than adequate. The nonsense about weapons of mass destruction is too pedestrian to fit in the humorous premise, and indeed the film struggles to find comedy in situations that should be ripe for it. The most disappointing aspect of this big-budget movie remake is the pedestrian dialog, which rarely rises above the strictly perfunctory. As you may expect, the action sequences play better than anything else (well, except Alan Alda, who’s a riot no matter what he does) but the problem here is that action sequences are cheap and plentiful, while Get Smart most definitely isn’t. While the film is not a disaster, it is a disappointment in how it suggests intriguing possibilities and then fails to follow them up.

  • Friday Night Lights (2004)

    Friday Night Lights (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2008) I may not know or care much about football, but this adaptation of the now-classic Buzz Bissinger book is a solid hit even if it glosses over much of what made the original so interesting. Forget about the sociology of football-mad Odessa, Texas and focus on the raw energy of this tale of high-school players being raised to demigod status: Director Peter Berg delivers a film that sizzles with pseudo-documentary energy, using hand-held camera and terrific editing to deliver an experience that keeps us engrossed throughout. Some of the material created to suit the dramatic needs of the film can feel overdone, but fans of the book will recognize little details, characters and incidents that would have been excised had the book been adapted by less-passionate hands. The performances from the ensemble cast are all remarkably good, from Derek Luke’s overconfident athlete to Billy Bob Thornton’s pivotal coach, steady under terrible pressure. The sheer cinematographic density of the first half-hour is mesmerizing, daring us to follow along or sink in the process. And even football morons like me will be swept along by the film’s final act. I’m not even interested in picking apart the film for what it doesn’t include from the book: this is as good as adaptations ever get, leveraging the strengths of a medium against the things it cannot faithfully represent. On the DVD, don’t miss the informative (if occasionally defensive) director’s commentary, or the where-are-they-now featurettes.

  • Enchanted (2007)

    Enchanted (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2008) I missed this in theaters, and shame on me: There is some really clever stuff in this modern retelling of the usual Disney fare. It starts in classic Disney-fairlytale flat 2-D animation, where a princess is exiled to real-world New York. Then things get more interesting as the fairytale idealism of the princess (a perfect, and I do meant perfect, Amy Adams) clashes with the grim (but not-too-grim) practicalities of the big city. The tension here is made even more interesting by the idea that this is a Disney film commenting upon an entire in-house tradition. Nobody will be surprised to find out that idealism ultimately wins over even the lead skeptic (a rather good Patrick Dempsey) by way of sheer cuteness, dragon-fighting and a number of snappy musical numbers (two of which, “Happy Working Song” and “That’s How You Know”, stick in mind well after the end credits). As a family film it sometimes loses itself in cute-animals shenanigans, obvious plot-points, overacting and some idiot-plotting. But there are enough clever sequences, smarts details and genre-aware commentary to make it seem interesting even to those who fall outside the “family” audience. Better yet: if wouldn’t have been as good had it come from another studio than Disney.

  • Death Weekend (1976)

    Death Weekend (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2008) Pure exploitation film featuring a young woman facing off against one vapid playboy and four disturbed low-lives. It starts promisingly enough, with a surprisingly well-edited racing duel through Ontario dirt roads. It sets up its characters efficiently enough despite the limits of its budget, and provides an intriguing (if well-worn) situation as the hoodlums track down playboy and woman for a weekend of home invasion violence. But the film soon loses control over its own pacing shortly thereafter, as the menace of the invaders is either played for laughs, or never taken seriously by the so-called heroes. Anyone with half a brain would have made attempts to escape: our protagonists stay inert, up to a point where the playboy loses whatever lingering sympathy he might have deserved. It’s a very long second act, and very little happens during the build-up. After that, well, it’s pure familiar stuff: physical assault, followed by utter retribution by the heroine. It ends with a nauseating bit of Stockholm-syndrome flashback. Not much to see here, even by the standards of exploitation cinema.

  • Wanted, Mark Millar and J.G. Jones

    Wanted, Mark Millar and J.G. Jones

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Top Cow, 2008, 192 pages, C$19.99 tpb, ISBN 978-1-58240-497-4

    This is not your usual comic-book super-hero miniseries.

    Mark Millar has something else in mind. He wants to show you a world where the super-villains have won. He wants to riff off Fight Club and The Matrix in a super-heroic context. He wants to make you cheer for an utterly amoral loser physically modeled after Eminem. He wants to take your money and make fun of you. (Not you, casual reader, but you, comic fanboy with a serious $40-dollar-a-week habit at the comic-book shop.)

    It starts where its readers live, with a lead character who has already been destroyed by modern life: Wesley Gibson is a young man with a steady job and a girlfriend, but both of those things are a farce: his job is an abusive dead-end cubicle nightmare, while his girlfriend is having an affair with his best friend –along others. Wesley’s a hypochondriac, suffers from panic attacks, and doesn’t seem to have any worthwhile hobbies beyond complaining about himself. But a few hyper-violent pages later, things change: A mysterious woman named Fox (whose appearance is clearly modeled after Halle Berry) tells him that he’s the son of a freshly-slain master assassin, and that an all-powerful organization wants him to continue the family legacy. After casually slaying most of a diner in order to prove her claims of legal impunity, she takes Wesley to the organization’s headquarters where he learns that his panic attacks are merely the undisciplined manifestation of an incredible talent for concentration. One issue later, he’s a master assassin (“The Killer”) learning how super-villains have destroyed all super-heroes and rewritten the history of the world to the one you learned in school. Another issue later, and The Killer is embroiled in a war between the last remaining super-villains, a war that claimed his father and may destroy him.

    Wanted doesn’t deal in niceties. It just takes five pages before the first hyper-graphic death. One super-villain has scatological powers. Foul language is pervasive. Fox (and eventually Wesley) have no moral compunction about killing innocents who annoy them. (In describing his training hit-list, Wesley enumerates: “My old geography teacher. The girl next door, that guy across the street who kicked my ass for scratching his old Mustang… The chick who said no when I asked her to a movie, that guy who set his dog on me… My bank manager, my landlord, that Hispanic guy in the record store with the attitude…” The only surprise is that he doesn’t kill his old girlfriend, but there’s a plot reason for that.) Small wonder if the Hollywood movie adaptation made it to screens shortly after the trade paperback, even without the super-villains.

    For a while, it looks like a slickly-produced but irredeemable exercise in pointless nihilism. (Not every Fight Club wannabe understands Palahniuk’s point.) A guilty joy to read, sure. Anything more, though?

    But every review of Wanted mentions the last two pages of the series with good reason: It’s as clear a deconstruction of comic-book fanboyishness as can be printed. It’s a slap in the face of everyone who’s been swept away in the story. In many ways, it’s the series’ chaotic moral center, its final attempt at redemption after an utterly amoral story meant to stroke readers in the most indulging ways possible. It’s what raises Wanted from a mildly interesting power fantasy to a pernicious commentary on such fantasies. [July 2008: And, typically, it’s the only part of the book that the movie adaptation gets completely wrong, transforming bone-cutting sarcasm into crowd-pleasing bravado.]

    It’s that ending that warrants a look at Wanted for anyone who falls outside the familiar stereotype of the comics fanboy. Millar may or may not have pasted a quick cheap tag to a pandering ultra-violent story, but there’s no denying that it radically changes the impression left by the book for the better. And if you’ve seen the film… you haven’t seen anything yet.

  • DOA: Dead Or Alive (2006)

    DOA: Dead Or Alive (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2008) Bikinisploitation, anyone? As excuses go to show bikini-clad good-looking young women doing martial arts scenes, this film is as good as it needs to be: The visuals are slick, the action scenes are fun, the plot reaches a decent clever/dumb balance. It’s based on a series of video games (including a bouncy-bouncy volleyball spin-off that does make it in the film), but you don’t need to be a gamer to appreciate the way the film consciously goes for PG-13 titillation. No one bleeds, no one shows more skin than a bikini allows, everyone gets to throw a few kung-fu kicks (which must be tougher than you think in bare feet) and there’s little left to do but cheer in bemused satisfaction. The featured actresses aren’t all equally compelling (Devon Aoki: Yes. Generic blondes? No.) but at least director Cory Yuen manages to keep things hopping with dynamic editing, relatively rapid fight sequences and a few beautiful shots here and there. Here’s a safe prediction if you happen to see this film with a group: The guys will like it and the girls will be bored.

  • Black Sheep (2006)

    Black Sheep (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2008) In the venerable genre of “horror movies when seemingly-innocuous things kill people”, this isn’t one of the bad ones: The idea of sheep turning into carnivorous monsters has a kick to it, and the New Zealand team putting it all together has enough cleverness to use the concept to its fullest extent. It’s not revolutionary, particularly funny or scary, but it goes through all of the right motions at a decent rhythm. The leads are sympathetic enough, the gore is suitably over-the-top and the fun just keeps on piling up. It could have been funnier or slicker (we’re still far away from Shaun Of The Dead or Tremors) but there really isn’t much more to say about it: Killer sheep, decent production values and enough fun for any gore-hound.

  • Bandidas (2006)

    Bandidas (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2008) Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek as late-19th-century Mexican outlaws: Can this film get any better? More importantly: does it even matter? This isn’t high art: as a Zorro-like feature, this film is equally underwhelming when it comes to comedy and action: There is a lot of both, but it rarely rises above the most obvious material. Luc Besson’s hand in the script is instantly recognizable whenever the two lead heroines quarrel over how to kiss the nearest unavailable guy, severely undercutting whatever pro-feminist message the films might have wanted to carry. The action is brief and ordinary (save for a bravura shot late in the film that tries to show a complicated sequence of events in one-take slow motion), though it may not matter as much as you think given then film’s reliance on silly capers rather than gun-slinging action. Fortunately, Bandidas itself is generally enjoyable: although practically released straight-to-video in North America, the film is more enjoyable than many blockbusters, and often prettier. Leaving aside the hotness of the lead actresses, there is some fantastic cinematography here, with wide sweeping shots of the Mexican countryside and a crisp, fun-filled feel to the images captured by the camera. Though some scenes could have been tightened (especially during the generic, imposed first act), the film moves in high gear once the protagonists go naughty and the rest is decent, reasonably enjoyable entertainment. As far as B-movies go, this is a solid rental choice… especially if the very thought of Cruz and Hayek tussling around in frilly underthings is enough to perk your, er, interest.

  • Strip Tease, Carl Hiaasen

    Strip Tease, Carl Hiaasen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1993 (1996 reprint), 418 pages, C$8.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60066-0

    Submitted for your consideration: the strange idea that some good authors are worth reviewing once but not twice.

    It’s a concept that touches upon the traditional definition of a hack: a professional writer who can be counted upon to deliver what’s expected. Less-kind definitions of “hack” focus on the mercenary intent of the writer as if it necessarily necessarily excluded any quality from the resulting work —but genre readers know better than that. Some professionals quickly learn that good formulas work consistently, leading to writers-as-brand names like Clive Cussler. The experience of reading their books remains consistent from one to the other: if it’s a thrill to read the first one and determine what makes it different from the rest of genre fiction, there’s little to say afterwards, especially in series where real change is kept to a minimum. (Cussler’s last few novels have been worth a review in part because he has started tinkering with his usual approach.) I find myself unable to review Robert B. Parke’s Spenser novels, for instance, even if I absolutely love them: they deliver exactly the same experience all the time: There’s little left to say except “Wonderful, another success in a long series.” In my just-finished quest to review all of Michael Connelly’s fiction at a pace of one novel per month, I often ran out of things to say beyond repeating Connelly’s strengths and seeing how the novels linked to previous books.

    Which generally brings us to Carl Hiaasen’s particular brand of comic crime fiction in that I have never been disappointed by his books, but it’s hard to find anything distinctive to say once a first review has been written. His madcap novels of silly South Florida crimes each feature entirely different plots, generally new characters and strange new Floridian sub-cultures, but they all share a similar feel. All can boast of a large cast of characters, criss-crossing plotting, limpid writing and a light atmosphere nonetheless leading to tense moments. Hiaasen has found a winning formula, and there’s little reason for him to deviate from it. That makes him an utterly dependable authors, and one who deserves a massive monthly back-catalog reading project. Alas, it also makes it almost impossible to review Hiaasen on a monthly basis: There’s a limit to how much space a plot summary can take when the critical content of the review remains the same.

    If I make an exception for Strip Tease, it’s that I haven’t reviewed Hiaasen in years, and I wanted to flag down why that was so. Furthermore, Strip Tease remains to this day the only one of Hiaasen’s non-juvenile crime novels to have been adapted to big screen. I never saw the 1996 film STRIPTEASE, but I can still remember the public titillation at the idea of then-hot Demi Moore playing the lead exotic dancer. Never mind that the movie was a critical flop and a commercial under-achiever: It’s probably still the only Hiaasen title that the vast public can recognize. (“Hey, look, there’s Demi Moore’s on the cover!”) I suppose that there’s something to be written about how Hiaasen’s fine-tuned style doesn’t lend itself to a flat film adaptation, but that will wait until I get to see the film.

    As for the book itself, well, it’s all you’d expect from a Hiaasen novel: Decent characters (including a single mom strip-teasing to support herself and her daughter) faced against antagonists both evil and stupid, complex plotting, wonderful prose style, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the less glamorous side of Florida life, moments of well-executed tension, progressive politics and an epilogue that wraps up everything. No disappointment here: Just a good solid dark comedy. Read one Hiaasen, and that will be enough to tell you if you are likely to love the other ones. (You can even read them out of order.)

    So don’t mind me as I spend the next few months reading through the entirety of Hiaasen’s work to date. Just don’t be surprised if I somehow don’t manage to review every single one of those books. Or if I end up discussing other things than the book when I do.

  • The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon

    The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 2007, 414 pages, C$33.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-00-714982-7

    This book’s a mystery to me.

    Yes, I know it’s a genre mystery: Stories of policemen investigating murders can’t be anything else, even when they take place in an alternate reality where a Jewish state was established in Alaska at the end of the forties. Think of elements of police mysteries, and they’re in the book: the down-on-his-luck investigator, the victim, the mob, the clues, the investigations, the romantic complications… Michael Chabon has written a good solid piece of crime fiction, and that part’s no mystery. And if that’s not enough, there’s bits of fantasy, thriller, science-fiction and romance here and there.

    No, what really grabs me as I finish the novel is how little I cared for it even as I can recognize all of the elements that usually compel me. To put it bluntly, it took me weeks to finish the book. I never felt any desire to pick it up, except for the duty to finish it. Even as I noticed clever bits, they never gave me a reason to be involved with the story. I now read other reviews, and they all seem to be talking about a much better book, even when I can vouch for their factual exactitude. (And that’s why you should really look elsewhere if you’re hoping for a meticulous and dispassionate analysis of the novel’s characteristics.)

    From afar, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union has it all: Murder mysteries? Alternate histories? Geopolitical implications? Bring them on! The idea of an Alaskan Jewish territory is novel enough to be intriguing, and the mechanics of setting a mystery in an exotic settings has worked for other writers from Tony Hillerman on down. Even the Wikipedia summary of the book has me recalling neat moments and telling details.

    But the reality of reading the book is different. Part of it is the Yiddish question. It may seem strange to criticize a book for the density of its imagined cultural references when I’m an enthusiastic graduate from the school of SF With Weird Aliens, but the key is that the Yiddish culture of the book isn’t that imagined. Every page of the novel carried along the sound of specific references whooshing over my gentile head. Every. Single. Page.

    Worse: a lot of the in-jokes and clever references were not decipherable from the text itself, as is usual from wholly-imagined alien cultures. Lack of knowledge is a terrible and difficult thing to admit, but so I must confess for you to understand why I didn’t get from The Yiddish Policemen’s Union the charge that other readers seems to have enjoyed. As I (weakly) edit this review, the novel (a mainstream bestseller) has won the Sidewise, Nebula, Locus and Hugo Awards: an rare coup that suggests that a lot of people actually loved the novel. (Whether it deserves any of the “best science-fiction novel of the year” accolades is another bloody debate for another time.)

    So, hey, I report and you make up your own mind.

    This being said, I’ve got the feeling that this is a book that I may enjoy a lot more the second time around, probably shortly after the movie inevitably makes its way to theaters. That’s the great thing about objectively good books that don’t quite click: there’s always another chance to change our minds.