Who doesn’t enjoy going to a nursing home and listening to old people ramble incoherently about how life was better before ipods and how much they miss Jim Crow laws? Come to think of it, who doesn’t enjoy getting repeatedly jabbed in the stomach with a rusty nail? Well thanks to The Shawshank Redemption, both of these feelings can be yours for the low, low price of your sanity and will to live. It is unsurprising that this movie is based on a work by Stephen King, because the entire time I watched I was hoping demons would devour my soul, as the prospect of eternal damnation would be a relief compared to having to sit through this film ever again. The emotional equivalent of watching tectonic plates shift in slow motion, The Shawshank Redemption is packed with exciting action like monotonous rants, vapid stares, monotonous rants, and vapid stares set to classical music. Did I mention the monotonous rants? There are a lot of those.
- Tim Robbins celebrates being free of the torture of making this movie.
Morgan Freeman mumbles and bumbles through the movie, which is understandable considering that, at the age of 247, it’s difficult to stay awake, especially when he has to recite earth-shatteringly dull monologues every ten minutes. And Tim Robbins’ eyes are so glazed over it would take a jackhammer to break through, something I was hoping would happen during the movie. The rest of the characters are as two-dimensional as a piece of cardboard, and as interesting to watch. The Shawshank Redemption desperately wants to be emotionally manipulative garbage, but it just isn’t good enough to qualify, as it is impossible to care about these insipid characters. A vastly better film would have been watching Morgan Freeman have his tongue cut out, as it would have simultaneously solved two of the biggest problems: he would have talked less, and he would have shown any emotion. The only feeling that The Shawshank Redemption actually instilled in me was the desire to be brutally gang raped, as it couldn’t be a more horrible experience than watching this.
Posted by Tom Houseman 