Match [what is the] Point [?]

Last night I saw something which I just HAD to share with the group.

Now I've seen some bad movies in my time. I have sat through the remake of The Wicker Man, in which Nicolas Cage beats up a cult of lesbian beekeepers whilst dressed as a bear. The scars may never heal from enduring, as an impressionable teen, Heartbreak Hotel, in which a teenage Charlie Schlatter kidnaps Elvis in order to cheer up his mum (Elvis goes on to redecorate his house in the style of Graceland, and propel him to victory in the high school Battle of the Bands.) I have even seen the Mariah Carey vanity flick Glitter, notable for Ms Carey only being filmed from the 'good' side of her face, for the appearance of Max Beasley as a sexy xylophone player, and for both of them being acted off the screen by a cat. Last night, though, I saw the actual worst film I have ever seen in my life, and that film was Match Point.

This Woody Allen-penned and -directed thriller (OK and here we're running into trouble already. Would you rush to see a Michael Bay-penned and -directed romcom?) is set in the kind of London someone who has never been to England might come up with if his only source material was one Nancy Mitford novel and Wimbledon (the tournament, not the movie). All the characters have come straight out of the 1930s, with the exception of Paul Kaye, who briefly plays an estate agent from a 1970s Two Ronnies sketch. It is saying something when a Paul Kaye Two Ronnies cameo is the most up-to-date character in your 2005 movie. Back in the lead roles, Jonathan Rhys Meyers (apparently heavily medicated and struggling to produce even one convincing emotion from his arsenal of two or three) plays a retired tennis ace, allegedly a poor Irish boy but with an accent that could not just cut glass but create an entire crystal sculpture, who falls in love with (or seeks to financially exploit? unclear from JRM's "performance") sweet, dim but rich Emily Mortimer (hiding behind fringe, palpably embarrassed) but can't resist bonking Scarlet Johanssen (and at some point we should really open the debate: despite being sexy beyond previously existing human measurements, can she actually act? Those in favour: evidence please). If I tell you that his chat up line is "What's a beautiful American ping pong player doing mingling with the British upper classes?" you might get some idea, but you might also think that the line is supposed to be funny and IT ISN'T. IT'S A RED HOT SEXY CHAT UP SCENE. (Scarlet Johanssen has just beaten Mark Gatiss at ping pong, and one of the tangential pleasures of this unspeakable movie is seeing the parade of middling-league Brit stars who were SO EXCITED to be working with Woody Allen until they saw the script. So just as you think you might be suffocated into a coma of awfulness, it's Rupert Penry-Jones as a louche tennis pro! It's James Nesbitt as a mysteriously astute police officer!)

Tragic consequences ensue, but not before JRM has screwed ScarJo in a cornfield in the rain - SO English, just like all my summer holidays - and by candlelight, dousing her in baby oil as snow gently falls outside, and in an exciting bondage scenario where she blindfolds him with his tie and rips off all his clothes, pausing only to have a duscussion about the relative merits of cheese versus peanut butter as mousetrap bait with her elderly neighbour. At the time, you will be thinking WTF, little realising that the cheese vs peanut butter debate is of devastating importance later on. Sex with ScarJo begins to wane when she is transformed in the latter part of the film into a bitching, demanding harpy, constantly screeching WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LEAVE HER while drinking from an assortment of seltzer bottles that I got freakishly obsessed by. WHO DRINKS THAT MUCH SELTZER? Meanwhile, back home, Emily Mortimer is desperate to get knocked up, pointing out, not unreasonably, that she wants three kids while she's young, but that this should not be a problem for a man with such a powerful serve. Clearly, either the wife or the mistress must go. But which? And how? And what will the consequences be?

Gentle reader, let me tell you. The consequences will be that people will die, and after people have died they will reappear and have a philosophical conversation with JRM who will quote Sophocles at them, and at that point you will be hit by the realisation that OH MY GOD, THIS FILM IS A HOMAGE TO CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. THAT'S WHY JRM WAS READING CRIME AND PUNISHMENT AT THE BEGINNING. BECAUSE WOODY ALLEN THINKS THAT THE TWO ARE LARGELY THE SAME, EXCEPT THAT CRIME AND PUNISHMENT COULD HAVE BEEN IMPROVED BY RASKOLNIKOV BONING SCARLET JOHANSSEN IN A CORNFIELD IN THE RAIN.

In Joe Queenan's excellent odyssey into American pop culture 'America', he coins the term 'scheissenbedauern' to describe "the disappointment one feels when exposed to something that is not nearly as bad as one hoped it would be." Watching this movie is the opposite of that feeling. Match Point is a perfect storm of terrible, the kind of terrible which can only be achieved when a hugely talented writer director assembles a hugely talented cast - well OK, but it does have Penelope Wilton in it - to make a film based on one of the greatest novels ever written and IT IS RAINING SHIT.

Of course, I cannot recommend highly enough that you see it.