The first time I saw this...well, I wanted to like it. I had rented it probably as soon as it came out on VHS. I hadn't read a Spawn comic but knew one thing, he was a badass and a lot of people liked the comics. I had high hopes. Boy, was I disappointed. Now as the time has passed and I've gotten older, I've tried to like it for different reasons. For the campy aspect of it, for Leguizamo's part, for anything...I still don't.
The effects are what they are, and you can't do much with a budget too low for your aspirations when it comes to a work like this. As it is, the suit and cape look pretty good, but it seems like those are the only things that any money were spent on. However, that is the least of my concerns for Spawn.
The acting is...in a word...atrocious. No one other than Leguizamo has any fun in this thing. He's like the guy at a crappy party that says, "Hey, screw it. I'm gonna have a good time whether the rest of you guys are or not!" Did I like his performance? Not really, but you have to give him credit for trying. That's more than I can say for the rest of the cast, crew, pretty much anyone else associated with this. Jai White is awful. The script doesn't help him at all but he was just the wrong choice. That said, there probably weren't too many African-Americans at the time that folks thought could pull it off, so he was chosen. Wrong choice, but I guess you do what you have to. Sheen was so bad I had to watch Apocalypse Now again just to get the vision of Spawn out of my head. Sweeney and Randle....who? They were in this thing? See what I mean?
The movie should NOT have been PG-13 either. We know well enough these days that even when a movie is put out in a director's cut on DVD with an R rating that it doesn't help much. Spawn should have been a "hard R" all the way from the get-go. It also could have helped itself being a bit longer, say 2 hrs total. But maybe it's the best thing that Spawn only tortured us for 90 mins. Any more of Spawn the way it is and you wind up thinking too much about Death's sweet release.
Like I said, I really wanted to like it. I watch it when it comes on FX or whatever other TV channel just to see if I can find a reason to like it, so maybe I won't feel the disappointment I felt the first time. It never works...and it never will.
The effects are what they are, and you can't do much with a budget too low for your aspirations when it comes to a work like this. As it is, the suit and cape look pretty good, but it seems like those are the only things that any money were spent on. However, that is the least of my concerns for Spawn.
The acting is...in a word...atrocious. No one other than Leguizamo has any fun in this thing. He's like the guy at a crappy party that says, "Hey, screw it. I'm gonna have a good time whether the rest of you guys are or not!" Did I like his performance? Not really, but you have to give him credit for trying. That's more than I can say for the rest of the cast, crew, pretty much anyone else associated with this. Jai White is awful. The script doesn't help him at all but he was just the wrong choice. That said, there probably weren't too many African-Americans at the time that folks thought could pull it off, so he was chosen. Wrong choice, but I guess you do what you have to. Sheen was so bad I had to watch Apocalypse Now again just to get the vision of Spawn out of my head. Sweeney and Randle....who? They were in this thing? See what I mean?
The movie should NOT have been PG-13 either. We know well enough these days that even when a movie is put out in a director's cut on DVD with an R rating that it doesn't help much. Spawn should have been a "hard R" all the way from the get-go. It also could have helped itself being a bit longer, say 2 hrs total. But maybe it's the best thing that Spawn only tortured us for 90 mins. Any more of Spawn the way it is and you wind up thinking too much about Death's sweet release.
Like I said, I really wanted to like it. I watch it when it comes on FX or whatever other TV channel just to see if I can find a reason to like it, so maybe I won't feel the disappointment I felt the first time. It never works...and it never will.