MOVIE REVIEW: JONAH HEX

JONAH HEX

Two of Seven Cows

Often, if I can’t decide between two new movies, I’ll go to Rottentomatoes.com for help. This website concentrates movie reviews from scores of sources in one place, and awards a percentage-score to each movie based on how many positive reviews that movie has received. I’ll simply chose which movie had the highest score and go see that one. There is, however, another method: Using the same website I’ll access the promotional poster for each movie and see if either has one of the surest signs of quality entertainment – Megan Fox dressed like a tramp.

Sorry Toy Story 3, but your practically unheard of 98% positive rating simply cannot overcome that. I am a big boy now, and there is nothing an animated spaceman can do that would be nearly as entertaining as watching Megan do, well, practically anything.

But, so as to not confuse the issue, Jonah Hex is a bad movie. Eighty-six percent of the reviewers on Rottentomatoes.com are with me in that assessment. Adapted from a comic book and starring the erratically-good Josh Brolin, Jonah Hex is short, disjointed and inane.

Brolin plays a haunted former confederate soldier with a super-natural ability to talk with the dead. John Malkovich plays his nemesis and evil genius, General Quentin Turnbul. Malkovich is always good, though why he’s slumming in this flick is beyond me. Megan Fox plays eye candy and caused me actual physical pain every time she appeared on screen. I kid you not.

Brolin’s character is clearly modeled on Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti western-era outlaws. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that had there been no High Plains Drifter there would be no Jonah Hex. This is good source material – Eastwood’s westerns were my bread and butter growing up. Should Jonah Hex evolve into a franchise, which is highly unlikely, no one will be saying that about it in thirty years.

The producers seem to have recognized that this is not a good movie, because they mercifully cut it short after barely an hour and twenty minutes. I can endure almost anything for that short a time, and so although this is a bad movie I actually sort of enjoyed it – and not just because Megan is dressed like a harlot and runs around going bouncy-bouncy-bouncy a lot, though that certainly didn’t hurt (yes it did).

Actually, Jonah Hex seems like exactly what it is: an old Clint Eastwood western that was turned into a cartoon and then turned back into a movie. It’s dumb, puerile and too short to be taken seriously, just like me. I give it two cows.