Dr. Zhivago Sucks

Good lord, what a steaming pile of horseshit! On my life's quest to see all 100 of the American Film Institute's list of Dopest Movies Ever I decided to see Dr. Zhivago at the Laurelhurst. What a mistake. The normal Laurelhurst pre-screening excitement ("Beer! Pizza! Movies! Fuck yeah!") slowly turned into the creeping realization that I had made a horrible, horrible mistake. 3 fucking hours! 3 motherfucking hours of tedious melodrama. I was digging it for the first hour; pretty, political-ish, soap-opera-y, seems like fun. An hour and half in, the pitcher's drained, the pizza crusts are long gone, and I'm ass out asleep. Same thing happened when I tried to sit through #5 on the list, Lawrence of Arabia. There I got lost in the desert and passed out from sympathetic heat stroke. Here I was trudging through what I assume was Siberia or some such cold snowy hellhole and I passed out from sheer, unadulterated boredom. It reminded me of a Myster Science Theater 3000 episode where they showed some old Hercules movies and the whole episode they hyped this "Sandstorm" scene. Instead of the usual wacky skits before commercials they would just rock creepy hands (the goth cousin of "jazz hands") and go "Ooooh Sandstorm". The scene lived up to its billing as it was 40 uninterupted minutes of a guy walking through a sand storm. That seemed to be what Dr. Zhivago was about. A guy walking through the snow and its bad because he's cold. Boo fucking hoo. Cry me a glacier.

And this shit acting style was still acceptable in 1965? The trembling lips, the intense stares, the stiff wooden dialogue. Now I understand why Dustin Hoffman was such a revelation when he stepped on the scene.

And that fucking mandolin thing! I've never wanted to go all Pete Townsend/Jon Belushi on a musical instrument like that before in my life. I almost want to become really rich just so I can afford to buy the original prop and smash it to fucking pieces.

I thought Dr. Zhivago was the highest ranking movie I'd never seen. Actually that's Bridge On The River Kwai (which I've seen most of on TV) at #13 and African Queen at #17 (which I've never seen a single frame of) are still up there in the top twenty waiting for me. I was relieved to see Doc Zhivag was only #39 tucked between Double Indemnity (which is about 1000 times more fun to watch) and North By Northwest (which is fun and has Cary Grant in it and a guy falling off Mt Rushmore and is therefore 3000-4000 times more fun to watch). I think they tried to hide it there in the middle hoping nobody would notice what a stinker it is ("heh, it's not like it made the top 20") while appeasing the romantic jagoffs who like these turds ("only 39, how dare they besmirch the reputation of Omar Sharif with such a dastardly rating"). The thing that really nails down the fact that this AFI list is total bullshit is the fact that my favorite Too-Long-Movie-About-The-Russian-Revolution, Warren Beatty's Reds, isn't even on the list.