j* Movie Reviews 2019

Mary Shelley (2017)

What fresh misery is this?

Lo, how I do abhor history and all it's fetid and sordid details of the misery of the poor souls with nought but literal pens and paper upon which to vent. Perhaps if Mary Shelley could only have whined about her douche of a lover and posted selfies with the hot doctor on facey, all this unpleasantness would not have been filmicly inflicted upon me. I mean we would, as a world, have missed out on the birthing of what is by now one of our most successful genres of literature. But should witnessing the birth of sci-fi really require two hours of ponderous relationship tragedy?

Don't get me wrong, I've been previously well aware of most of the depicted debacle, what between the studying The Gothic, and then studying Ye Olden Days Women's Lit including Mary's Mum's book. But can there ever be more woe than in this sort of frustrating author's tale? I feel it's only made worse by the sheer magnitude of authors that get crammed into it. Classics from classic douches. And classics stolen by classic douches from others who are not as bad.

So much jealously, rage and woe, so little inspiration. I quite liked the good doctor and the galvanising experiments with frogs legs... but I feel those are self-obvious things. What a bunch of moody so-and-so's. Nice shots of trees on occasion, but no delicious spook. Just human devastations upon each other. At length. Even the bloody outro credits are just more tales of woe.

J* gives it 2 stars.