Completely illogical. Hyper-unrealistic. Ridiculously bad acting. Horrific trials that have no juries, seemingly no rules and no judicial integrity.
Despite an apparently star-studded Japanese cast and great visuals, this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
I got sucked into watching this live action adaptation by a deluded friend who is a huge fan of the original detective-style Nintendo DS games. You play as the hawk-haired rookie lawyer, Phoenix Wright, who needs to find clues, gather evidence and then cross-examine witnesses with clinical precision - trials in their dystopic Japan are only allowed to run for a maximum of three days(!!!). What happens in the movie, however, is a major cluster-fuck of random revelations and new evidence popping up every three minutes DURING the trial - which basically fuels the entire direction of the movie. Moreover, there were countless of unbelievably stupid and illegitimate 'objections', lawyers not asking questions but making speculative statements during cross-examination, accused persons being found not guilty simply because it was proven someone else was at the scene at the same time, WTF supernatural spirits giving advice, anachronistic Minority Report-like technology being used in the courtroom, incessant Yu-Gi-Oh! style battle cries, summonsed witnesses just randomly walking in and out on a whim etc. etc. etc.
Maybe I'm just being a picky law student. Or maybe - this movie was totally fucked up and didn't make any sense whatsoever unless you actually played the game and understood that this was just one huge Mickey Mouse legal trial. It's not supposed to be taken seriously. That is made pretty clearly when they start using mentally ill amnesiacs and his parrot (it wasn't EVEN a parrot, but a cockatoo) as witnesses.
None of the characters were relatable because they were all weird and dumb and I have no idea how they passed law school. And of course, why do these Japanese people have white people names??? Why do some of them dress like normal people, some like Star Wars extras and others like Victorian era aristocrats??? WHAT???
Oh my god this movie. You should drink a shot every time there's a deus ex machina. It'll be more fun than watching the movie itself.
A movie that doesn't make any logical or factual sense? Sounds like just about every movie these days. The suspension of belief in reality is, by necessity, a required to be able to enjoy any movie that is not a documentary or (in some cases) based around some historical event. Ace Attorney fits that trope. The fact that you're a law student makes it all the more necessary. It'd be like an engineer or anyone with a military background watching a movie like Pacific Rim or Godzilla; it's a stupid movie, but they can still appreciate the explosions. I'm sure the Secret Service was similarly amused by Olympus Has Fallen or White House Down. I don't think Ace Attorney ever pretended to be a serious legal drama, and my advice would be to treat it with the whimsy that it deserves.
ReplyDeleteOr you could turn it into a drinking game. Doesn't sound as entertaining as the Lord of the Rings drinking game though; those movies were fantastic and the drinking game just makes it even better.