Ill-Informed Gadfly

“Funny Games” might seem like a revelation to someone. I can’t be sure to whom, exactly. But maybe a movie-loving high school senior who just got introduced to postmodernism would have his world rocked by Michael Haneke’s leaden and self-important repudiation of violent cinema. For the rest of us, “Funny Games” is just arthouse torture porn. If anything, the “Saw” movies, which encourage viewers to enjoy the doling out of pain, raise more provocative questions about our complicity in screen violence. “Funny Games” is a virtual shot-by-shot remake of Haneke’s 1997 German-language film of the same name; he has said he hoped to reach more English-speaking viewers. Naomi Watts stars as the matriarch of a bourgeois family held hostage by a pair of vapid young sadists. The family dog dies first, and Haneke smugly seeks validation for breaking an unwritten Hollywood rule about not killing pets or children. Never mind that the rule gets thrown out all the time – recall Will Smith breaking the neck of his wounded pooch in “I Am Legend.” That’s the problem with Haneke’s clinical and polemical provocation. He can’t or won’t acknowledge that trashy mainstream movies sometimes stumble upon honest or revelatory moments. He’s too busy being outraged by the notion of taking pleasure in the violent, lurid and intellectually tame. Once you tap into Haneke’s disdain for entertainment, you won’t be surprised by his tricks, traps and smirking asides. “Funny Games” ends up more boring than the conventional thrillers it seeks to skewer.

LISTEN: Funny Games