Duplicity-Julia Roberts, Clive Owen





SEE.





Timelines can be tricky. Creative editing meant to make a film more interesting by taking the audience out of a normal linear framework can be wonderfully freeing. Say, for example, as used in Pulp Fiction. On the other hand, nonlinear editing that takes us from 5 years ago to 3 days ago in seemingly no particular order can be perplexing to say the least. In Duplicity, the trick is remembering that the audience is being played just like everybody in the film. Are (Claire) Julia Roberts and Ray (Clive Owen) really working together, or are they double-crossing each other? When did they decide to work together? When did they decide to pull off this scheme? Yes, folks, you're supposed to be confused about this story. I know, you just wanted to go watch a fun movie about corporate espionage starring two attractive actors. All this thinking and timelining...just spoils the buttered popcorn and cold soda.








Here's the thing. It's all been done before. It's really hard to surprise the audience. We bore easily. Filmmakers have to try so hard to engage us. So now, instead of having a story unfold before our eyes, we actually have to bring a chart and graph into the theater to make heads or tails of when certain events occurred; who said what to whom when; and what piece of the puzzle is missing. It's harder than getting into law school. It's our own fault. You asked for complex, interesting stories. That's too bad 'cause what you're actually going to get is just more convoluted storytelling. The song remains the same. It's just played backwards and upside down.





Personally, I'm not bothered by being a little confused. It lets me know I'm alive. And, frankly, I'm used to it by now. Up to a point. 3 days earlier. 10 days earlier. 3 months earlier. 2 years earlier. 5 years earlier. Really? It's a two hour movie. Maybe we should agree to consolidate our timeline a little in the interest of audience sanity. I can barely remember character names, nevermind, whether what I'm watching now occurred before or after the last twelve flashbacks. If the time comes when the movie audience has to plug into a computer program or an Iphone application just to follow along, I say we all just go back to doing it the old-fashioned way-read a book.





EAT.







Frozen pizza. Why, you ask? Apparently a lot of research goes into the frozen pizza market. Or else, the writer of Duplicity is pulling a fast one on me. The frozen pizza industry that Ray and Claire consider infiltrating provides comically serious dialogue about the theft of trade pizza secrets. Trade pizza secrets? Really? What do I know? Well, what I know is that all the brain power required in following this story sure made me hungry. Frozen pizza it is! Don't just dive in without proper frozen pizza research. After all, these companies would kill to sell frozen pizza to you. Review Good Housekeeping's frozen pizza ratings at http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing/reviews-tests/food-beverages/frozen-pizza-1102. Some poor bastard spent the best years of his life trying to make a frozen pizza that you'll eat. Let's take this seriously, people!











SHOP.






For reasons I'm too stupid to understand, Claire runs through the competition's office building looking for a fax machine so she can send the secret formula out to her bosses and complete the espionage. I'm not questioning this plot point per se. Having viewed and charted the entire movie, I understand the purpose these scenes served. What I don't understand is a computer "genius" who wouldn't just say, "Hey. Take a picture of the formula on your (fill in the PDA of your choice) and e-fax it or e-mail it or e-whatever it to us." Seems simple enough. If your computer genius seems stuck in a fax rut, direct him or her to http://www.myfax.com/wireless_faxing.asp?bt=c. 'Cause, seriously, nobody believes the run for the fax machine in this day and age.