The first rule of Fight Club....

is you do not talk about Fight Club. So that makes this review easy for me. I will talk about my home-made hamburger instead. It was nothing special actually. It was rather bland. The meat in it, the base of any good hamburger, was lacking in any distinct flavour. Funnily enough I could say the exact same thing about the movie. In fact, the hamburger was better than the movie. Quite a bit better.

This movie, was made in 1999, and was added to my list because it rates so well on IMDB (8.7). I just don't get how? I had no idea about the plot before I watched it, though I figured it would be about a group of men who form a "fight club" as an escape from their mundane lives. Partly right, though the movie doesn't go very far down that track to fully find what is going wrong in the men's lives to turn to this violent club.

* next paragraph contains spoilers *
The biggest problem I have with this movie is that it is a little bit of everything and a lot of nothing. I found the same with Pirates of the Caribbean. Is it meant to be funny? Is there meant to be a love story? Is it meant to make me think about my own life? Is it meant to take me on a journey? Well it didn't do any of that for me. It has a plot twist that, to me, was as easy to pick as a sunrise. I was sitting there thinking - "this storyline isn't very strong, what could happen that would be an attempt to boost it? Ahhh, Tyler Durdin and the narrator could be the same person!" So an hour and 30 minutes later in the movie when that humdinger is finally exposed, it was no surprise at all to me. But Edward Norton has already been in a movie where he had a split personality, Primal Fear. That movie did it much better and with a plot twist in the end that I never saw coming. If I wanted to watch a movie that was funny because somebody wore a fat suit, I would watch Mrs Doubtfire. If I wanted to watch a movie where men join a club to get away from their ordinary lives I would watch Old School. If I wanted to watch a movie for it's violence and semi nudity I would watch Sin City. All of those movies I have just mentioned, focussed on that one thing, and were all the better for it.

So now for the ratings. I base my ratings on a few things and it generally changes throughout the movie. I started with a 6 for this movie because I thought it had potential, potential to really make me think and soar to an 8 or 9. It continually let me down. A rating of 5 means I wouldn't watch it again. I ended up giving it a rating of 3, which means that even if it was on TV and the only other show on at the time was re-runs of Lassie, I would be cheering her home instead.

My ratings -
Fight Club : 3 punches to the face (which I would prefer over watching this again - at least it would be over quicker)
Home made Hamburger - 5 meat patties
Pure Blonde Beer - 8 green bottles