Will Eisner's "The Spirit"

Wow, it's been a bit too long since the last post, but here it is.

The impetus, in this case, is the new Frank Miller film, his version of Will Eisner's classic comic, The Spirit. It was, to say the least, bad. But deliciously bad.

There were times when I was doubled over in laughter, stomping the floor ... literally. Of course, that was made easier by the fact that after one guy left a half hour into the film my daughter and I were the only ones in the theater. We didn't have to worry a out being embarrassed.

God knows, the story doesn't do justice to Eisner's comic -- a visionary noir set of comics that ran in comic books accompanying the Sunday comics from 1940 to about 1952. Eisner's style was frequently tongue-in-cheek, but filled with the grit of the big cities that carried his book. He was also a master of weaving storylines into short O. Henry type tales.

Miller's version of The Spirit is big and frequently pointless, characteristics which Eisner would never have allowed himself.

But while Miller never reaches Eisner's depths, he forges his own sense of over-the-top humor, a kind of camp take on the character. Needless to say, the legion of Eisner fans is mostly offended by the film.

But I keep coming back to scenes that gave me serious laughter -- in an absurdist, black humor bent. Samuel L. Jackson's villain, the Octopus, steals the show, whether he's donning Nazi paraphernalia or vaporizing kittens. In fact, Gabriel Macht, who plays the Spirit, is the least interesting character on screen. The women -- as in Eisner's work -- are stunning, from Eva Mendes as jewel thief Sand Saref to Scarlett Johanssen as Silken Floss, the Octopus' assistant.

The dialogue is frequently hokey and the plot doesn't always hang, but The Spirit strikes me as a film that could go down as a so-bad-it's-fun cult piece in the long run. And, yup, I'll plunk down the money for the DVD when it comes out for that alone.