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Well, now I really am emotionally stirred up. My thick, baudy wall of figurative mud-thatch that I had been creating for all my post-pubescant years has been severely damaged to near collapse. The Waltzing Anna trailer is so cheap looking and transparently pitiful that is has cast my thoughts back to watching those dreadful Health videos in Year 9. Oh my gahd.
Curse thee, Waltzing Anna. Waltz all you will, but that doesn't change the fact that your waltz is for the no-good end result of an underproduced, money-starved, university film student festival quality heartstring tugger. Curse on thee.

I really resent movies that try to promote themselves on how heart-warming they are. That's basically saying "See this movie, because the ending can be guessed before you see it, thus you don't have to think." Is there a person out there that would want to see a movie because you desperately crave to see an annoying wrong-doer have senior citizens teach him how to be a flawless humanitarian? Maybe the residents of Utah, USA. But even that's a bold stretch.

Another thing, besides the sappy outcome, is very obvious; this movie was written by someone who thinks those jokes that old people tell are funny. Ever had an old person that barely knows World War 2 is over try and tell you something funny? It's awful. They always forget the punchline, so that extends the whole joke about 20 minutes until they can remember the ending, and you spend the whole time trying to work out the ending before the old person, and then the old person finally gets it and it's probably an eightieth as funny or logical as the one you came up with. People's humour evaporates with their sex cells.

Only it seems the writer of Waltzing Anna didn't get the memo, and a slew of vacant old fossils walking around with their pants down and jokes about bedpans proves it. Oh, and that dumbass elderly man that says some bad line like "See you at the nursing home, young man" and then blows a raspberry. I name him Cringeworth. He, alone, was a massive blow to one of the most crucial foundations to my not so impregnable wall of introvertedness.

Some may argue that Waltzing Anna isn't funny because it isn't supposed to be a comedy, it's a romantic weepie story. But, my god people, it has Artie Lange in it!!! And by the way, what is with the main character's 90's era boyband hair!?
The title character, Anna, has Alzeimer's and all she seems to be able to do is lift her hand and watch it droop. Is it just me, or is it really hard to sympathise with someone that has no personality due to the symptoms of an illness? I mean, if it were your mother, yes. You'd have known who she was your whole life. But to walk into a theatre and be introduced to some old bag of bones in a nighty that shits her own bedsheets and doesn't know who the hell anyone is, how can we be expected to find that endearing? Euthanize the bitch and bypass the watery-eyed ending (and the postcard-perfect character arc for the main doctor while you're at it.)

If and/or when I'm shipped off to a nursing home, I'll be damn sure to reconstruct my Wall and set the generalisation of seniors straight. No bingo, no political radio, no yellowed page novels about navy boats. Just good old fashioned abusing, then euthanising of Alzheimer's patients. Ahh, poor, impressionable old folk. You are sheep who have lost their way, allow me to shephard you to my will!


Waltzing Anna - Kindred Media Group
Anticipation Level: Low
Look out for: Anna pretending to be absent from any basis of reality. And aaaall the old people pretending to be quirky and distinct from each other and to have their own gimmick, but they are just the one in the same aged entity.
US Release date: Back on 11th August, 2006.
Trailer Source