{"id":57741,"date":"2023-04-18T12:37:18","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T16:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=57741"},"modified":"2023-04-18T12:37:22","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T16:37:22","slug":"movie-review-the-popes-exorcist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2023\/04\/movie-review-the-popes-exorcist\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review – The Pope\u2019s Exorcist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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                When I first heard that there was a movie called \u201cThe Pope\u2019s Exorcist,\u201d I thought maybe it was about a guy that performs an exorcism on The Pope. That could be a cool idea \u2013 the holiest man in the Catholic Church himself needing an exorcism. But no, it\u2019s just about The Pope\u2019s preferred exorcist going off and performing an exorcism on yet another possessed teenager. Ho Hum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Russell Crowe plays Father Gabriele Amorth, a real-life figure in the Catholic Church whose story, I\u2019m sure, is more interesting than anything in this movie. He\u2019s described in the movie\u2019s advertising as \u201cwisecracking,\u201d but that\u2019s a stretch. He offers a few dry remarks, plays some head games, makes some goofy noises, and is flippant with a review board, but I never felt that \u201cwisecracking\u201d was a particularly accurate descriptor. Maybe because I never found any of his \u201cjokes\u201d to be funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                The Pope (Franco Nero) sends Amorth to Spain to investigate the possession of young Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney). Henry, along with his mother (Alex Essoe) and sister (Laurel Marsden) just moved into an abandoned abbey, and soon enough the boy is hissing vulgarities and throwing around local priest Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto). Since the abbey is in Spain, it\u2019s not hard to guess the dark secret of the house\u2019s history. Supposedly nobody expects it, but I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                The literal demon forces Amorth and Esquibel to confront their figurative demons. Amorth feigned death during World War II and has survivor\u2019s guilt. He also botched the treatment of a young woman in his care. Esquibel is guilty of something much sleazier if the demon is to be believed. I suppose these sins are necessary for character development so that we know these men are flawed, but the scenes of flashbacks and confessions just scream \u201cpadding the runtime\u201d to me. How can a movie this short seem to take so long? Roger Ebert said that no good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. I\u2019ve seen some decent movies that could use some trimming (\u201cJohn Wick: Chapter 4,\u201d anyone?), but far fewer exceptions to the latter rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Name a tired element of the exorcist genre, and it\u2019s probably here. Veteran exorcist teaming up with a novice priest? Check. Possessed kid speaking in a voice that clearly isn\u2019t theirs? Check. Crab walk? You know that\u2019s a check. Head spinning around? It doesn\u2019t do a 360-degree spin, but one does go backwards for a bit, so a faint check. Ineffective jump scares? Check, if the movie even thinks it\u2019s doing jump scares. Lame finale with bad CGI and a lot of thrashing? I\u2019d almost be disappointed if this movie got better in the last ten minutes and that wasn\u2019t a check.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cThe Pope\u2019s Exorcist\u201d is a hacky horror movie with Oscar winner Crowe supposedly lending it credibility, though it really just makes me feel sorry for how far his star has fallen. It managed to make a meager $9 million at the weekend box office, getting dominated by \u201cThe Super Mario Bros. Movie\u201d with nearly ten times that amount (that movie gets two more weekends to lay waste to everything in its path). You\u2019d be better off giving your money to almost anything else, including fourth-place weekend finisher \u201cRenfield, which has a few funny ideas and is at least good for a \u201cC\u201d grade. It\u2019s hard to forgive this movie for wasting so much of my time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: D<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Pope\u2019s Exorcist\u201d is rated R for violent content, language, sexual references and some nudity. Its running time is 103 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver                 When I first heard that there was a movie called \u201cThe Pope\u2019s Exorcist,\u201d I thought maybe it was about a guy that performs an exorcism on… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":57742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2271],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57743,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57741\/revisions\/57743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}