It’s here. The let-down ending of NBC’s shoulda been aborted, Rosemary’s Baby.
Jointly reviewed with Samir Roy.
Samir: How can a movie feel so long and not enough at the same time? It’s a special failure for a movie to be simultaneously overlong and underdeveloped.
Margaux: The “shocking” conclusion of Rosemary’s Baby was anything but. All it proved was how utterly unnecessary this ventures sum total was, the miniseries never decided if it wanted to be homage, remake, or whatever the eff it ended up being. And if you’re gonna reveal Satans baby, GODDAMN DO IT RIGHT OR NOT AT ALL.
Samir: In this second half of Rosemary’s Baby, I felt like the creative team behind the whole project made absolutely no use of the added time to enhance the story. I just didn’t feel as aligned with Rosemary throughout the film. And sadly Zoe Saldana doesn’t make much of the famous lines. All the direct quotations didn’t just pale in comparison, they made me wonder: why copy the original film’s most memorable moments so specifically if you couldn’t even manage to do something interesting with them?
Margaux: Why change Guy Woodhouse’s character to seemingly struggle with the decision of trading Rosemary’s womb for fame, if he doesn’t actually ever do anything. Other than gloom around at parties and get told by Margaux and Roman that he needs to bang his wife so she won’t catch on to the whole thing. It’s like they say, dance with the devil and you’ll end up getting your wife pregnant by him.
That’s a saying, right?
Samir: And usually that saying is meant to suggest that this dance has consequences that really aren’t worth it. Again, I feel the choice in the original story to have Guy be an actor really worked better than an aspiring author as he is here. For some reason you believe the cutthroat selfishness of a struggling actor living off of Yamaha residuals. You almost get why he would actually think a deal with the devil as the way to fame is a good idea. But this guy, I just don’t see what part of selling your first-born child to Satan sounds like it will go well. Doesn’t it occur that the tradeoff is a tad too severely imbalanced to consider Satanism as a viable option for eternal happiness?
At least the update of Rosemary’s bad haircut worked. I thought of Chloe from Don’t Trust the B in Apt 23 when she says “OMG you got a pixie cut? Feel my heart racing? That’s fear.” in response to someone saying they made a terrible mistake.
Margaux: Really? I thought Zoe Saldana’s take on Mia Farrow’s iconic haircut made her look like Kate Gosselin. Which is befitting, since she has eight spawns of Satan herself.
Samir: And that’s a hellaciously awful look.
Margaux: It practically looks like she has a mullet…
Speaking of questionable decision making, how about Guy’s awkward make-out sesh with Margaux at his al fresco lunch? I think the background extras face said it all: WHY?
If it’s to prove that she has feelings, she basically tells she doesn’t have any literally the line before, asking Guy if he thinks she doesn’t have emotion. I don’t – there’s so much bad writing.
Samir: There was nothing right with that moment. “Was that real?” he says. I kind of thought the same thing, in a more wishful tone, like hoping it wasn’t. Not sure if Guy was hoping that. Perhaps she was trying to tell him he’d always have a place to park his car once his wife predictably sees just how disgusting he is. She said she likes dark subjects. Sex with Guy sounds pretty dark.
And what about Rosemary and Guy’s one loving night? With pastrami, which apparently they think they can’t get in France? And he thinks he’ll hurt the baby. How big do you think your penis is dude? Why do all dad’s think this? The baby isn’t just camping out in the loins the entire pregnancy, I think you’d need a lot more than you’re packing to reach the baby with that thing Guy.
Margaux: I think it’s a dude excuse to getting out of seeing pregnant chicks, that they want to have non-pregnant sex with again at some point, naked. Which – can’t blame them. But Guy is a just a moron riddle with guilt. Sometimes, those are the guys with the biggest penises. Not like I would know…
Samir: Not an issue here. 😉 I think pregnant women are pretty, but I do think it’s creepy that people always think they have the right to just walk up and touch a pregnant woman’s belly.
Margaux: So how in the world did Rosemary not go full Mama Bear mode on “Steven Marcato” in the stairwell when he freakishly paused, causing her THROW her laundry basket down a flight of stairs, to rub her stomach and mutter Satan’s doctors prognosis?
Samir: I wish I could explain the inexplicable, but I cannot understand why seeing him there made any difference to the story. Is this what convinced her to call the police commissioner back? He turned out not to be on the witch’s side, and genuinely interested in solving the mystery.
Margaux: Well, Roman saw to it that he never would discover the ending to that story. But we did and boy, was it fucking lame.
Samir: No wonder Satan had to arrange the deaths of all the people who didn’t respond to his charms and promises. Rosemary’s friend Julie questioned things and died, the commissioner question and died, perhaps the crappy ending he spares them qualifies them as mercy killings in his devious, intricate plot. For a plot constructed by Satan, it felt awfully planned. Oh dear, we can’t let her just keep thinking this sparkly blue-eyed beautiful baby that everyone will be jealous of is normal. We have to make her husband tell her it was stillborn and that it was cremated. That’s why we always see shots of him in twos, as reflections or through glasses, he’s such a two-faced bastard.
Margaux: That was a pretty rough, white lie. And the only plot line they’d established well enough for it to pay off a bit in the end. This what finally leads Rosemary to dump douchebag Guy, effortlessly done while pouring what she thinks are her baby’s ashes into the scene. It was just nice to see someone’s characters acting accordingly to the situation because they were starting to blow it by actually making Rosemary come across as truly batshit fucking crazy.
Samir: It was Saldana’s best acting moment in the show. As a woman who has suffered a miscarriage, this made her choice to raise the child a little more believable because you could understand her desperation to keep the baby she has. The ending should have made more sense emotionally but somehow it didn’t. I bought it from Mia Farrow with less of a reason to do so.
I really wanted her to kill at least one of these awful people once she knew they plotted to use her body to literally birth the Antichrist. The choice is scary because you understand why Rosemary wants to raise her child, because she carried and nurtured it and gave birth, and wanted the child from the beginning. But this time around, it seemed more prudent to imagine the future beyond her choice, so I was disappointed she didn’t actually stab someone.
When parents call their beloved little monsters such things in frustration, they really have no idea what that means until we see Rosemary trying to handle a real monster from Hell, from toddlerhood through puberty. Only bad things could possibly await her.
Margaux: See! Now THAT is the pitch I would of bought. How many stars should we give this joyless dreck?
Samir: I say 2, again for the same reasons as Part 1. There is nothing else of value here, and it pains me to say that about an Agnieszka Holland film.
Margaux: Yes, Julie’s Kitchen Nightmare death was pretty cool, I was let down by the Commissioner’s blurry/bloody eyes, only to be run over by a garbage truck. What is this? Final Destination: Satan’s Child? Not worth sticking around for two hours. 2 stars and see ya never Rosemary’s Baby.
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