Maxxxine is certainly better than the other two films in the Maxine trilogy but that isn’t saying much. I recognize this isn’t a very good movie but I also kind of enjoyed it. Unlike
Pearl and
X, this movie has the guts to
try to be fun and entertaining whereas the other two are quite boring.
Maxxxine certainly fits in with the other movies as they’re all about our female protagonists wanting to be famous no matter what, but the tone switches this time around.
Pearl and
X don’t work for a multitude of reasons but the main issue is that they’re boring. Boring can be good sometimes but not in this case. It’s sort of a failure when your films about pornography and axe murdering are stale and uninteresting. I think this is a fair criticism because Ti West didn’t set out to make boring deconstructed slasher movies. It’s clear from the editing, music and overall tone of the first two movies that he wanted to make something exciting. The thing about Ti West is that he’s good at ghost stories. Traditional horror and slashers aren’t really his strongpoint. I think the Maxine trilogy is proof of that (click
here to read my thoughts on X from a few years ago).
This is a very unintentionally silly movie with a lot of cartoonish performances and sometimes silly dialogue. But the biggest issue is there’s too much going on for a 100 minute movie. In addition to
Maxxxine’s never-ending quest to become a movie star, she’s still on the run from the murders in the first film (there’s a sleazy private investigator on her trail that knows about her past). She’s committing all new murders this time around and there’s a serial killer called the nightstalker on the loose that’s killing girls around her. The movie could have been simplified and condensed. But I was still entertained. My attention never strayed like it did with
X and
Pearl.
Maxxxine has drawn a lot of comparisons to
Boogie Nights. I guess that’s because both movies are about the adult film industry. But any shot, scene or comparison from
Boogie Nights that folks bring up in relation to
Maxxxine all come from older films (the famous mirror shot at the end of
Boogie Nights was an homage to the ending of
Raging Bull which, knowing Martin Scorsese, was probably inspired by something earlier).
If anything, Bette Gordon’s
Variety feels like the movie that
Maxxxine takes from the most. Both movies are about women in the adult industry being pursued by stalkers.
Variety and
Maxxxine have lots of specific scenes and moments that are too identical to not mention even if they are coincidental.
I noticed this potential nod to Sofia Coppola’s
Somewhere…
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| Somewhere / maXXXine |
and
Tales of Hoffman…
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| Tales Of Hoffman / maXXXine |
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Visual homages aside,
Maxxxine’s twist in the end borrows heavily from Paul Schrader’s
Hardcore. Enough time has passed since this movie’s release so I’ll just reveal it - the nightstalker is revealed to be Maxine’s evangelical father trying to get her to leave the adult film industry and come back home which is similar to George C Scott’s character in
Hardcore (minus the serial killing).
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Hardcore / maXXXine
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Hardcore / maXXXine
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The crazy stalker element comes right out of Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion
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Crimes of Passion / maXXXine
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I guess I don’t have a huge issue with all the homages considering the prior films in the trilogy are also reference heavy. I knew what to expect. If anything, the coincidental similarities to older films are the best thing about it (I didn’t particularly care for the
Psycho sequence that’s literally set in the actual Psycho house)
This isn’t a post to try and convince anyone that
Maxxxine is misunderstood (I’m sure in about twenty years or so history will be re-written and it will find a new cult audience of apologists). This movie’s reputation is understandable.
Maxxxine deserved all the negative criticism it received. I just thought there were a handful of semi-interesting qualities about it that shouldn’t go ignored even if the overall end product is a misfire.
