Gone Girl Review Part 1
Good but not as great as everyone else seems to be going on about.
mi·sog·y·ny (məˈsäjənē) noun – dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.
mi·sog·a·my (məˈsäɡəmē) noun – the hatred of marriage.
I’m starting my review with these two definitions due to the fact that if you have ever been on the fence about being either a misogynist or misogamist this film will push you over into the miso yard. If you have ever had a reason to distrust a woman, your wife, or the idea of marriage but are trying to get over it do not see this film. You will walk out seriously distrusting your wife, your mother, your female friends and relatives, the girl who serves you coffee at Starbucks, and any mammal lacking a Y chromosome (and possibly certain female birds and reptiles).
Not to say it’s a bad movie. It’s actually quite good. Compelling story, fun twists, great characters, excellent acting, very good pacing, and overall a truly flowing story. It even has a couple of very positive female characters in the sister and the cop. It is by David Fincher, director of my all time favorite film Fight Club and as such I would expect it to be at the very least masterful and it is. 
Of course the only female character in Fight Club is a sex crazed borderline personality ball busting kleptomaniac so it seems clear that Mr. Fincher has never planned on building his career through the uplifting of the female stereotype. (I did feel the need to show a better female stereotype so I pulled this image from the Wonder Woman t shirt category)
However to see a positive role model male or female is not why you go see a David Fincher film. He is the master of the flawed protagonist and this film definitely falls into that slot. Therefore it is not the issue I have with the film. The problem I can’t seem to get past is the fact that at one point about 3/4 of the way through the 149 minutes of the film a scene that was supposed to be both horrific and pivotal had most of the audience (including myself) laughing uproariously and the suspension of disbelief, which had been hovering nicely at the 12-14 ft mark, shot up to the upper stratosphere and left us all gasping for oxygen. The last 1/4 of the film stopped being a gritty and realistic crime drama and turned into a fantasy with comedic overtones that were really hard to take seriously.
I will be dropping spoilers shortly and will most definitely give you warnings ahead of time but for a minute I want to talk about plot holes. A plot hole is like a pot hole; some are bigger than others and some streets might have one or two or be covered with them like a teenager with acne. Sometimes you can drive past them or even swerve to avoid one that you see coming. Sometimes they are small enough that you drive right over them with just a little bump and sometimes there are so many packed together that the street is more pot hole then asphalt and you can move along at a slow pace with a steady vibration through your seat.
Sometimes, however, you can be driving along a perfectly smooth street with no sign of anything and all of a sudden hit a gigantic pot hole that bottoms out your car and bends your axle, leaving you driving along listening to the sound of your tire rub against the side of your wheel well. That’s what happened for me. Smooth ride for almost two hours and then bang! Gigantic plot hole (see what I did there?).
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