Finally – it’s the 90’s, yo! Dances With Wolves stars a little actor named Kevin Costner. Ever heard of him? ;) It took five years of development to complete the movie based mostly in the Civil War era, and as director, producer, narrator and lead actor, Costner was all over this thing. We even get to see his butt, which would be awesome had he not scratched it and neglected to edit that part out.
Costner stars as John Dunbar, a Civil War lieutenant who is transferred to an abandoned Western frontier and sticks around in the event his fellow soldiers reappear. Other than his horse Cisco and wolf Two Socks, Dunbar is all alone – or so he thinks. A Sioux tribe is nearby and while they at first see him as threat, once they get to know him they realize he is actually pretty nice. Or at least it seemed that way; it was hard to tell through Costner’s awful acting and much more awful narrating.
After being befriended by the Sioux, Dunbar is renamed Dances With Wolves (ah!) after his new companions see him rolling around in the grass with Two Socks. It would have made a lot more sense for Dunbar’s love interest to be a female Sioux, but for some inexplicable reason it’s Mary McDonnell, a white chick who was kidnapped by a different Native American tribe as a child. (Plus everyone we thought was a hot girl in the Sioux tribe ended up actually being a guy anyway.) McDonnell’s character’s name is Stands With a Fist; she explains how she got her name but unfortunately Kicking Bird, her adoptive father, does not explain how he got his. Seems like it would have been fun. All the non-English dialogue was spoken in the true Lakota language. And another fun fact: McDonnell, in real life, is two months older than Kicking Bird, and less than two years younger than her adoptive mother Tantoo Cardinal.
In the interest of full disclosure, you have to know something. This movie is the 11th longest movie of all the Best Picture winners at 175 minutes. Unfortunately, we accidentally watched the extended cut, which was 236 minutes; there are only two Best Picture winners that are longer than that. So needless to say, it was a lot of movie and by the time it ended after 1 a.m., there were some unhappy faces. We won’t spoil the ending since you’ve only had 21 years to see it and plus we fell asleep before it happened, so we don’t even know how it ended. (OK, that’s a lie.)
Dances With Wolves won seven Academy Awards. Shockingly, it beat Goodfellas for Best Picture which is inexcusable, and it also beat Godfather III, which is more inexcusable that Godfather III was nominated for Best Picture. Costner also won Best Director over Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. The American Film Institute later named it the 75th best movie of all time.
So what did the Team Movie Meats quintet think?
JIMI: (0.75 Acting + 1.78 Visuals + 1.0 Wow + 0.8 Story + 1.0 Enjoyability) = 5.33
TRACY: (0.58 Acting + 1.8 Visuals + 0.4 Wow + 0.85 Story + 0.6 Enjoyability) = 4.23
RACHEL: (0.9 Acting + 2.0 Visuals + 0.5 Wow + 0.4 Story + 0.2 Enjoyability) = 4.00
TAD: (1.4 Acting + 1.8 Visuals + 1.1 Wow + 1.4 Story + 1.2 Enjoyability) = 6.90
NICK: (1.0 Acting + 1.8 Visuals + 1.0 Wow + 1.15 Story + 0.7 Enjoyability) = 5.45
FINAL: 5.18
Interesting score notes: Rachel dished out TMM’s first-ever perfect category score with a 2.0 in Visuals. Yet not only did she have the lowest score, she walked out with about 13 minutes left stating it was one of her least favorite movies ever. … The final score would have been 4.75 had Tad’s score not been included. Though he was frustrated at the length, he thought the non-Costner acting was good and the story was solid. … Jimi’s score was the closest to the overall average, and he provided one of the odder moments: after intermission ended, he was telling us he was bored, and seconds later Costner narrated, “I am bored.” So they shared that in common. … Nick was so tired and annoyed when the movie ended he forgot to organize the group picture. … And just because Rachel’s score was lower than Tracy’s, don’t think Tracy didn’t hate this movie. Hours after it ended, she posted on Facebook, “I am so mad at Kevin Costner. I really really hate that guy right mow.” This was crazy because (1) only four people would get the reference and (2) she was so angry she wrote ‘mow’ instead of ‘now’. Reader, we pray you never get that angry.
FAVORITE LINE: “I just pissed my pants and there’s nothing anyone can do about it!” (Grits guy from My Cousin Vinny). Honorable mention: “Postscript – the man I encountered was a magnificent looking person” (Costner) and “I am in mourning” (McDonnell, a tenth of a second before having sex with Costner).
RANDOM VISUAL: Costner’s butt scratch. One of the awards this film won was Best Film Editing; it should have lost just for allowing that to stay in the movie.
MOVIE MEAT: Buffalo. After you watch the characters take out a dozen buffaloes with bows and arrows, it’s hard not to head over to Ted’s Montana Grill.
TIME OF DEATH: 1:07 AM on February 6, 2011.
NEXT UP: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), selected by Tracy. Luckily, this one is only 172 minutes.
Damn it, Tracy.
