I'm no stick, but I have a colleague who is just ginormous, and listening to the guy eat is one of the reasons why I sometimes push away from the table. He sounds like he's death rattling when he eats potato chips.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think the world of this friend, but he needs to work a bit on the celery, breathe deeply between bites, and stop getting his fingers wet from slobber.
You're wondering where the hell I'm going with this, aren't you?
George Stevens' Giant is the cinematic equivalent of watching my friend eat snack food (and everything else that's not nailed or glued to the lunch table). It's so wheezy and falumpy and gasbaggish that, after three and a half hours of pork rinds and soap suds, you're ready for the movie-watching equivalent of a lap band around your stomach. Stevens takes so long to tell you that
a) Texas is a really big state
b) Ranching families are guaranteed to produce weird kids if the dad and mom are Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor
c) James Dean sure could mumble up a storm
d) Oil rigs suck
e) Bigots suck more
When the credits rolled at our house, and Rock Hudson finally figured out that the future of Texas actually included Mexicans (shock!), I looked around at the wife and daughter. We all had that glazed gaze that comes from too much cinematic goo and grease.
Our breathing was labored, our guts were bloated, and our fingers were all slobbery
Burp!
