Probably the film I was most curious about going into this, as I knew of its controversial reputation. Here’s the thing; I’ve mentioned before that Langdon’s character is almost in an entirely different reality from everyone else and as such, he can often make dark gags work. But even Langdon couldn’t pull off that attempted murder scene; it’s way too discomforting and, while the gag is supposed to be that he’s too incapable to pull it off, it still does put a very unlikable spin on the character. And, Harry being Harry, it’s really drawn out.
But I’m more on metaldams’s side here; that’s really the only part of this film I don’t like. In fact, you could actually remove that one sequence and still follow along to the film. Yeah, think about it; if they just cut from Harry at his wedding arguing with his father to the scene of them discussing Harry’s abrupt departure, the plot would still make sense, and it would also protect the innocent quality of his character that is prevalent throughout the film. The idea of him falling in love with Bebe does feel in line with his oblivious character and there is something oddly satisfying about him realizing in the end who she really is and deciding he wants out. You have to remember that the initial idea is that this is a character that’s been kept out of long pants for years so he won’t get in trouble, and once he does get into them, he has to learn for himself the difference between right and wrong. That’s really not a bad concept. And, to top it all off, it does have a really great comedy sequence in the second half. Yeah, the cop-dummy part is fantastic. Langdon moves and panics in the way only Langdon can do, and it’s also funny seeing him run around with the wrong crate. The rest of the comedy revolves around Harry’s obliviousness to seeing Bebe commit these horrible acts and not realizing what’s going on. I think the scene with her robbing the man on the street would have played really well with sound; I can just imagine Langdon thanking the man for his generosity as he hands him his wallet. And, again, it actually does kind of make sense for Langdon’s character; he didn’t see Bebe pull the gun on the man, he legitimately thinks the man is just giving him stuff.
So, yeah, a flawed film, but it’s really only one part that ruins it and, like I mentioned, you could very easily remove that sequence and make it a much better film. Is it the worst Langdon feature? Well, we’ll see, but I will say I have seen a bit of one of the upcoming films and it has a scene in it that infuriates me so much...and unlike this film, you can’t remove it and have the plot make sense. So I’m going to say it’s probably not the worst Langdon feature, but we’ll see. As it stands, LONG PANTS is a film that had a bad idea mixed in with lots of good ideas; this is the film where the Langdon-Capra fallout happened and you can tell just by how disjointed that sequence is in comparison to the rest of the movie.
