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POOR THINGS

"Sordid, Disgusting Marxist Feminist Fairy Tale"

Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)
Entertainment Quality:
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Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

POOR THINGS is a quirky, but extremely obscene, atheist, feminist satire of western society. A mad scientist, who’s been repeatedly abused by his sadomasochistic father, reanimates a female suicide victim’s body with her own baby’s brain. He hires a young med student to follow Bella’s progress. The student falls in love with Bella, and she agrees to marry him. However, she decides to go to Lisbon with a wealthy hedonist before marrying the med student. An absurd journey into sexual hedonism follows.

If you cut out all the obscene dialogue, sex scenes and nudity in POOR THINGS, this 141 minute movie would probably clock in at only half that. Thus, scene for scene, POOR THINGS stands as one of the most obscene major motion pictures ever released by Hollywood. POOR THINGS promotes Marxism, atheism, socialism, hedonism, and the kind of feminism that turns women and men into sex objects. It’s a sordid, disgusting, blasphemous move. Ironically, both her suitors call Bella beautiful, but she’s one of the ugliest, revolting characters ever filmed, inside and out. Discerning moviegoers will want to avoid POOR THINGS.

Content:

(HHH, CoCoCo, FeFeFe, SoSo, ABAB, C, B, HoHo, LLL, VVV, SSS, NNN, AA, DD, MMM)

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Sordid Marxist humanist, ultimately pro-socialist, feminist take on society, including a hostility shown toward the upper class (the two men from the upper class are vain or terribly cruel), though the heroine runs into a cynical nihilist who says all people are irredeemable brutes and who believes neither religion, nor socialism, nor capitalism can change that (heroine believes the world can be improved, but she chooses to do it through godless science and socialism), but there is an interrupted wedding scene inside a church, and the movie does not attack the clergyman, and a middle aged surgeon is always talking about how science must be emotionless, but in the end, he clearly has feelings for his female Frankenstein creation with whom he’s like a father, and two women have explicit oral sex in one scene

Foul Language:
Anachronistic foul language includes about 40 obscenities (including 27 or so “f” words), two Jesus profanities and 10 light profanities including such expletives as Good God and Mother of God

Violence:
Some gruesome scenes inside a private and a public surgery room, one scene shows a surgeon opening up a man’s stomach to cut out a tumor, but he and the patient (also an expert surgeon) discover the cancer has spread, middle-aged surgeon describes how he took the brain of the child inside a recently deceased pregnant woman and placed the baby’s brain inside her head and resuscitated her (allusions to Frankenstein occur in the movie where the surgeon’s face has scars on it like it’s been torn apart and put back together, making him look like Frankenstein’s monster; he is

Sex:
Many very explicit sex scenes of men with a naïve but hedonistic white woman who runs away with one lover and ends up being a prostitute in Paris, one scene shows the woman having explicit oral sex with a black prostitute in their brothel, and they lie in bed tenderly afterwards (there’s little tenderness in the explicit scenes of heterosexual sex), the older woman running the brothel seems to come onto the younger heroine in a creepy way, and lots of frank sexual dialogue

Nudity:
Many images of full male and female nudity, many images of upper female nudity, some images of upper and rear male nudity, naïve heroine wanders a private surgery with cadavers laying around, and she curiously flicks one of the male cadaver’s private parts

Alcohol Use:
Alcohol use, woman deliberately gets drunk in one scene, lovesick man shows up drunk, lovesick man gets drunk at a gambling table aboard a ship

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
Brief smoking, and a dying man in pain from cancer says he took morphine, amphetamines and cocaine to attend his adopted daughter’s wedding to walk her down the aisle, and he says he’s always loved cocaine; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Naïve woman gives lots of money to two sailors to give to some poor people, but it’s clear the sailors are just going to take the money for themselves, naïve woman’s obsessive lover kidnaps her and takes her on a Mediterranean cruise from Lisbon to Athens (the cruise is interrupted at Paris), the lover turns to obsessive gambling when the woman starts becoming more interested in reading philosophy books (the lover has decided he truly loves the woman, but he’s a shallow rich man, the woman was shallow too until her moral conscience is awakened), and sad images of extreme poverty in one scene.

More Detail:

POOR THINGS is a quirky, but extremely obscene, atheist, feminist satire of western society, with a story about a mad scientist who reanimates a female suicide victim’s body with her own child’s brain who agrees to marry a mild-mannered young doctor but then agrees to travel with a slightly older, hedonistic wealthy man to sow her wild oats. POOR THINGS promotes a Marxist, humanist, socialist, feminist brand of hedonism and is one of the most obscene, blasphemous, abhorrent, and disgusting movies ever released by a major Hollywood studio.

Set sometime during the Victorian Age in London, Dr. Godwin Baker is a mad scientist who likes to create hybrid animals like duck dogs and pig goats. He hires a mild-mannered young medical student, Max McCandles, to minutely follow the progress of his newest creation, Bella, who appears to be a very awkward, naïve young woman. Godwin, whom Bella calls “God” for short, tells Max that the pregnant young woman’s corpse was brought to him, a victim of suicide (an image earlier shows the woman jumping off London Bridge into the Thames River). The woman’s brain was already too far gone, but Godwin discovered that the baby’s brain could still be revived. So, he placed the baby’s brain into the corpse’s head and brought the body to life.

Max records everything Bella does. As she starts to become more in control of herself, Max starts to fall in love with her. So, he asks Bella to marry him, and she agrees. Godwin is doubtful about such a marriage, but he thoroughly supports Bella’s freedom to do whatever she wants.

However, a slightly older, wealthy man named Duncan Wedderburn becomes smitten with Bella. He insinuates himself into her life, at first secretly. Her naivete and willingness to explore everything in life intrigues him greatly. Duncan is a cad, however, and he just wants to ravish Bella’s body. He invites her on a journey to explore the world and becomes his lover. Bella agrees to this but reminds Duncan that she will eventually return to Max and marry him. Again, Godwin supports Bella’s freedom to do what she wants, and Max lets Duncan take Bella away with him to Lisbon.

The rest of the movie, until the third act, explores Bella’s relationship with Duncan. Eventually, even Duncan becomes so smitten with Bella that he wants to marry her, but she refuses. Bella’s refusal drives Duncan mad. Things come to a head between them when Bella naively gives away all the money Duncan brought with him and won at a ship’s casino.

POOR THINGS is a sordid Marxist, feminist, humanist hedonistic ordeal. In fact, if you cut out all the obscene dialogue, sex scenes and nudity in POOR THINGS, this 141 minute movie would probably clock in at only half that. Thus, scene for scene, POOR THINGS stands as one of the most obscene major motion pictures released by Hollywood that MOVIEGUIDE® has covered. POOR THINGS is also one of the most abhorrent, disgusting, immoral, inane movies ever made. It promotes Marxism, atheism, socialism, hedonism, and the kind of feminism that turns women into sexual objects while claiming to “liberate” them from the strictures of a corrupt “patriarchal” society. Eventually, Bella becomes a prostitute at a brothel in Paris until she decides she’s bored with the lifestyle. So, in the “feminism” promoted by the filmmakers, it’s perfectly fine for women to sell their bodies for money, so long as they don’t get bored. Also, at one point during her stay at the Paris brothel, Bella decides to engage in a lesbian rendezvous with one of the other female prostitutes whom she’s befriended.

POOR THINGS is also an attack on the British class system, from a Marxist, socialist viewpoint. Besides Duncan, there’s another evil wealthy man who tries to hurt Bella. Bella turns the tables on both men, but not before they do her some harm.

One final thing. Max says Bella is beautiful, and Duncan later says she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. However, the way that the camera people, hair stylists and makeup artists have photographed Bella is not really beautiful at all. It’s hard to take a movie seriously when the dialogue doesn’t match what people clearly will see up there on the big screen.



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