Recovering From Grindhouse

Alright, so Grindhouse is a huge, 75 million dollar bomb, and everyone has his theory why — some say it’s too long, some say it too closely imitates the dreck of a bygone era, and some say there’s simply no substitute for the charm of actual dreck.

My own two cents: like Snakes on a Plane before it, Grindhouse is too often a one-note movie that doesn’t live up to the cleverness of its hook, in this case the brilliantly iconic “hot chick with killer leg” poster image. But whatever the reason for the film’s failure, at least one person stands to profit from it: namely, Rose McGowan as the hot chick with the killer leg.

God knows it’s been easy to dismiss Rose since her glory days as independent film’s hottest, curviest new icon with the shortest résumé. Especially in recent years, when most of those curves have been starved away. And let’s be honest: the girl’s not the strongest actress in the Hollywood stable (witness her performance in The Black Dahlia — yeesh!). But everyone has their element, and in Grindhouse Rose is undeniably in hers. No matter that the film was a flop; Rose played her role with aplomb, and enough people (well, critics) saw it to make post-Charmed Rose a more viable thing.

Of course, since that thing largely depends on Rose’s aesthetic appeal, she’d do well to lay off the coke or whatever she’s doing and try to recover some of those Doom Generation curves that got her noticed in the first place. With luck, that’ll restore her face, too, unless its present off-putting appearance (particularly around the eyes and mouth) is the result of Tara Reid-like surgery, not Kate Bosworth-like starvation. (It looks like the former, but I’m hoping it’s the latter.)