The Cuckolding of Guy Ritchie

(image via Yahoo) The Independent covers Guy Ritchie, a man who, like his wife, Madonna, is well versed in the methods of reinvention. Only, while she has mastered the art, he appears to be still learning the particulars of creating a crowd-pleasing public persona: With his legs crossed nervously on a floral red sofa, Guy Ritchie looks hesitantly into the camera in an online interview for The Sun. He looks like a hostage, pleading for rescue. "Hi, I'm Guy Ritchie," he almost apologises. "I'm the - uh - writer/director of Revolver which is coming to your screens on the, uh, 22nd of September. Go and watch it because I need the money and I need to be more populaah." [...] It can't be easy, being married to the most famous woman on the planet. Especially for somebody who has always craved a pop-culture credibility of his own. But if the gender roles were reversed, you couldn't image a woman playing the same "c'mon girls, help me out here" card. Just imagine Posh Spice appealing to the sisterhood: "Please buy my album, I know it's rubbish, but I need the money and the kudos - it's very hard on me just being Mrs Beckham." What do we really know of Guy Ritchie, as an individual separate from his wife? He's a film director, yes, but we mostly think of him as "Mr. Madonna". He's received accolades for at least one film, but then, ruined that buzz by putting the notoriously untalented (as an actress) Madonna in one of his movies. Could this have been the thing that killed Guy's chances to stand on his own as a "serious" director? Or were there other things that were fated to mar his chances to shine in the film industry? His newest film, "Revolver", has not received very positive reviews : Ritchie's half-hearted SOS to cinema-goers is unlikely to help him. Seldom has so much media attention been devoted to drubbing a relatively minor movie. The critics have already labelled Revolver "a stodgy, expensive revenge movie with a pompous belief in its own brilliance". This paper's reviewer, Anthony Quinn, found the gangster film plumbed "new standards of dreadfulness". "It's convoluted past the point of rationality," wrote The Daily Telegraph's film critic. "Its boring, impenetrable, overbearing script leaves the viewer drained." The Guardian dismissed the film's director as "an overgrown public schoolboy with the worst fake hard-boy accent this side of Tim Westwood"... Ritchie has also been called out for a glaring lack of originality. It seems that it's okay to borrow an idea or a concept, as long as you take it to the next level and create something innovative with it, or make a bold statement, something that Guy has yet to achieve: Madonna has always been a magpie. She has incorporated slabs of Monroe, Dietrich, gay disco, cowboy glitter, trance and pornography into her constant reinvention. Likewise, Ritchie pilfered - with rather less wit and poise - from Tarantino and Scorsese and Fight Club's David Fincher. But when two such style-snatchers collaborate, the derivatives are compounded and image created by two people standing on the shoulders of so many is always in danger of toppling. Being married to Madonna also made Ritchie's biography a fact of public record. We found out that, rather than being the barrow boy he camped up, he was in fact the stepson of baronet Sir Michael Leighton and a descendant of King Edward I. "There's something very phoney about him," says [Nick] James. It is interesting to observe the union of a posh boy pretending to be working class, and the Michigan engineer's daughter currently trying on her best Penelope Keith act as though she were to the manor born. It's almost as if Guy, even though he carries the title of "husband to Madonna", is still nothing more than her latest "boytoy", someone she'll soon get bored of being with, as soon as she finishes molding herself into the "genteel country English wife". Will Guy Ritchie ever outshine the shadow that his wife's fame has cast him in? Or will we forever think of him as "Madonna's husband", or "the English Quentin Tarantino"? "So, Where Did It Go All Wrong for Guy Ritchie?" (The Independent)