Wall-E is appropriate for all ages. It’s old school cartoon cuteness with Pixar’s eye candy visuals. It’s also completely lacking in subtlety about the message. If you are uptight, looking for something to complain about, don’t believe in global warming and are unconcerned about how humans destroy the Earth, don’t go see Wall-E. Everyone else, take the family and feel the warm fuzzies you felt when Lady and Tramp shared spaghetti. When the camera pans the trash piles, pay close attention to what you see. There are Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. items in the piles and in Wall-E’s collection. I wonder if Michael Crawford knew he was going to have a major role in this movie?
Get Smart surprised me. I expected non-stop stupidity. I thought the main character would be a doofus. The movie was actually laugh out loud funny. The tv series is everywhere in the new movie, but most of it blends so seamlessly that people who never saw Don Adams will not even notice it. The characters are likable and the age difference between the leads is completely forgivable because of the background stories. Steve Carell is easy to love, but when he smiles at a potential dance partner and tells her it will be fun, he won the heart of every woman in the audience. I liked this one so much that I’m sending Tommy and his grandfather to watch it. They are going to looove it. The very best lines in the movie come from Alan Arkin, especially after a car chase and a close encounter with a swordfish. Go see Get Smart and frolic in the silliness.
Prince Caspian was good, but it felt like a children’s movie when it could have been so much more. It’s too scary for small children and too bland for older children. The 15-y-o’s in our group all thought the centaurs were silly, but they liked watching Ben Barnes. Wait for the DVD on this one.
I love going to see movies at the drive-in. It is a much more relaxed, social environment than a regular movie theater. Everyone arrives early to set-up camps. Chairs, blankets, coolers and toys are organized while adults mingle with their neighbors for the evening. Children control the area between the screen and the cars. Girls perform unison cartwheels and handstands while boys throw footballs and tackle each other. Small children giggle and run freely under the watchful eyes of every person there. The back rows are avoided by everyone except the teenagers. The equipment is not modern and the food is not for careful dieters, but nobody cares. For that frozen moment in time, it is a happy car town.
The doomsday clock is counting down toward the end of the Midtown Drive-In in Harriman, Tennessee. In less than 5 years, the theater will be put out of business by the hospital that is being built next door. Hospitals have bright lights that glow all night. The only lighting that drive-ins need are the sparkling stars in the sky over your head. Last weekend, we even had a shooting star to enhance the atmosphere. Sometimes in life, you only recognize in retrospect the moments that were sweet and priceless. Every time we spend an evening at the drive-in, we smile at each other and know that this IS one of the good times. This summer, spend one evening at the drive-in with your family. In the blink of an eye, the drive-ins will be gone and your children will be grown.
This afternoon, Granny babysat for the youngest children and Granddaddy took the rest of us to see Iron Man. It seems like Granny always has to sit out the movie outings, but it really is her preference. See, Granny has some form of movie narcolepsy that causes her to fall asleep whenever she sits down to watch a movie. She has had it for as long as I can remember. When we were little, she would sit down with the best of intentions and be snoring fifteen minutes into it. My youngest brother, who used to be the poster boy for impish mischievousness, would slither from his seat to the floor. Once he made it to the floor, he would disappear and reappear several rows away, like a gopher on a golf course. The middle brother and I had a choice. Ignore the escapee until Helen Reddy was singing again or wake our mother to report the delinquent. Waking our mother was a gamble, because she didn’t care if Kermit was walking on those strange looking legs and was likely to send me to fetch the giggling gopher. When VCRs became a fixture in every home, my mother rejoiced. It may take her three or four tries, but now she sees the entire movie. We don’t even put popcorn in her hair any more.
I don’t need to review Iron Man when everyone else has already sung the praises of this latest comic book movie. Critics would have liked less screen time devoted to the creation of the suit while everyone else just enjoyed the movie. The people who sat through the entire long, long credits ALL looked like they spend more than a little time sitting at a computer. When the shadowy figure on the screen spoke, the audience actually squealed with glee at the recognition of the easily identifiable voice. Noah was a little confused at the excitement of several audience members. “So, there’s gonna be another movie with Iron Man?” Oh, Noah, this is the ERA of the comic book movie. The comic book geeks of yesterday are today’s movie audience. Instead of being the oddballs who wore pointy ears instead of playing sports, we are being wooed by movie studios. They pull us in with the nostalgia of familiar characters, but they capture us by making the stories about our mid-life anxieties. The fuzzy line between the good guys and the bad guys, the flawed and damaged characters and the absence of easy plot resolutions all make the fictional superheroes completely real. Comic book movies are a flight of fantasy and a visit to the therapist’s couch all at the same time. The previews were unmemorable except for one. I had goosebumps during the preview for The Dark Knight. I love summer movie season.
“Mom, guess when Iron Man is in the theater? May 2nd!”
“You know what? Iron Man.”
“May 2nd. Iron Man.”
“Guess where I wanna be May 2nd? Iron Man!”
“Don’t forget Iron Man starts May 2nd.”
“I don’t want to wait for my birthday to see Iron Man.”
“Do we have Iron Man tickets yet?”
“Iron Man. Iron Man. Iron Man.”
That’s all from yesterday. I wonder if Noah wants to go see Iron Man?
I once described Evan as very much like the little boy in Elizabethtown, but nobody saw that movie so it’s a bad point of reference. What if I said he’s a lot like the boy in Catch and Release? Did anyone but me see that one? I can’t explain why, but I really like Catch and Release. No, it’s not just because of the groovy way they filmed the sex scene or the fact that Kevin Smith is charming when he’s not Silent. I can’t get Doug to watch it though. He’s too busy. He’s not too busy to watch 20 minutes of Platoon or The Rock every time he walks by the tv, he’s just too busy for a chick flick. Also, everyone is twittering about it now, but why didn’t anyone tell me that Enchanted is so cute? Just once, I’d like to see people randomly break out into song and dance. Wouldn’t the world be a happier place with more dancing? I could easily write a thesis using Enchanted as my topic’s springboard. On the other hand, Across the Universe is a truly terrible movie, but if you consider each song separately, like MTV in the 80s, it actually has two or three good videos. I have one last movie thought. I know that I had to read Beowulf when I was in high school, but either I didn’t try or my teacher missed the boat on how to capture my attention. Either way, I know the teacher didn’t draw parallels between Beowulf and modern politicians. I suspect we had some Baptist-censored version that added to the confusion. The movie was certainly a lot more fun than the archaic written version we had to read. Angelina’s full frontal is anatomically just like the angels in Dogma, so why not let high schoolers watch it? Beowulf’s target audience is teenage gamers and single adults who still live with their parents isn’t it?
Over the weekend, I cashed in our Blingo tickets and took the girls to see Horton Hears a Who. It was sweet and completely appropriate for small children. Sarah giggled when they drifted into the anime sequence and Amy giggled when she recognized characters. I wasn’t distracted by the celebrities behind the voices as I am in some cartoons (Oswald). Just one change would have made it the perfect children’s movie. Surely, someone could have written a children’s song for the finale. Something children could sing and enjoy. What 50-year-old decided that an REO Speedwagon song was a good way to end an otherwise charming little movie? So very, very wrong.
Except for WALL-E, the previews for children’s movies this summer was one long Abigail Breslin commercial.
Late nights, I like to crawl in bed and watch old movies. Old is a relative term since it is no longer used to categorize black and white movies from generations before mine. It now applies to movies that were in the theater when I was old enough to be working in the theater. Last night I turned on “Class” to do some geezin’ about my misspent youth. Aside from the joy of baby faced celebrities when they were just becoming famous, the movie has an undercurrent of rebelling against authority. It’s also cheesier than my children’s pizza, but that’s not the point. The students push, push, push authority in the movie and the consequences are absent. I know it’s popular to complain about how today’s children are undisciplined and horrible, but I beg to differ. Things that my parents’ generation ignored, frowned and wrote off to adolescent rebellion are now acts that will get you arrested. When I was in middle school, there was a girl who kept herself safe by being the class bully. While the rest of the middle schoolers tormented each other, nobody messed with this girl. One day on the bus, she pounced me. Just walked up and started beating my face into the floor of the bus. The bus driver stopped the bus and pulled her off of me. He put her off the bus at a stop that wasn’t hers and she never rode the bus again. I don’t know how she got to school, but she certainly didn’t get a mini-vacation 3-day suspension. I was never questioned by anyone and my parents were never told. I did get to claim her spot in the backseat of the bus next to a cute boy whose name I can’t remember any more. If that incident happened today, the girl and I would have both been arrested and had to appear in juvenile court. We would have spent days at home watching tv instead of going to school. Our parents would have had mountains of papers to sign and hours of meetings to attend. Of course, the bus driver would have lost his job and been sued by the other girl’s parents. I was a more active delinquent by the time I got to high school. I wasn’t bad. I just pushed as hard as I could against authority. Somewhere along the way, probably under Reagan, we gave more and more of our freedoms away in exchange for less personal responsibility. Apparently it came with a memory eraser that prevents adults from remembering anything but a shiny, clean Disneyland-ish adolescence.
Brad Renfro wasn’t included in the Oscars memoriam segment. Had he fallen behind on his membership dues? Somebody pay the dues and let his legacy be remembered for his accomplishments. Also, if Hollywood won’t do it, movie fans need to “mute the memoriam” instead of listening to the applause-a-rama of popularity. Let’s show some respect.
Last night, Doug, Tommy and I went to see Cloverfield with LissaKay and Rich. I knew what to expect going in and I am not a scary movie fan, so I liked it and I didn’t like it. I know everyone else loooves the way it ends, but I didn’t. I am still processing the whole terrorism symbolism and 9/11 references. I can’t hate a movie that sparks a flame in the burning embers of our collective subconscious. Much more effective than the government’s pro-war sponsored movies. You know who really disliked Cloverfield? Tommy. I don’t know if it was the shaky camera, the loud sounds of destruction or the tension of anticipating the next attack that unsettled Tommy. Tommy left the theater for a break, came back and finally, left and stayed out. I went looking for him and ended up calling his cell phone because he was nowhere to be found. He was hiding in a bathroom stall. No more scary movies for Tommy. Also, I don’t want to give anything away, but there is nothing creepier than camel crickets. Ick, ick, ick.
The last movie we saw with Lissa and Rich was Sweeney Todd. I think it’s time to break this pattern of movies in which everyone dies. Don’t they make funny movies any more? Upcoming movie thoughts:
Eager to see - Star Trek, The Savages, Horton Hears a Who, Prince Caspian
Haven’t decided if theater or DVD - The Spiderwick Chronicles, Charlie Bartlett, Indiana Jones 4, Hancock
Wait for DVD - Iron Man, Leatherheads, Mummy 4, anything with Will Ferrell
No way - The Eye, One Missed Call, HellBoy 2, In the Name of the King, First Sunday, The Orphanage, There Will Be Blood, The Ruins, Funny Games, The Game Plan, Untraceable, Rambo, Meet the Spartans, 10,000 BC, anything with a professional athlete turned actor
I think all movies should have a pointless musical number halfway through the movie. If a musical doesn’t fit, how about a flashback for everyone who wasn’t paying attention. Can’t do that either? Then put an old fashioned intermission in there, because those buckets of beverage make it impossible to sit through a movie. Since I hate Doug’s ideas of disposable seat cushions, catheters and potty seats in the theater, how about a bathroom stall with a one-way mirror in the back of the theater? No more asking “what did I miss” after that dash to the restroom. To keep the drunks, delinquents and overly amorous from abusing the “special stall” it could be a members only privilege. Or, maybe I should just wait until everything comes out on DVD to see it. One of the cable channels ran “The 40-year-old Virgin” over and over again Christmas week. Since I had never seen it, every time I disappeared to do some wrapping, I watched a little bit of it. Doug thought I had lost my mind. “Whatcha doin?” “Wrapping and watching Steve Carell.” “Again?” Maybe Wedding Crashers or Knocked Up will be next Christmas’s movie. I heard they were popular.
