Monday, November 15, 2004

Movie Roundup

This weekend's movie roundup: We didn't make it out to see The Incredibles, but we did watch a couple of DVDs.

Around the World in 80 Days - This was the recent version, with Jackie Chan as Passepartout. Enjoyable fluff. Jackie Chan still stages some of the best martial arts scenes around. Here, he uncharacteristically includes some "wire work", but it is relatively unobtrusive: Rather than the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sort of flying trapeze routines, Chan uses wires to allow his stunt people (and himself) to do impractical, and even unlikely things, but not quite physically impossible things.

The Day After Tomorrow - A real howler; an uproarious comedy, although I don't think they meant it as one. Still, it's hard to believe they weren't giggling when they not only introduced Cancer Boy as a serious character, but just to kick the pathos up a notch, made him blind. And reading Peter Pan, no less (well, not reading exactly, since he's going blind, but "remember[ing] the story from the pictures" he can just barely see). And that's without even getting into the ludicrous "science" behind the story. I'll just point out the not-very-prominant credit at the end, saying the story was inspired by a book co-written by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, two utter nutjobs who ought to stick to their more credible stories, like being abducted by little grey aliens.

2 comments:

Kwik2Jujj said...

IMHO, the best part of The Day After Tomorrow was when I went to the restroom. The overland sledding party was in peril with a "redshirt" hanging by a rope over a forty-foot drop into a shopping mall. Seemed like a good time to take a break.

Four urinals down from my moviegoing cohort in the restroom, I mock-yelled "THE MOVIE'S SUCKING REALLY BAD! WHAT SHOULD WE DO?"

When we re-entered the theater, it was subliminally noted that there was one person missing from the sledding party, but nobody cared. I did wonder though why the party chose to take a huge looping detour, going miles out of their way and out into the ocean. They apparently knew that the director needed a shot of them near the Statue of Liberty. Ridiculous.

Unknown said...

I wondered the same thing, about that sightseeing trip past the Statue of Liberty.

I wouldn't have wanted to sit through it in a theater, but I got plenty of enjoyment watching it at home, and relentlessly mocking it in a DIY-MST3King. It really astounds me that anyone could have mistaken it for anything even remotely like real environmental science.