Summer Movie Roundup

Summer Movie Round-up:

I see a lot of movies. Well, I think I see a lot of movies – compared with most people.

You know that movie quiz that’s always floating around facebook – I think I’m somewhere in the 250’s out of around 300ish movies. I probably like movies more than I admit to myself. I’m the kind of person who, when watching Grind House and hearing about that movie’s influences, goes in search of the movies that inspired it. Right after Grind House, I quickly went looking for Last House on the Left and Vanishing Point. When I was younger, I used to wander around the video store picking up classic movies and old oscar-nominated movies just so I could watch them. Does this make me some kind of expert? No. Does this make me obsessive? Kinda.

Jackie and I always feel strange when people tell us they only see a couple of movies in a theatre a year. We probably see that many in the span of a week, or at least, a couple weeks.

With that in mind, here’s what we’ve seen since Jackie’s been back for the last two weeks.

License to Wed

This movie got drubbed by the critics, and while I can understand why they might dislike it, it’s not nearly as bad as they made it seem. It’s a typical rom-com, but certainly not any worse than most typical rom-com’s. There were some decent laughs, the characters were decently acted, with maybe the small exception being Robin Williams taking it a little too far and coming off creepy instead of the desired well-meaning. Otherwise, it was a pleasant summer movie – not deep by any means – but light and reasonably funny.

Transformers

Like the above movie, this movie is basically the same thing. A high concept movie that is incredibly light on substance. This should come as no surprise – it’s a movie about talking, transforming robots based on an old Hasbro cartoon and toy line. The action was okay, although occasionally too jumpy to the point of not being able to understand what was happening. The dialogue was occasionally self-referentially hilarious and occasionally groan-inducing cheesy. Another light summer movie where you can leave your brain at home.

Pirates of the Caribbean

It’s a long movie and it’s a convoluted movie and it’s the prototypical summer spectacle movie. The story wrapped up decently, the action and stunts were fantastic. The special effects were eye-popping. I can’t say that I felt truly satisfied by the conclusion, but I wasn’t disappointed either. Adding Chow Yun Fat was also a bonus, scoring brownie points with me – although I was a little sad inside that he didn’t have a toothpick in his mouth and two guns at any point – but perhaps that’s just me not letting go of my many-year obsession with Hard Boiled.

Knocked Up

The thing I liked most about Knocked Up was the fact that I could actually picture it. With most comedies, there’s an element of suspended disbelief so that the jokes can operate freely. With Knocked Up, the scenario, the characters and especially the dialogue never seemed out of place from my everyday reality. Judd Apatow has a knack of taking an ensemble cast and letting them simply follow the wireframe script in a way that comes across refreshingly real. Characters don’t seem like they’re aching to shoot out a funny line, but instead simply say them. The way the dialogue is so fully infused with pop-culture references while still retaining that sense of real people talking is exceptional for most movies.

When one of the kids in the movies says to her aunt “I googled murder” it’s both hilarious and realistic because it seems like something a kid would do if they had access to google. When Ben starts talking about how sometimes he wishes he could change his past actions, it’s all the more amusing and seemingly real when he uses Back to the Future first as a metaphor, which then devolves straight into bad movie quotes and impressions.

Knocked Up wasn’t as consistently funny as The 40-Year Old Virgin, but that’s more attributable to the fact that it’s a different animal entirely. Knocked Up is not as slick a movie and isn’t as driven to uncover the laughs. It’s more content in finding the humorous moments between all the stress, worry, pathos, melancholy and everyday fight of life.

For this, it might not be as visceral as The 40-Year Old Virgin when sitting in the theatre, but it sticks with you a lot longer afterward.