Recaplings

Time again for inarticulate movie reviews with Jason. This time, we've got 3 movies to cover, because when everyone leaves town for the summer, there's nothing left to do but go see movies. Or stay at home eating Oreos and lying on the couch, but you can only do that for so many weeks.

Normally, these things would be spread out over a period of day, weeks, and months as I carefully mete out all my opinions like drips from a broken faucet in order to maximize my writing volume potential. But since work has picked up so much lately that I actively wonder if I will ever have the energy to post again, I'm just gonna go nuts here.

Madagascar. Jesus Christ, this was a horrible movie. I should in some way preface that, but no, it was hideous. Not funny. Not smart. Not clever. Bad soundtrack. Bad voice acting. Took what could have been a really funny premise and slammed it into the ground repeatedly until it stopped moving. And judging from the small children and myself in the theatre, we can safely say that they definitely did not catch the 8 year old mentality they were going for.

I am being overly harsh here, but since I finally took to paying full price for movies rather than continuing to pass as an imaginary student, I get personally offended by movies that take my 8 dollars and then turn out to be 90 minutes of crap surrounding 6 minutes of funny stuff.

The only possible draw to the movie was the colony of gay disco-dancing ferrets, and even they lost their allure about 10 minutes in. Everyone involved in this movie should be shot, or forced to give me my 8 dollars back.

Crash. Okay, this is an entirely different sort of ripped off, but I don't feel great about going to see this. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was an excellent, excellent movie. Well acted, full of stars, very nicely done. But at the same time, I just again, spent 8 dollars to get insanely depressed and contemplate the state of ugly racism in America. On a weekday. That's just messed up.

But totally a good movie that everyone should see. It has Ludicrous! And he acts! I mean, come on people. Any movie that can hold Sandra Bullock, Ludicrous, and Ryan Phillllllipe has to have some sort of redeeming value for every person in the world.

Oh, and there were two semi-secret reveal moments in the movie that were completely broadcast for all the world to see. One was intentional (the one with the shoe) and the other was not, but those two moments served to absolutely rivet me into the movie - both times because you know for a split second before it happens exactly what is about to go down, but you're completely helpless to stop it. Which is really good writing, I guess, to get me that invested through such subtle things.

The Longest Yard. Otherwise called, what you see at the theatre when you just show up at 10 minutes to eight looking for something, anything to watch.

I have a confession to make - I don't get Adam Sandler movies. Well, it's more that, I get them enough that I know why people think they're funny, and I understand their concept and allure, but they never strike me right. The Wedding Singer is the only one I have been able to get through multiple times, and that's such a train wreck of a fact that I can't begin to explain it. It just exists, like, in its own personal dimension where logic and common-sense have no ground.

It is safe to say that Sandler movies exist outside my sphere of caring. I know they're there, and people like them, but they are definitely not for me. The analogy has finally come to me: Adam Sandler movies are Diet Coke to me. It's there, people love it, but it complete is beyond me, for no good reason.

And we're 10 sentences out and I haven't said a word about the actual movie. It was good. Another one of those movies that I go into with such low expectations that when it turns out halfway decent I feel vindicated and very inclined to recommend it to everyone. And it had Nelly! If you can't tell, I irrationally love it when singers become actors. Nelly, Ludicrous, Mandy Moore, it doesn't matter, they're all great - it's like finding out your local librarian turns out to have secret ninja skills and fights crime at night in a costume. Well maybe not exactly like that, but you get level of strange combinations of talents I'm going for, right?

Anyways, it was cute, and pretty funny, and had its sports moments, and its touching moments, and its homoerotic subtext-and-actual-text moments, and everyone got theirs in the end, so I felt fully satisfied by the time we left the theatre.

And now from the looks of this, I recommend The Longest Yard over Crash. Which is a damnable lie! Go see Crash! Get some depressing culture in your life. Builds character and whatnot. It really was good.