"Year One" and "Whatever Works" and "Food, Inc" and "Away We Go"

I don't want to keep writing about the films I've been going to see, but it's probably the only thing Micah and I have been doing that is at all worth writing about. Unless, of course, there is some interest in a play-by-play of yesterday's most disorganized water fight, or the delicious pizza we had after that.

But I want to record my impressions of these films. I skipped Away We Go when it came to blog posts because I liked it and felt that there was nothing more to say. But I still don't like Dave Eggers, and it's important to know why. But I don't know why. So, I'll leave it at that.

Year One- Did anybody else see the clear Apocalypto spoof throughout? The hunt at the beginning? The capture of the entire village? Slavery in a big city? Religious sacrifice? In any case, it was one of the few things worth paying attention to even thought it wasn't particularly well-done.

Food, Inc- Predictably, it made me want to change my eating habits, but I am a coward. I also don't have the means to do as much as I would like to. And also, it's hard to give up things like Cheez-its because they seem harmless, but they're not. And, the biggest message that the film conveyed was that you can hardly get away from the McDonalds of the world if you don't grow all of your own food because big fast food chains are also big buyers of produce which means that they control the market. I'm not making myself very easy to follow, but the point is that evn lettuce that we buy is McDonald's-controlled lettuce in a way.

Whatever Works- Larry David doesn't act. He plays Larry David with Woody Allen's preoccupations. All other parts are enjoyable.

I ate healthier food in Downer

Today, I had a bagel slathered in butter, half a mug of juice, and a bowl of ramen. For dinner, I might eat a hot pocket.
Yesterday wasn't any better.

"The Hangover"

# 126 on IMDB's Top 200. Reviewers on the website describe it as "truly, hilariously, funny" and "The tale of how three friends tries to find the lost groom before his wedding after their crazy night in Las Vegas. The movie gets funny from the Las Vegas part right till the end. There is hilarious stuff in every other scene. Not to be missed, one of the best comedy of 2009."

But ALL OF THIS IS A LIE. There are barely words that can describe my distaste for the people in that theater who laughed uproariously at the most disgusting and stupid things for over an hour and a half. In the film, Phil (played by a greasy Bradley Cooper) sets out to give his friend Doug the best bachelor party on the face of the planet by taking him to Las Vegas. We know from the first scene that the night has gone horribly wrong because Phil is calling Doug's fiance to fess up to something. The rest of the film takes place as one long flashback that skips the actual bachelor party bit in order to mimic the effects of a certain drug (a Forget-Me-Now if you will) which forces the characters to piece together the events that led up to Doug's disappearance. That's it. And in the end, the men are rewarded for their behaviors in a number of ways- I think I'll just go ahead and spoil it. Stu (Ed Helms) gets the courage to stand up to his controlling girlfriend, Alan (Zach Galifianakis) gains partial acceptance from Phil who after a night of debauchery funded by money stolen from his elementary school students gets to come home to a loving wife and son while Doug is forgiven at the altar for being sunburned and late to his wedding with absolutely no explanation. Everything about the wrap-up scene at the end smells of the horrors of Broland. It is okay to break up with your girlfriend if she doesn't want you to marry a stripper. It is okay to steal from kids to pay for gambling and strippers as long as you cover your own child's ears when a friend swears. The bachelor party is a man's due payment for putting up with marriage for the rest of his life. That logic is not once challenged throughout this film because every problem is solved through the ingenuity of the alpha male who has all the answers. They even win a total of over 160,000 dollars in the course of less than 48 hours! Perfect night, bros.

This, of course, just barely scratches the surface of what is wrong with the entire set up of this comedy. After Doug, Phil, Alan, and Stu take their first shot of Jager where one of the characters says, "this reminds me of college." I find it hard to believe that these guys ever left.

I'll just leave you with the memorable quotes page from IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1119646/quotes

First

Good morning friends scattered in the Midwest. And kind of the East if you don't count Michigan as part of the Midwest which maybe I don't.

I got a new watchband, and the man who helped me at the swatch store was okay if not a little pushy, and I tricked Micah into walking all the way to his house from the Penguin Store, but it ended up being worse for me because I had terrible walking shoes on.

On a completely unrelated note, Star Trek was great. It renewed my interest in science fiction films which is probably something that wasn't diminished in the first place. There was a line in it though that was either unnecessary or poorly acted. The woman who knows a bunch of languages and works on the Enterprise was part of a discussion of what was happening with Nero (the bad guy), and either Kirk or Spock were explaining why he thought Romulus (his home planet) was destroyed, and at the end she gasped and said, "An alternate reality."

I promise I will be more interesting in the next posts.