Saw a number of movies this weekend, and all of them were pretty good. Firstly, there was The Simpsons Movie/Bourne Ultimatium double bill at the drive-in. Drive-ins are pretty cool, and take me back to the simpler times of my childhood. In today's environmentally conscious age, however, I believe that idling my car to recharge the battery between movies borders on irresponsibility. We opted to bring radios (which we used for the Simpsons) and then use the car for Bourne.
The Simpsons Movie is good, but not great. I haven't watched new episodes of Simpsons in over four years; I felt they'd hit a wall creatively and were bogged down with endlessly self-referential scripts. The film played like a really good episode, more along the lines of season 2-5. They could, being a movie, push the envelope a bit farther in terms of language and crudeness, but they stayed pretty tame.
The Bourne Ultimatium was very, very good. After a heavily Bourne-influenced Bond film(Casino Royale), I was curious to see where this film series, which many credit for the more serious tone in the 007 franchise, would go. It didn't get bogged down with silly and superfluous subplots or love interests, it was all out action in the best possible sense of the word.
Finally, I saw Hairspray, which left me with a bit of mixed reaction. I really liked what I saw and thought the musical numbers were fun, but something left me cold. I realized afterwards that part of what I was feeling was the realization that a lot of what made John Waters' original film so different was left out: Penny's imprisonment with the psychairst, Tracey's turn in special ed and her time in jail, the final dance off, the hair-bomb. Some of these changes are understandable - you have to cut out somethings to make room for plot; other changes just seem misguided, like having Amber's mom the station manager. Okay, it's 1962 and black people can't dance on television with white people, but a SINGLE WOMAN runs a television station? Also, the scene of her trying to seduce Tracey's dad makes no sense WHATSOEVER! The actors are good, the direction is interesting, the music is engaging, but it's strange changes like this that annoyed me. I mean overall I was pleased, but thought it could have been much better.
1 comment:
The best thing by far about "Casino Royale" was the chase on foot at the start of the movie, and yes, it does seem to have derived from the Bourne franchise. But the Bond film had character development which outstripped all three Bourne pictures together. On the other hand, I think I liked the Bourne pictures more, simply because they're all one thing, and very good at that. The latest "Die Hard" tried too hard to be about character, though the stunts were tremendous, especially taking out a helicopter with a car. That was neat. And I think there were more stunt people in the credits than for Bourne.
As to "Hairspray," I couldn't bring myself to go see it. If you'll pardon the pun, I didn't want to see the Waters diluted. The ads are telling me it's this generation's "Grease"; since my generation's "Grease" was "A Hard Day's Night" I'm not impressed.
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