The Avengers

Tyler and I went and joined the bandwagon masses in seeing The Avengers on Saturday night.


And I do mean masses...when you're in the habit of behaving like an elderly married couple, you forget that Saturday night is a night that people actually go out. Between the parking in Old Mill District for the Tenacious D concert that was happening just over the hill in the amphitheater and the standard Saturday night hooligans, parking was interesting and so was the line for the movie theater. Ah, well.



The synopsis is as follows: "...The Super Hero team up of a lifetime, featuring iconic Marvel Super Heroes Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins..."

 Does anyone else see an overloaded lineup as a recipe for mass confusion?


Every single one of these super heroes had their own movie...so now we're going to mash them all together and not expect them to be all overwhelming? Even on the big screen?


I'm sorry. Let's reverse.


Tyler and I went to see The Avengers on Saturday night. My expectations were understandably low, as (a) it's a Marvel movie and two out of every three Marvel movies are flops and (b) the preview was entirely pyrotechnical CGI. But it bid to be a decent movie for the big screen on a Saturday night.


Unfortunately, it held true to expectations.


When I go to see a movie, unless I am made clearly aware that it's a part of a series and I'm the idiot who saw number 3 before seeing numbers 1 and 2, I want the entire plot to be standalone. Self-sufficient. Fully internally supported. With Avengers, I spent most of the movie thinking to myself that clearly, I missed something and had been expected to shell out to see all of the other supposedly standalone Marvel movies featuring the characters listed above in order to make heads or tails of certain plot insinuations, relationships and where the hell the villain Loki came from and why the hell aliens are invading the planet using a scifi thingamajig that came from an unknown place.


Because again, I didn't see any of the other movies.


Well, that's not true, I saw Ironman, both of them, so I know who Robert Downey, Jr.'s character is and his relationship with Scarlett Johanssen's character (Black Widow). But the Black Widow's relationship with Hawkeye is only sort of kind of explained in a backwards itty bitty sorta way, and who really knows where everyone else came from. And when did Super Heroes suddenly become involved with Norse demi-gods (Thor and Loki) one of which has some unexplained, random vendetta against the planet and brings unexplained aliens to conquer it?


So issue one, to review, is that the plot makes no sense.


You know what? I'm going to stop with that. Most everything else was decent. It was midly funny, Ironman took the cake for coolest and pretty much stole the spotlight in true Tony Stark style. Which is good, because he carried the movie. But no matter.


We're moving on. If you've seen The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man 1 & 2, and whatever movie features the Black Widow and Hawkeye, then you'll love The Avengers. If you haven't, you should probably catch up on those before you catch the flick.

Footloose 2011

I have a staunch dislike for remakes of perfectly good classics for the most part. There is always room to be pleasantly surprised in that area, however rarely that it occurs.  Take for instance, the iconic classic of Kevin Bacon in the original Footloose. I can never watch a movie with him in it without recalling the David Bowie tie and poorly crafted accent, not to mention the infamous dance and his revolution that he brought to the town of Bomont.

 I am aware that this review is late in the making, but it took me a while to build up the courage to watch the remake of such a timeless movie. Well...timeless for girls like me who love their dancing!

Like the original, the movie was light on plot, wary of acting talent, but heavy on the dancing. The makers tried to bring the movie into an era where teenagers were no longer conceived in the 80s, pumping the music but keeping some things true to form and old school.  For instance, what teenybopper of this day and age actually knows what a drive in movie theater is? Or would recognize the movie's first big dance scene (outside of the intro, that is) as being at that particular location? But that's besides the point. Perhaps they were trying to make the movie accessible both to new lovers of the movie and to the old. Who knows.

Other than the Kenny Wormald's abysmal accent that tended more Aussie than Bostonian (I mean really, Ben Affleck did a better job at a Boston accent), and Julianne Hough's poor timing, the only shining acting was from vet Dennis Quaid. But a lot can be said for an actor who was willing to delve into so many different projects, even if most were flops, an actor who can work with original CGI elements like he did in Dragonheart must be up to snuff. 

Luckily the movie had a couple good one-liners (most notably, "it's line dancing...it's a white man's wet dream" and "I think its sexier than socks on a rooster") and of course, the dancing and the music of Kenny Loggins to make up for the lack of everything else.

I suppose though, the original was probably also lacking in those areas, only it's iconic cult following has made it memorable and somehow always better.