No Reservations

I saw the sneak preview of No Reservations last night, the Catherine Zeta-Jones romantic comedy. I love sneak previews. I especially love filling out the little surveys they pass out. I imagine there's a statistician somewhere at Nielsen Media Research who looks at my form and dismisses it as a statistical aberration.

One of the question was: How many movies have you seen in a theater in the last 2 months? And the choices are: 1, 2, 3 to 5, 6 or more. It only goes up to six? That's less than a movie a week!!! I answered "6 or more", but then wrote "30+" on the side :-)

Then it asked: Which of the following movies have you seen in a theater? Followed by a list of a dozen or so movies. I checked all but one (I never saw "The Lake House").

Hairspray

When a teenage female dancer on a Baltimore TV dance show needs to take an unexpected 9-month break, a local chubby girl gets her big chance. Her name is Tracy. She's always been a little kooky, even a bit crazy, but after seeing her at the audition, one might say she's a maniac... maniac on the floor... and she's dancing like she's never danced before... and it shows.

Warning: This is a musical. Very musical. If you don't like musicals, you won't like this movie. Don't let the girlfriend convince you otherwise, stick to your guns and insist on seeing Die Hard.

But I, for one, love musicals. I like Die Hard too, mind you. I'm still a guy.

Although, I have to admit, I probably should have averted my eyes during the Christopher Walken / John Transvolta love ballad duet... nightmares will result, I'm sure. On the up side, Amanda Bynes is very adorable as Tracy's best friend, Penny.

The social context of this movie might be hard for the younger generation of today to understand. The very idea that America was once filled with such intolerance will seem so foreign to them. Because, as we all know, teenagers today accept each other as they are, without judgment or prejudice. Just the other day, I heard one of them say "Racism is totally Gay".

Hairy Pouter and the Other Phonies

The Ministry of Mage-ick thinks Hairy is crazy because he says VowelDeMart is coming to kill them all. So at the first excuse, they kick him out of that PigZits school where he's been wasting his time for the last four years. But before he can go "Woohoo! No school!" he's abducted by Serious Bloke, Remus Loopy, and the other phonies. He's taken to a half-way-between-other-houses house where he is reunited with his friends Hormonee GrandHer and Wrong Weasely.

Then Hairy is put on witch-trial for having used magic illegally. DumbBellDoor defends him and convinces the Ministry to let him go back to school, but the Ministry insists on appointing DullOrElse Ummm...Bridge to the faculty. I thought she was the most reasonable person in the whole movie. She's in charge of hundreds of emotionally unstable teenagers and she forbids them to use their highly unpredictable and deadly magical abilities. Seems pretty darn reasonable to me!

First day at school, Hairy meets Loony LoveOfGod. She's cute and all, but you can tell she's not playing with a full tarot deck. She's gonna end up a member of Hairy's cult of magic dabblers. They meet in a secret room where they do all sorts of things to each other, but only Hairy gets to first base with some Asian girl. He must not have been a good kisser because the Asian girl betrays them and tells DullOrElse where the secret room is.

Hairy and his friends go to a crystal ball warehouse where they fight a bunch of bad guys. Guess what happens to the crystal balls. The phonies show up to help but they're still losing. It takes DumbBellDoor to show up and save Hairy, yet again. He's pretty sad that his friend Serious Bloke is dead, but I'm sure he'll get over it before the next movie: Hairy Pouter and the Half-Breed Prince.

Ratatouille

It's not "wattatoowee", it's "Ratatouille"!

Roll the "R" and don't add an "ee" at the end. Now was that so hard?

Other than that, the movie's very good. Great for kids.

Transformers

I've seen it 3 times in 4 days. What does that tell ya? Other than I'm a nerd.

My favourite line: "You've failed me yet again, Starscream!!!". Ahhh... nothing like the classics.

You Kill Me

Ben Kingsley is an AA member, "Alcoholic Assassins", that is. His drinking is getting in the way of his talent at killing people. Luckily, he's made a few new friends who are trying to help him stop drinking. Including a new girlfriend, Téa Leoni. She dates him because "she doesn't want to be alone". Granted, she's not as young as she used to be, still, I'm sure she could do better.