| Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only an error to be exposed. -- H.L. Menken | ||||
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The Road To El Dorado
 Kex Bonus: The Road To El Dorado:  In spite of rumors to the contrary, Kex is not old enough to have actually seen any of the old Bob Hope/ Bing Crosby road pictures in their first run. But as an avid fan of movies in general, I have seen all of them, at least once. For the uninitiated, Hope and Crosby play a couple of ner-do-well con men in search of one big score in life, and consequently go globe-trotting all over the world in search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Their quests took them to such locales as Zanzibar, Morocco and many other exotic places where they had equally exotic adventures. A couple of decades ago, plans were in the works for one final road picture, reuniting the aging duo one more time for a final road picture to be entitled The Road to Eternity. Unfortunately, Crosby spoiled the plans by personally setting out on his own road to eternity, consequently any plans for further road movies seemed to be on the shelf permanently. Then again, nothing in Hollywood is really permanent. Just about every imaginable late 50's and early 60's TV show either has been, or sometime in the future will be made into a full length movie. This trend has surfaced mostly because 1. There is absolutely no apparent capacity in Hollywood these days to actually unleash an original idea, and 2. Apparently the folks in Tinseltown don't think that the predominatley under-30 movie going crowd has yet tired of all the 60's TV they can digest on Nick-At-Night. Consequently, after Jeff Katzenburg left (got is ass kicked out of?) Disney Studios, one of his first projects upon arriving at Dreamworks was an animated revival of the Hope/Crosby road pictures entitled The Road To El Dorado. The film is much in the traditional road picture flair, with the two main characters, Miguel (voiced by Kenneth Braugh) and Tulio (voiced by Kevin Kline) being inept but basically loveable confidence men. The duo accidentally stows away aboard a ship under the command of the evil Cortez, who is heading to the New World in search of gold. Far be it from Kex to get off on a side track, but if there was ever a guy in history who could have used a good publicity agent, it was Cortez. Here is a guy who hired himself a crew, hopped on a couple of creaky ships, and set out across a broad and dangerous ocean to find gold for his king and country. Personally I think the guy was a bit of a savage myself, but its not like he could have refused the King's commission. Anyway, Miguel and Tulio escape Cortez, only to nearly perish adrift in the ocean. But as fortune would have it, they land on a paradise island, where they encounter a friendly group of natives who are in possession of obsene quantities of gold. Naturally, the natives believe Tulio and Miguel to be gods, so the duo find themselves with an opportunity to take home undreamed wealth, if only they can figure out a way to get back to Spain. The logical inconsistancies of the movie begin to glare forth as soon as Miguel and Tulio arrive in the New World. First of all, the natives all speak English (or Spanish, whatever the two con men speak) so there is no communications problem. Further, the natives take on that long and well established human characteristic of being trusting and friendly to outsiders. We know that kind of thing happens a lot in history. Of course, the natives believe the newcomers to be gods, which in itself is remarkable. The duo happens to land on one island in which a couple of shady white guys are worshipped. The tribe's chief (Edward James Olmos) is naturally a friendly and tolerant sort, who is only too willing to hand over most of his power and authority to a couple of strangers. But not everone in the village is convinced that Tulio and Miguel are gods. The first to see through them is a young and beautiful village girl, Chel (Rosie Perez) who sees them for what they are. But rather than challenging them, demonstrating an allegiance to her people, she wants in on the scam. The village priest, Tzehel Kan (Armand Assante) is also suspicious of the duo, and apparently fears losing his power. Consequently, he makes numerous failed attempts to expose the duo. Quick note: If you want to know who the bad guy is in an animated movie, listen for someone who's last name is Kan or Khan. Events come to a crisis when eventually Cortez and his men arrive, and Miguel and Tulio must face a critical decision: They can help the tribe by throwing Cortez off the track, but that would mean sacrificing their own riches, or they can attempt to escape before he arrives. Naturally Miguel and Tulio surrender to their good natures, and help out the tribe. The movie ends as all road movies do, with the duo rueing what is lost, but already looking ahead to a new adventure. Yes, its true that Kex is not old enough to date back to the original road pictures, but I have been around long enough to witness at least one startling social transformation. Back in my carefree and quieter high school and college days, Elton John was a pop performer whose name envoked considerable controversy, particularly among the generation who had achieved my present chronological stature. Here we are most of 3 decades later, and John has become so mainstream that he is now doing soundtracks for children's movies and singing at state funerals. It all kind of makes you wonder what Marilyn Manson is going to be up to in 3 decades. For all its problems and logical lapses, Road To Eldorado is basically fun and entertaining. Afterall, its a children's movie, so we put up with a certain surrender of logic. While much of it is unquestionably aimed at children, there is a fair dose of humor adults will appreciate, most of which will go over the children's heads (fortunately). For animated fare, its worth a look. Last Week: The Count of Monte Cristo:  Before we get started this week, I want to issue an appropriate warning to all the Kexkateers. If I get any more emails requesting that I review the upcoming Brittany Spears movie, the senders will have their email addies blocked from my box for one year. I'd rather pound 8 inch nails through my feet and tie my wang to the rear of an eastcoast-bound Greyhound bus than see a Brittany Spears movie. Well, at least unless there is a reasonable prospect of her getting naked. The only new movie of note opening this week was the new Nicole Kidman flick, Birthday Girl. I wouldn't have seen that even if it were entitled Birthday Suit Girl. As the regular readers are well aware, I'm always as pleased to gander at a beautiful naked female as the next guy, but Nicole Kidman just doesn't qualify. I saw her au natureal in Eyes Wide Shut and it was not a pleasant experience. In fact, it darned near took jaws-of-life to pry my eyes wide open again. Originally it was my intent to review I am Sam this week, but I was discouraged by what I had read about it. Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing anything Michelle Pfeiffer appears in, but this movie sounded pretty bad. From what I can gather the essential message is, even "normal" people often make bad parents, so why not give a caring, mentally challenged person a shot? Yes, and since the flight engineers at JPL messed up the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Landing missions, maybe they should have given the guy who cleans the toilets a shot at it. So, The Count of Monte Cristo won out instead. At the risk of sounding excessively overegoistic right out of the gates, this movie seemed to be trying so hard not to give me any particular ammunition to hate it that it didn't really give anyone else a chance to love it. Maybe the problem was that its just all too familiar. The work of Alexander Dumas has now been adapted to the silver screen over 100 times, and it seems like this story accounts for 86 of them all by itself. This really should have been just about the shortest story in history, especially since the plot was twisted from the book slightly so that Fernand Mondego (Guy Pearce) could be Edmund Dantes' (Jim Caviezel) lifelong friend. Dantes and Mondego are returning from a trade mission, where they were forced to put ashore on the island where Napoleon is being held captive, because their captain is ill. Napoleon gives Dantes a confidential letter, which Dantes promises to deliver believing its of a personal nature. In fact, it contains details for an escape plan. This allows Mondego to set Dantes up, mostly because Mondego wants to steal away Dantes' fiance, Mercedes (Dagmara Dominczyk). Now, here is where the story should have been a lot shorter. Once Dantes returned to Marseilles, all Mercedes probably had to say was, "Edmund love, did you know that Mondego was hitting on me?" and in reply, Dantes would say, "Forsoothe, my dear, and worry not, for I shall go hither and kick his scrawny ass." End of story. Alas, Dantes is an idiot, and Mondego succeeds in getting him arrested and sent to a horrible prison known as Ile D'If because the French can't come up with colorful names like "Shithole Island." Edmund is locked alone in a dank, dark cell for 5 years, then things take a turn for the worse. An aged priest played by Richard Harris tunnels into his cell by mistake. Edmund promises to help him finish tunnel out, if the Priest agrees to teach him things like economics and science. That was a good plan, because the Priest would have been able to teach him lots of interesting things, like how the sun goes around the earth and poverty is the saintly life. After about 6 more years in prison, the duo nearly tunnel out, but we are so sick of the Priests sanctrimonious jabbering that we are hoping that Edmund will bash him into the afterlife with a rock. But it doesn't happen. Instead, the Priest dies, and Edmund escapes by trading places with him in the body bag. I was pretty glad, because if I'd of had to endure one more minute of prison scenes or Harris, I would have started to try to tunnel out of the theater. The Priest left Dantes a secret map of a treasure on Monte Cristo island, where apparently the accountants and executives of Enron, and Neil Bush hid their loot. That enables Dantes to go back to France where no one recognizes him, and exact revenge on everyone who got him sent to prison. Okay, I won't go off on the Enron thing. I mean, so what if the company and its officers jointly paid less taxes than a Denny's busboy. And so what if they encouraged employees and investors to keep buying stock, even when they knew they were freefalling towards the tank. And so what if they had already bought off every Republican in elected office in the country, including the President? Its not like anyone got a blowjob or something. Anyway, Dantes gets his revenge, gets his woman back, and rediscovers God, who had to have been really thrilled with his revenge antics. Then again, I guess we are talking about the same God I've read about in the Bible who smited entire countries because one guy dissed him. But if he is really there, why did I have to endure this movie? Last Week: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: Turn on your television. See all that crap? Sally Jesse, Geraldo, and the king of schlock himself, Jerry Springer? No matter how low these individuals would seem to have dragged the culture of entertainment, they are not the progenators of our deterioration. No, folks, they are only the bastard step-children. To root out the true author of the disintegration of good taste, you must travel back a few decades, and there lurks the frightening spectre of a harmless looking little buffoon. But don't be fooled by appearances. Chuck Barris may look harmless enough, but as you peer at him, before you stands the man who weaved the handbasket we now occupy on our relentless fall toward perdition. The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, The $1.98 Beauty Show, The Gong Show...all the creations of this one evil genious. Its not that television was a bastion of intellect before Chuck Barris. No, things were already bad enough. But there were limits. There were standards developed by the broadcasters themselves; it was "The Televison Code," a self imposed list of rules that broadcasters would not cross. There was the powerful F.C.C. who reserved the right to revoke the broadcasting licenses of stations, or even networks who crossed their own line. To the best of my knowledge, things never actually came to that, because the broadcasters actually respected the limits. Some might call it censorship, but there is a fine line between presenting something for the sheer sake of being bold and cutting edge, and backing away simply because airing certain things is just wrong. Or there used to be. Then along came Chuck Barris. He didn't pry the door open. No folks, he used nuclear weapons. There is no such thing as the "Broadcasters Code" anymore. The only rule in broadcasting, be it TV or radio these days is simple: If there is a potential audience, and somebody with money to back the project, you can get in on the air. Now here we stand, half a step away from tossing whoever we don't like this week to the lions on national TV in the name of entertainment. But there is a note of good news in all this, and director George Clooney presented it to us in his film, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Chuck Barris' own entertainment excesses drove him so far off the deep end that he developed delusions that when he wasn't making schlocky game shows, he was a hit man for the CIA. Yeah right. Sam Rockwell gives a dead-on performance of Barris, mastering many of his mannerisms, and even giving a passable rendition of some of his voice inflections. Unfortunately he also spends a lot of the movie naked. I didn't need to see that. Its not like Rockwell is much to look at, and I'm not much of a fan of naked men anyway. But since he is portraying Barris, whom no one really wants to see naked, the whole concept becomes even more nauseating. Drew Barrymore plays the female lead Penny, Barris' longtime lover and eventual wife. There are a lot of problems with that bit of casting. First of all, its still impossible to see Barrymore without thinking of her bouncing on Tom Green. That mental picture is sufficient to cause me to start hurling up mystery meat I ate back in 5th grade. Now we see her getting it on with Barrymore/Barris, and that isn't exactly a step up. How many bad mental images are we supposed to stomache everytime we see her. And its not like she can act. She plays every scene with a sort of clueless grin on her face, even when she is supposed to be wrenching up emotional pain. I kept hoping somebody would ram a hot fireplace poker up her ass just so we could see her portray something resembling the true agony she was supposed to be feeling. George Clooney and Julia Roberts also had roles in the film, as covert CIA operatives. Roberts looked a lot like a wannabe Carmen Sandiego, only with a gigantic mouth. Clooney looked like he wasn't entirely comfortable in front of the camera this time around, but at least he kept his pants on. I was pretty happy about that. I'm not sure exactly what Barris is doing these days, but I know he did work as a technical advisor on this film. I have also been informed that he is working on a sequel to the autobiography upon which this film is based. Maybe it will be called Confessions of a Nutcase Who Really Wasn't A CIA Hitman. Frankly I don't care, but at least Barris is dealing with a lot of demons, and frankly he deserves it after all he subjected us too, and all that grew out of it. We can only hope that Jerry Springer has a similar future in store. Sally Jesse? Hey Sally, didn't you used to "entertain" foreign dignitaries for your country? Just a thought. On the other hand, as I walked out of the theater hoping that no one would recognize me, one thing did occur to me. Maybe this whole thing is one last pantsing of America at the hands of ole Chucky. Afterall, the first three letters of the word "confession" ARE "con." Last Week: Miracle: Life is never worse off as the result of the daily addition of a little suspense. It is one of the truly vital spices. Unfortunately, in many cases, our modern world is entirely lacking in it. There are some things that we are so sure of we can almost set our watches by their occurance. Will George W. Bush tell the American people some ridiculously unconvincing, bald-faced lie about the war in Iraq today? (Yes) Will the anchors and commentators at Fox News spend most of the broadcast day kissing the administration's ass? (Yes) Will Microsoft release a product today that actually works the way it is supposed to? (No) Will Kex resist the temptation in this week's movie review to remind his collective readership what a Bozo George W. Bush is? (No) But while suspense is generally a good thing, that keeps our lives interesting, sometimes a good story can utterly lack suspense and still be thoroughly entertaining. This is especially true if the story in question is unusually compelling in nature, and the story tellers are reasonably gifted at their craft. In February of 1980 I was attending to advanced scholarly pursuits , and didn't have a lot of time to pay attention to the Winter Olympics. In fact, to this day I still don't pay a hell of a lot of attention to the Winter Olympics. I probably spend less attention to them now than I did then, if that is possible. The winter games just don't offer a lot of events that appeal to me. I've spent a good portion of my life in Colorado, but I've never been on skis. I don't give a crap about skiing. I don't like driving in the snow. I don't like playing in the snow, and I have no interest whatsoever in strapping pieces of fiberglass to my feet and taking my chances sliding down a mountain. So skiing doesn't hold the slightest appeal to me. If the only choices I had on TV on a given day were to watch skiing or soccer, I'd unplug the damned thing for 3 months until baseball season started. Bobsledding is a little fun to watch, but let's face it: It doesn't require a whole lot of athletic skill. You could train to be a competitive bobsled racer in Winchell's. The close cousin to bobsled racing is a weird event called luge, in which some moron pulls on a scuba suit, straps a piece of wood to his butt and slides down a bobsled track on his back. That is just insane. Have you ever met anyone who is a competitive luge racer? (No) That is because they keep those guys locked up and carefully guarded. Figure skating blows. Okay, it requires a great deal of skill, and there is a sort of artistic beauty to it. But it isn't a sport. In Kex's Amazing World, any pursuit that requires subjective evaluation to establish the level of performance isn't a sport. That is more like a job review. How do I know that the cute iceskater out there didn't just give the French judge a hummer? Isn't it a little possible that the Canadian's judge's score might have been shaded a bit by this afternoon's visit with his best buddy, Jack Daniels? No, sports require that the winner score the most goals or runs or touchdowns or whatever. There are damned few real sports in the Winter Olympics, and the only one that interests me is ice hockey. I really like hockey. So I paid some attention to it back in 1980, because the young American team was doing pretty well. Still, it was a forgone conclusion that the Soviets were going to win the gold medal. The Soviets were a thinly veiled professional team that kicked ass on the best the NHL had to offer. So when the young American team faced them in the first game of the medal round, the outcome was not in doubt. Then suspense came into the picture. The American team, which had been pounded purple by the Soviet team just days before the opening of the Olympic games pulled off the greatest upset in the history of sports. The game was tape delayed for TV broadcast purposes, but I remember the thrill when I heard the outcome a few hours before the broadcast. The whole nation erupted in celebration, although only about 10% of the populace had ever seen a hockey game. After the upset of the mighty Red Army team, the U.S. won their final game two days later, and claimed the gold medal. It was an unprecedented accomplishment. A TV movie called Miracle On Ice starring Karl Malden was made a few months later. Then we all went on with our lives, and years rolled by. The magnificent accomplishment of the 1980 U.S. hockey team faded into a footnote of history. But the Disney people have revived the story in Miracle, a more detailed and excellent account of the story. We've all seen way too many fictional sports movies about underdogs who make good. They are pretty popular in the cinematic realm, but this one shines because its true. It also shines because it is an outstanding movie. And with so much of the country shivering in the cold, its an excellent weekend to go out and catch this flick. It'll definitely warm your heart, if nothing else. Last Week: Because of Winn-Dixie: If the place you live looks anything like the crappy little town in which this movie is set, yooooouuuuu might be a redneck! Wait. There is no doubt about it. That would definitely qualify you as a redneck, no two ways about it. India-Opal Bologna (Annsophia Robb ) is a little girl with some serious problems in her life that go well beyond her name. But since that one is so obvious, lets go ahead and get it out of our system. Its sing along time gang, so lets all do the obvious joke together: Pitchpipe-hmmmmmmmmm. (Sing) My bologna has a first name, Its I-N-D-I-A! If you have to go through the formative years of your life with a name like India-Opal Bologna, yooooooouuuuu might be a redneck. Again, there isn't any "might" about it. Its no wonder that our little girl protagonist is dealing with some really deep self actualization issues. When she gets older, she can change the first name I guess. The last name, she is going to be stuck with a bit longer unless she decides to get married at 14. All things considered, that isn't a bad bet. Afterall, she is being forced to grow up in one horse town: No, actually its more of a horse manure town in the south. Her father (Jeff Daniels) is a stick up the ass preacher, and her mother deserted the two of them when Opal was about 3. I've never seen a more likely recipe for future rebellious teen pregnancy at age 12. The only serious obstacle that young Opal is going to have to overcome to fulfill her obvious destiny is the lack of a male sibling, or first cousins living nearby. Anyway, Opal and her dad move to this pathetic little town somewhere in Florida, because he is assigned to the local church. The town is such a dump that it doesn't actually have a building to house the church, so an empty convience store serves the purpose. Opal is seriously depressed because she had to leave all of her friends behind, and there are very few children her age in the crappy new town. In fact, as close as I could tell, there were three. One was a bitter young girl whose brother drowned the previous year, although she was such a little witch we wondered if she weren't responsible. The other two were a pair of twin boys. One of them seemed moderately sane, while the other was the classic evil twin who will undoubtedly make headlines about a decade into the future in a news story that involves a bell tower and a high powered rifle. Things are looking pretty bleak for Opal until a stray dog mysteriously shows up in the crappy little town. He begins to lead her on a series of adventures that introduces her to a host of messed up people who inhabit the town with her. First, there is the ex-con (Dave Matthews) who runs the local petstore. Its not immediately obvious why a town this small can even support a pet store, but Opal gives herself a job helping him run it so that she can afford a collar for her dog, now named Winn-Dixie. We learn that he got sent to prison some years before for beating up a policeman who tried to take away his guitar. After hearing him sing, we sympathize with the cop. Opal meets the local librarian (Eva Marie Saint), an old lady who spends her days snoozing at the desk because nobody ever checks out books. We find out that she is a decendant of the man who used to run the candy factory that once supported the town. When it closed, apparently the town pretty much crashed and the few people that didn't leave went into a collective fit of depression. Finally, Winn-Dixie leads Opal to meet an elderly, lonely, and nearly blind black lady (Cicely Tyson), who just needs some companionship. Through the efforts of Opal and Winn-Dixie, all of these people are brought together to ease their lonliness, although they are still stuck in the crappiest little town in America, so nothing really improved all that much by my way of thinking. Still, this is a good family movie with a little bit of substance, and at least a plotline that we haven't seen 10 times at the theater the past year. Very young children probably won't enjoy it all that much, but ages six and up will probably find it entertaining. The plot is sufficiently interesting to keep the attention of adults as well. Last Week: Ice Age 2: The Meltdown: After seeing this film, I can hardly wait for Ice Age 3: The Mass Extinction. Okay, it wasn't by any means a terrible movie. It wasn't even a particularly bad movie. Then again, it wasn't last time either, and at this point, we address the fundamental problem. There wasn't anything original to hang your hat on here. Show these two movies together, side by side, and I'll bet that 90% of the people who have seen both of them couldn't tell you which is which. Personally, I'm just not that wild about spending money to see the same movie twice, unless I do it intentionally. Stop and consider for a moment...if you were going to make a movie about a talking mammoth, would Ray Romano be your first choice for a voice? Would he be one of your first 10 choices? I don't think so either. That bothered me in the first film, but there were enough other things going on to distract me from thinking much about it. This time, the film did not have the benefit of originality going for it. Sure, there were a couple of new characters. The major one was another mammoth voiced by Queen Latifa. But she wasn't really a new character. She just took the place of the little human child that the intrepid trio was trying to return to his parents in the first film. The writers tried to throw in a little twist. It seems that the she mammoth was adopted by opposums when she was just a mammoth tyke, and now she thinks she is an opposum. That is a big leap from a human baby that bonds with the mammoth, sabre toothed tiger and sloth that try to take him home. It must have taken hours to work through that construction. This film was directed by Carlos Saldanha, who's previous film credits include directing the first Ice Age movie, last year's animated film Robots, and this one. He also did some sort of visual effects for The Fight Club. I'm not sure exactly what it takes to "direct" an animated film. Its not like you can push the emotional range of the characters, or criticisize them for missing their marks. So just what is Saldanha really pulling a paycheck for? The guess here is that his position is mostly ceremonial, and he can pick up the Oscar if any of his films ever win one. But my suspicion remains that if he were put into a live action film where he actually had to direct the action, the man would amply demonstrate that he probably couldn't direct shit to stink. So, what was the point of this whole exercise? Well, all the animals are noticing that the ice is melting, and somehow or another, a couple of buzzards make them aware that the dam that is holding back the ocean is going to break in a couple of days. So if the animals can't make it to higher ground, the buzzards are going to have a feast. Its not immediately apparent why the buzzards would have bothered to send out the warning, considering its not really in their best interests. And if somewhere in the proceedings, there might have been an opportunity to make a relevant statement about our own world, even if only adults would be savy enough to catch it, the people responsible for the film passed on the opportunity to make a statement. The graphics in the film are really quite amazing, if anything, superior to the original, which was excellent in its own right. But making the same film, just to make it look a little better is a flimsy reason for the production. People who enjoyed the first one will probably like this one as well, its just that there isn't an overwhelming reason to see it, at least not until it is available in rental. As with the original, the best part of the film were the antics of Scrat, ever in pursuit of his elusive acorn. But since his screentime is intersperced between scenes of the main action, we are frequently left wishing that he was the star of the show, and the rest of the cast peppered in as filler. Ice Age 2 just didn't melt my heart. Last Week: Ratatouille: Okay. Enough already. A cartoon about a rat that likes to cook. What the heck is next? A movie about a seagull that enjoys selling Avon? Look, if we are out of ideas, let's just come forward, admit it and not dig any deeper into esoterica. Hold your horses there Kextateers. The word was "esoterica, not "erotica." I could hear some of you giggling and getting excited. There are 6,173 people on the planet that truly enjoy cooking. There are 147 people on the planet that actually like rats, and they are all weird. That makes a population of 3 people who both enjoy cooking and don't mind rats. Not a promising fan base for a film. Well, I have a small confession to make. I don't entirely dislike rats. In fact, I have had pet rats. If properly handled from a young age, they can actually make pretty good pets. However, even my acquired tolerance for them does not make me a rat enthusiast. It just improves their potential ranking as compared to other possibilites. For example, next to snakes, rats are definitely the people's choice. They also rank above earthworms, lice and sea monkeys. Seamonkeys? Yes. Has anyone out there ever managed to get those damned little critters to live more than 2 days? I haven't, and for some lame reason or another, I've tried a couple times. Here is the biggest lie in the universe...well, second biggest after that WMD in Iraq business. "If your seamonkeys die, just let all the water evaporate, and add new water, and your little pets will spring back to life!" Or some b.s. to that effect. You know what happens if you actually try that? Nothing. All that does happen is that you end up with a new cup of briny water filled with seamonkey eggs that didn't hatch the first time around, and zero possibility that they are going to hatch the second time either. What kind of morons do they think we are? Well, shucks...I guess they already know we are enormous morons if we buy seamonkeys in the first place. They are shrimp, and they don't even remotely resemble those kinda cute creatures on the label of the package you bought them in. And if you are stupid enough to actually believe you can make some sort of entertaining pet out of a creature at the absolute pit bottom of the food chain, I guess you must be pretty much of an imbecile. So I don't think I'm going to get suckered 3 times. Maybe I'll go out and buy some of those triops though.... Oh, yeah...the movie review. So this filthy disgusting little sewer rat wants to be a great chef. He befriends some loser kid who just happens to be the bastard child of a famous dead chef, and the heir to his restaurant. So the rat helps the kid become a famous chef in his own right, and helps him take over the restaurant. Doesn't sound like much of a basis for a plot there, right? Right. There definitely isn't enough there for a 2 hour movie, and thus becomes not just a butt numbing experience for adults, but absolutely excruciating for the young fry. Okay, this movie is getting tons of critical plaudits, and is doing great at the box-office. Big whoop. It's a movie about a cooking rat. It looks great and it's so damned hot out that people are dizzy enough to think that the new Bruce Willis movie is pretty good. Right now I think half the people in Denver would pay big bucks to watch Paris Hilton pick her nose for two hours as long as it was in an air-conditioned room. Oh, btw, for those of you who dropped by expecting a review of Sicko, check back in a couple of days. There will be a special bonus review this week, since this one was a bit late. | |||
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