That's right, it's mid-June.

June 21, 2006

A bit of a trying day emotionally today, so I’ll try to keep this relatively brief. I’m currently watching the NBC talent show judged by David Hasselhoff, “America’s Got Talent.” I swore I’d never watch shows of this ilk, but the Hasselhoff got me—yeah, I haven’t felt this guilty for watching a show since “The Littlest Groom.” Anyway, movies.

Monday afternoon, I ventured to the Broadway (Mall) Multiplex for a double feature of “The Lake House” and “3 Fast 3 Furious.” In short, “The Lake House” was somewhat entertaining but not quite what I had hoped for, and not as bad as most seemed to have thought. For those of you don’t know, the movie is a romance with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves and the ridiculous plot involves a magic mailbox that allows them to send letters to each other even though they’re living two years apart. Yeah. There’s definitely some charming moments and some niceties to be had, but the tone is kinda sorta all wrong. Given the sweetness of the story and general plot turns, the tone is pretty consistently dour and had me prepping for a depressing ending (no, of course there isn’t one). The whole movie has a gloomy feel to it, and on top of that, there are a few characters that should’ve been cut entirely (Christopher Plummer, Shohreh Aghdashloo) and just seemed to pad out the extremely thin storyline. I was surprisingly a fan of this movie’s trailer and was all set to release my inner girl and go for it, but—while it’s not a total wash—it’s a bit of a disappointment.

As for “3 Fast 3 Furious,” well…. I don’t know if it was exclusively the movie, or the barrage of obnoxious, loud preteens who frequent the fucking Broadway Mall, but I didn’t make it to the 30-minute mark of this thing. I saw no Vin Diesel, I didn’t even see any “drifting.” I left during co-star Bow Wow’s first scene, so I can’t really evaluate his performance. Look, this whole series has been idiotic, I know, but I just couldn’t bear to slog all the way through this one. I despised the first one, but I found #2 tolerable. This one just had so many things I either shook my head at or laughed at in the first 20 minutes alone: 1) Lucas Black is supposed to be a 17-year-old 2) The judge sentences him to move to Tokyo instead of jail 3) Title card reads “Tokyo, Japan.” As opposed to “Tokyo, Germany”? They obviously know how stupid the people going to this movie are. 4) As stupid as the first two were, they at least had the bullshit undercover-cop storylines going for them. This one just seems like a moronic, irresponsible advertisement for teens to drag race. I honestly can’t wait for the first idiot to get killed street racing while attempting “drifting.”

And finally, yesterday, I worked a screening for “Waist Deep” (or as I like to call it, “The Second Movie in a row where Larenz Tate dies in the passenger seat of a car after being shot”) for work. As I’m sure you know, “Waist” is the latest exploitation opus starring Tyrese and The Game. The screening was good times, I got to meet some pretty major press, so that was exciting, but on to the movie. It’ s already getting trashed exonerably in every review I’ve read so far, but barring the ridiculous, hilarious ending, it’s pretty good for what it is—an excessively violent, fun, shoot-em-up gangsta movie. I’ve read that it brings back an offensive genre that completely warranted dying out, but I’ve actually missed this kind of movie (call me a stereotyper and/or a racist if you must)—I’m a “Juice” fan, I admit. No one would call this a “good” movie, and like I said, the ending is HILARIOUS (it almost seems like a parody of a tacked-on happy ending), but I was never bored, in pain, or annoyed at this thing, and I think those who like this type of movie will enjoy it. Oh, and Tyrese spends the whole movie in a sweaty tank top for those who enjoy that type of thing.Tomorrow night, I'll be checking out the midnight screening of Adam Sandler's "Click," and I'll try to post a one or two sentence reaction to it before I go to bad, and a longer critique on Friday or Saturday.