One Day

The cleverness of this story is that it takes place on a single day, July 15, over several years.  It charts the relationship between Emma Morely (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) as they grow from twenty-somethings to forty-somethings, try to figure out what to do with their lives, and wonder if they will end up together or not.  It’s based on the book of the same name by David Nichols.

I didn’t really care for the book, so I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t really love the movie, either.  It’s not a terrible film or an awful story, it’s just that I don’t really like the characters, and I don’t really care whether Emma and Dexter are happy or not because I think they’re both kind of selfish and immature jerks.  The movie adaptation made them slightly more likeable by omitting some of the less-than-flattering storylines, but it’s still a story about two people who may or may not get together.  Who cares?  If that’s the way you want to spend a Saturday afternoon, fine, it won’t hurt you, but there’s really nothing very compelling, thought-provoking, or insightful here.

Anne's accent could have used a LOT more work. It was pretty bad, too nasal, and it came and went.

At one point, Dexter’s sickly mother tells her son,

“I know that you’re going to be a good person, kind, loving, good…but I don’t think you’re there yet.  And I worry that you’re not very nice anymore.”

She’s right.  At this point in his life Dexter is hosting a cheesy late-night television show, partying and drinking every night.  He does, eventually, grow up and become a ‘good person’, more responsible at least, less of a drunken mess.  But it isn’t because he’s striving for any particular standard or facing and actively overcoming his shortcomings, it’s just because he gets…older.  How utterly uninspiring.

Dex: "I'd still like to read those poems. What rhymes with Dexter?" Em: "Prick. It's a half-rhyme."

Maybe some people find this story incredibly romantic, that two people who have been “just friends” for years but always carried a flame for each other might one day get together at last.  But I just found it annoying.  Dexter is a pig, admitting:

“I do fancy you.  The problem is I pretty much fancy everyone!”

This come shortly after he makes fun of her modesty, when she is reluctant to skinny dip with him.

“You’re such a prude!  Why are you such a prude?”

What a guy.  Emma, for some reason, continues to hold out hope.  At first I sympathized with her, but after a while I wanted to shake her and ask why she insisted on pining over this guy who is clearly not worth it for so many years.  I get that you can’t always help who you like.  I get that she had feelings for him and they kinda-sorta dated once.  I don’t get why I’m supposed to think it’s a good idea to keep clinging to memories and dreams from the past, over a guy no less, instead of moving on.  Do I sound like I’m not a romantic?  I’m sorry, I think there’s a place for romance, but I’m pretty sure we serve a God who asks that we not let our passions rule our lives.  At least find something constructive to do instead of sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.

This story can’t even be used as an example of Romans 8:28, which says “And we know that in all things God works for the good…” because the rest of the verse continues “…of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose.”  There’s no purpose-ing going on in these jokers’ lives at all, much less God’s.  They’re not even “waiting” for each other, they each get involved with other people that they don’t really like as much because…who knows.  Because they can’t be bothered to hold out?  Because it isn’t a movie about self-control or striving for anything?

Maybe I’m being too hard on this movie.  I’ll end with a semi-positive, but it’s a spoiler, so don’t read past this picture if you don’t want to know how it ends..

"I love you Dexter, so much...I just don't like you anymore." -Emma

***SPOILER ALERT***  After Emma dies, Dexter and his widower father share the following exchange:

 “I don’t want a heart-to-heart, do you?  Except to say, that I think the best thing that you could do, would be to try to live your life as if Emma were still here.”–Dad

“ I don’t think I can.”–Dexter

“‘Course you can.  What do you think I’ve been doing for the past 10 years?”—Dad

I guess in a way that’s similar to the way that Christians should be living out their lives aware of an invisible presence, always trying to do what God wants us to even if it doesn’t always seem like he’s tangibly “here”.  ***END SPOILER***

It’s not terrible, but it’s annoying enough that watching this movie was One Day of my life that I won’t be reliving.

Cars 2

The best part, by far, was the Toy Story short at the beginning.  I feel a little bad saying that I hated this movie, because I know it’s a very popular franchise, aimed at kids, with some sort of positive moral.  I want to support Hollywood’s efforts to continue producing family-friendly fare.  But I don’t think that has to be done at the expense of good storytelling.  Pixar movies are usually all-around high quality, but this time it feels like they should have taken the script in for a tune-up or two before racing into theaters.

The original Cars movie worked a little better as a car-populated universe because they were confined to normal car settings; racetracks, highways, gas stations, car shops.  The second movie gets global and introduces a series of spy cars, equipped with all sorts of gadgets to help conduct their spy business.  It just feels a little ridiculous.  I mean, James Bond has an awesome car.  But he doesn’t drive it all the time.  It’s not very intuitive to lower a vehicle on four cables into a warehouse to spy on the cars below, and then have to drive yourself back across the cables, or drive up a wall with magnetic wheels, or drive it over roofs.  I’m sure kids won’t be bothered by it, and it’s probably not any more unrealistic than a talking car to begin with, but to me it felt like the story was stretching too far beyond the natural boundaries of such a universe.  I rolled my eyes so much I was nearly dizzy.

Much of the eye-rolling came courtesy of one Tow Mater, who is certainly the central figure of this sequel.  If your kid is a Lightning McQueen fan, they may be disappointed by how little screen time he gets.  Mater demonstrates what a well-meaning idiot he is over and over and over again.  McQueen starts out being embarrassed by him, but brings him along on his overseas tour, where he is really embarrassed, then Mater messes up McQueen’s race.  Next, Mater gets caught up with the spies and is bumbling his way across Europe.  Then he finds out everyone sees him as an idiot, and has flashbacks to all the bumbling idiot episodes in case we forgot what we just saw not forty five minutes ago.  We get it!  He’s an idiot.  Personally, I don’t find ignorance that hilarious.

A lot of the dialogue feels very poorly set up.  It’s like one person wrote the important speeches, when characters fight or little lessons are preached, and somebody else took their work and said, okay, let’s stick that one there, and this one here.  They don’t flow well.

The primary theme is about friendship, (although I think really the primary theme was about having a Cars sequel.)  After disowning his friend, McQueen receives the following advice from some Italian cars:

“It’s okay to fight. Everybody fights now and then, but you’d better make up fast.  No fight is more important than friendship…He who find a friend, find a treasure.”

That’s a pretty simplistic statement, that no fight is more important than friendship, but it is a good message for children.  The Bible tells us not to let the sun go down on our anger (Ephesians 4:26), it says to settle disputes quickly and as a priority over offering sacrifices (Matthew 5:23-26).  It says that we should live peacefully with everyone, if possible (Romans 12:18).  But it’s not always possible.  And sometimes maintaining our convictions, or refusing to compromise God’s mandates, might be more important than staying “friends” with somebody.  Jesus promised that if we live as he has shown us, we’ll have some haters, (John 15:18-25).  That’s pretty complicated, and doesn’t fit into a nice kid-friendly platitude.  The Cars 2 message isn’t bad, it just isn’t a good substitute for Sunday School.

The secondary message to this movie is, Big Oil is bad, alternative fuels are the obvious solution, and cars with inefficient gas mileage and unreliable parts are “losers.”  That last part, in a human-populated world, might be just a statement about energy efficiency, but remember, in this universe, the cars are people.  So it is essentially saying, if you came with faulty parts, you’re a loser.  Haha, why didn’t you pick a better factory to be manufactured in, loser! (Or are the cars “born”?  It isn’t really explained).  They’re the bad guys, so it’s easy to write them off, but this subtle message is not a healthy one.  It encourages mocking the misfortune of others, and doesn’t suggest that people can change and improve themselves.  One character haughtily states, “Once Big Oil, always Big Oil,” justifying a mistrust in a car that had purportedly switched to green fuel.  Good grief, even Twilight features vampires that strive against their human-eating nature to better themselves.  Come on, Cars 2, you’re getting morally out-done by a hormonal teen romance franchise!

Verdict: It’s fine.  Not great, not terrible.  The man sitting behind me guffawed loudly every ninety seconds or so, so apparently some adults will thoroughly enjoy it.  But not me.  If I had kids, I would rather wait for this to come out on DVD and let them watch it while I get other things done, because it was so tedious for me to sit through in the theater.  I might issue this film a citation for driving below the minimum speed entertainment limit.

My favorite part: the Queen Elizabeth and Prince William cars.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Well, it was pretty much what i expected.  The highest compliment I can give this movie is to say that it isn’t terrible.  It’s mindless summer entertainment, built around explosions and cool mid-air CGI transformations, (some of them inserted into recycled footage), rather than any sort of plot or character development.  You could totally go to the bathroom at any point during this movie and not miss anything important. My husband remarked that a lot of the dialogue sounded like video game blurbs; somewhat random, generic “let’s go fight!” or “here’s what we need to do next” instructions.  (To see my raw notes, including a lot of bad lines, click here.)

Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is a whiny college grad looking for a job.  Maybe some of us can relate to the job-hunting part.  And maybe some of us were incredibly irritated at having to watch him complain for the first twenty minutes about how he doesn’t have an awesome job or car, being jealous and angry with his girlfriend (I’m just going to go ahead and refer to her as Sex Symbol, which is an accurate description of her role), and not appreciating that she is supportive.  He feels like he deserves so much more than he has. He keeps trying to remind people that he’s a hero, and he has a presidential medal to prove it.

He’s ungrateful and unwilling to humble himself.  And even though he ends up taking a less-than-desirable job for about a day, he doesn’t ever exemplify the Biblical work ethic, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,” (Colossians 3:23).  He could also stand to take a lesson from a true hero that will be exemplified on the big screen in a week, when Deathly Hallows comes out.  If you’ve read the books, you know who I’m talking about.  A hero that is never thanked or praised, and who remains silently steadfast anyway.  (I can’t wait!)

Anyway, this movie has really, really, bad writing.  That makes it harder to analyze, because it doesn’t really have much of a purposeful message or any consistency.  It doesn’t even stick with the themes it brings up at the beginning; many of them aren’t resolved.  Does Sam end up getting the recognition and job he feels like he deserves, or does he learn to accept his position and stop being so annoying?  I couldn’t tell you.  But that isn’t the only thing that’s unclear at the end.  **SPOILER ALERT**  So when their planet goes away, do the Decepticons just give up, or die?  It appears to be resolved, but is it? How? I thought they still outnumbered the Autobots, because they beamed a whole bunch of them in, and if the destruction of the home planet destroyed them why don’t the Autobots also die?  Whatever. Explosions! Something vague about America and freedom! **END SPOILER**

I would say the worst thing about this movie message-wise is the sexism. The camera consistently ogles Sex Symbol, (it doesn’t even pan up to her face until she’s been onscreen almost a full minute, lingering instead on her pantless legs and backside.)  She’s perpetually dressed in tiny tight clothing and heels, while Power Woman (head of National Security, I think) is an ice queen who hates to be addressed respectfully as ma’am, (because, like, how can a woman be in such a powerful position if she’s actually, you know, womanly?)  Also, Sam’s mom is a complete idiot.  So there are your choices for female representation in this film.  Thank you, director Michael Bay.  To be fair, a lot of the male characters are also flat and stereotypical. I mean, I didn’t even like Sam!  He’s just whiny and arrogant.  This is a terrible movie character-wise in general!  My husband said, “Well, it’s about the Transformers, primarily. The people are just to set the story up,” but I didn’t feel like Optimus, Sentinel or Megatron were fleshed out (haha) any better than their human counterparts.  Their relationships are told through dialogue rather than shown.

I guess Optimus is kind of a good role model, because he is committed to defending the humans and their planet when he doesn’t have to be, just because his mentor “taught me that all creatures deserve to be free,” but I didn’t find him compelling.  His motivation isn’t really clear, he doesn’t get any character development, he’s just the good guy so he does expected good guy things. **SPOILER ALERT** Except for the part where he just flat-out kills Sentinel, his supposed mentor and beloved long-lost leader, who admittedly turned bad but is now literally begging “Optimus, no!”  I think, again, it’s just poor writing.  It’s easier to kill him and end the scene than introduce complexity, compassion, a discussion about how he could be rehabilitated or what a just punishment should be.  I guess he did betray the Autobots, but still…it seemed like a cruel moment for Optimus.  **END SPOILER**

So, to sum up, this movie is about entertainment, and not story.  Oh, I almost forgot; it’s also about revisionist history lessons, and Transformer-related conspiracy theories regarding the Apollo 11 moon mission and the Chernobyl disaster.  Real-life astronaut Buzz Aldrin makes an appearance as himself, so apparently he is not as offended by this fictionalized version of history as the ones who say he never went to the moon.  (He once punched a guy for saying that).

I can’t even think of a clever line to end this with.  That’s how little content is actually in this movie.

Does anybody see a decent script lying around? Anyone?