Reeling

And now for the most seemingly unambitious summer resolution you've ever heard: I'm going to watch 100 movies this summer. I know. No, calm down. Please. I know. I'll be okay, don't worry about me.

Summer technically began for me on May 8th so I have between then and sometime in early September to watch 100 films--aaaaalmost a movie a day. Very little leeway here. This could be the feel good story of the season. Do NOT be surprised if it comes up on your daily news ticker. It's a human interest story, and people can dig that, right?

Admittedly I'm cheating a little to get myself off the ground. I saw a movie about a week before school ended so I'm counting that as first on my list. Since then I've watched two more so I'm up to three.

I want to dedicate a lot of my blog to the movies, music, and books I come across to (hopefully) generate some conversation because I love talking about media, both good and bad. That, of course, explains the name I chose here which, interestingly enough, is the element that snagged me about a month ago the first time I tried to start a blog to escape responsibility--I couldn't think of anything interesting to title it. Today I said to myself, "Forget it. Just get on with it."

So, without further adieu, this, although technically my second entry, is effectively my first:

#1: Observe and Report


























Had I devised my summer cinema goal prior to seeing this movie I might never have decided upon the endeavor at all. I briefly lost my taste for film after this.

I consider myself pretty accepting when it comes to movies and I try to find something redeeming in everything. I won't say there was nothing redeeming about this. The end alone (I won't give it away) was enough to at least intrigue me.

I think Seth Rogen is a likable guy. There are some comedic actors (Dane Cook comes to mind) who give off the sense that they are actually struggling to hold back laughing at their own cleverness. That sort of self-satisfied, the world is crazy but I'm not comedy is really hard to attach yourself to. I never got that from Seth Rogen. He seems like a genuine guy with a strong sense of what he finds funny. I don't really enjoy his humor, but I appreciate what he does.

Having said that, Van Helsing remains the worst movie I've ever seen in theaters. This challenged that distinction. It's not that the film was bad per se, but it was a bad mix of dark comedy and slapstick comedy: the depressing tone of a dark comedy with the over-the-top delivery of slapstick. The two naturally oppose each other. Dark comedy has to be deadpan to work. Wes Anderson fans can appreciate this. If you've ever seen The Life Aquatic (my personal favorite movie) you hardly need to hear the line Billy Murray is delivering to realize it's funny; his character delivers everything he says with such intense certitude that you know nothing could be that serious. Every character in that movie took him or herself too seriously, and that's what made it so hilarious.

The problem here is you have the darkness of a delusional mall cop posited against a silly drunken mother. You have an asshole police officer fighting for control over the tone of the film with a caricature of a minority character whose ridiculous accent was clearly supposed to be a punchline in and of itself. Fans of dark comedy won't find the humor sardonic enough, but fans of slapstick will get dragged down by the depression in the film. And there's no character to sympathize with, so viewers have no personal stake in the film.

I think it was the guys at www.theonion.com writing for A/V club who mentioned that this movie seems to be Seth Rogen's Cable Guy--a stretch from the comfort zone after a series of very successful films. I haven't heard much about the critical reception of the movie, but I know that so many of the jokes fell flat. I wanted to laugh, but I realized three quarters of the way through in the theater that I had not laughed once because I was searching for the point of the movie. Whatever the reason may have been, no one else in the theater could be heard laughing, either. I know dark comedies aren't always looking for that big old LOL, I'm just not convinced this is a dark comedy. I hope for Mr. Rogen's sake that his next film seeks to capture the charming immaturity that is his forte.