Gnomeo and Juliet

So last night, I got to see a movie on opening night for the first time ever. That movie was Gnomeo and Juliet. Obligatory SPOILER WARNING, but it’s a small one since I won’t reveal too much. You really should see it on your own.

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely hate the original Romeo and Juliet story written by Shakespeare. I think it’s absolutely stupid that a pair of 14(or was it 16?) year old kids, commit suicide because they can’t have the first person they ever had a crush on. This isn’t a story about love; it’s about the stupidity of children.

That little rant out of the way, I continue on about the movie. For those of you, who don’t know, it’s about a new rendition of Shakespeare’s Classic tale of two star-crossed lovers who are kept apart by their feuding families, portrayed by… gnomes. Rather than the Capulets and the Montagues, we have the red verses blue.

First and foremost, this movie was not as silly as I thought it would be, it’s a great deal more serious, but it is rather hilarious and much better than anticipated. It was a real treat.

Secondly, when they have a movie such as this, you often worry that the best scenes are in the commercials, and really there is a fair number, but not all of the gems are in the commercials alone, also you’re missing the context of the jokes, which make them much funnier.

Third, this one had a way better ending.

Now, from this point, I will add the mild spoiler warning, but really I won’t go too terribly into details, since I know some people prefer to be surprised, but still read reviews in order to be better informed about their choice.

We had been debating about seeing the movie in the beginning, but after several decent commercials I decided I really wanted to catch it in theaters, especially since it’d been awhile since we’d seen one in theaters and we’d been disappointed in ourselves from thinking a movie would be interesting and then waiting until video and wanting to smack ourselves because it would have been SO much better in theaters. I think it was definitely worth the money.

Now many people would go on and on about love it, hate it, and not really paint you a clear picture, so I’m going to do my best to present it to you plain and try to avoid jading. It’s a fun little family movie and though there are some off references, the whole movie is dedicated to Shakespeare’s play and they include many lines from it and even a guest appearance by the writer himself in the form of a statue. I love how they continuously pop in random quotes directly from the play, and not all the ones you’d automatically assume.

Really, my worst complaint is that the little “getting ready for our date” montage is vaguely annoying because it’s stylized and vague. I understand that they were trying to exaggerate the scenes and draw your attention to what they were doing, but the bland backgrounds, in a movie that is so brilliantly colored, is very off putting and distracting. I wish they’d improved these scenes better than they did. I have to say that often times Madam Frog (whatever her name was) gave me a bit of a headache. However, I can’t get over the terrible hilarity of the Elton John reference.

This is a movie that you would want to watch repeatedly in order to catch all of the details in the individual scenes. The scenes where they show the front of the house, and the scenes were the show the backyard, are going to be points in which I pause the movie (once it comes to DVD) and look at all the funny stuff. There is little in references and silly things like that you will want to catch and stuff you won’t notice the first time around, but it would definitely not be painful to catch a second showing.

I have to say that I LOVE the argument with Shakespeare “Everybody dies! It’s awesome!” “Your version stinks” “You don’t know art!” That’s not the actually conversation, but you get the picture. Another favorite part HAS to be the ultimate lawnmower bit, of which I can’t remember the exact name, but hey, you’ll go watch it to find out for yourself won’t you? By the way, I would TOTALLY own that Kitty Mower if I could.

Ok, now we get into the detailed, ignore this part if you want no spoilers, part.

We first see the human owners of the two yards, a pair of grumpy old people who have a blue and red home respectively and both have an endless yard full of silly yard fodder you often see with people who collect a lot of kitshy junk. Gnomeo is the Blue’s best gnome and he always pulls the best pranks and goes the extra mile. Tybalt is the Red’s meanest, gruffest gnome and always sets out to make the red’ life miserable. They both get into a race on the backs of lawn mowers to decide whose the best is, but Tybalt cheats and the blue’s mower is trashed. Blue seeks revenge, and he goes all stealth to vandalize the Red’s mower.  Meanwhile, Juliet is out to prove she’s not “delicate” and goes after a prized flower in the garden across the alley. After a botched attempt, Gnomeo and his partner in crime have to flee from Red’s yard, and Gnomeo spots the gnome ninja (Juliet) across the way. After an adorable scene involving the flower, they fall into a lake and both disguises are revealed. Juliet is horrified and runs away, but she can’t bring herself to betray him to her father. There’s a hilarious scene with her friend the frog fountain. I don’t want to go into much more, because the movie is rather awesome and there are many things to watch out for. If you’re not interested by this point, you really won’t be much interested else wise.

It’s a great movie and it’s age appropriate for anyone. The only part that maybe a bit… risqué is the gnome in the “borat” bathsuit thong. I cannot figure out any other way I could explain this thing. However, if you’ve seen him in the previews and hope to see more of him, there really is only 2 major scenes with him in it and nothing more.

My opinion, go for the gnomes, stay for the Flamingo.

The Invention of Lying

Recently, we got the movie “The Invention of Lying” from our Netflix queue. I have to add a quick note that Netflix is my best friend ever when it comes to renting movies, TV shows and other random dvds.

If you haven’t seen this movie yet, I add the obligatory SPOILER WARNING.

First I would like to point out that this movie, starring Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, and some other people, is pure dry British humor. If you are not familiar with dry British Humor, don’t like it, or are angry with Ricky Gervais from the Golden Globes, this may not be the movie to watch.

I happen to enjoy it, but I was not aware this movie would be dry British humor, so I was a little shocked at first. (Have I said Dry British Humor enough? Maybe not.)

The premise of the movie works like this, Earth as we know it, never developed the ability to lie. Apparently, this means that everyone says exactly what is on their mind at any given time. I guess a lie by omission is still a lie. In this mythical world, not only can people not lie, but for some reason this means they are more concerned with genetic compatibility rather than being happy, and everyone is generally mean to each other.  Because people never learned how to lie, movies are actually documentaries, and because the lack of lying means no one has any creativity, it’s some guy sitting in a chair reading off a script. Rather boring really.

The plot to the movie works something like this, Mark is on the low end of the genetic desirability scale and is hooked up on a blind date with a pretty woman who tells him up front she has no interest in him sexually. This leads to a conversation I won’t repeat here, you’ll just have to take my word on it, it was very off putting to watching the rest of the movie. However, I pressed on and was determined to watch the thing. I was rewarded I assure you. Repeatedly he mentions that he thinks he’s going to get fired, which is kind of amusing. He goes to work and finds out, yes he really is about to get fired, if his boss could just follow through.

It’s really quite silly and a little annoying, but again, it does pick up pace! So basically, his blind date failed, he lost his job and now he finds out, he’s out of his apartment unless he comes up with $800. Well he heads into the bank and they tell him he’s got like $200, and suddenly their computers go down. This is the turning for the whole movie. Suddenly his brain rewires itself and he lies about his bank account.  Since no one is used to lying, no one apparently has a bullshit detector either.

From here the movie really gets going and starts getting into the funny stuff. He tests his new ability on his buddies who takes everything he comes up with at face value; one of my favorite scenes in the movie. This starts off as harmless fun as he figures out what he can get by with. Deciding to get his job back, he writes this horribly elaborate “historical fact” involving space aliens and all kind of craziness. He even fakes the document by dumping coffee on it, and tearing it and other funniness. Again, no one knows what a lie is, so no matter how off the charts he works, he is always telling the truth.

His lies keep snowballing and he gets in deeper and deeper and even wins the affection of the girl he wants, but still he’s not a genetic match so she’s not interested. She’d rather be miserable with the ass than risk ugly children.  Again, why is not being able to lie or understand lies, the cause of this weird anomally?

This goes even deeper when his mom is dying and in order to make her feel better he makes up this magical place in the clouds where she will have a mansion and be happy and all this other stuff off the top of his head. This is a really touching scene that again snowballs.  Suddenly everyone wants to know about the magical place in the sky and how he knows about what happens after death. Whoopsie, someone created religion!

Interestingly enough, they manage to have a bit of a lesson about appropriate times to lie, when the girl of his dreams asks if being famous altered his genetic material and he actually answers truthfully, No. He very easily could have lied here, but the fact he didn’t makes it awesome.

I have to say, even with the rocky start of this movie, I wound up really enjoying it.  It’s really confusing at points, some of the humor is sketchy and edgy, and just a little bit out there. It left my husband and me scratching our heads, but you can’t miss some of the silly humor, the pokes at religion and of course the pizza box commandments.

Knowing: A review

I posted this on my facebook once before, I figure I might as well repost it here.

Last July I watched the Movie “Knowing” with Nicholas Cage.

WARNING: Spoilers! Do not continue to read if you don’t want to know the ending.
(you may appreciate them though)

As a fan of his movies, especially recent titles, I was expecting this movie to be much like this other movies in the smart guy figuring out a complicated problem, probably a conspiracy of some sort that he has to stop, and eventually will.

Predictable, but I like them like this. I like the intrigue and going along with the character to figure out where this is going and how it got there.

Ok, well, that was the first 2/3rds of the movie. The other 1/3 is “WTF???”.

I shall elaborate. For those of you who don’t know, the plotline goes something like this:

In 1959 a time capsule was buried with a strange note from a little girl who filled her paper with a series of seemingly random numbers. The poor little girl goes insane, but the paper is put in there anyway. 50 years later, John (cage) is a depressed dad trying to take care of his son after his wife’s passing. The son, Caleb receives the paper from the time capsule and is (of course) confused and takes it home. On accident, John realizes the numbers mean something, the dates and death counts of all the major disasters in the last 50 years. John is trying to figure out what the other numbers mean and what should be done. He makes contact with Diana and Abby, the daughter and granddaughter of the little girl who went insane.

Ok. That’s the basic plotline. Now, reading the back of the cover, and looking at previews, I can kind of figure out where this is going. I actually avoided this movie for some time before finally deciding my brain was ready for a “thinky conspiracy movie”.

Ok, no one’s brain is ready for this garbage.

That being said, Nicholas Cage delivers a beautiful acting job with the mess of a movie that he was given. I applaud him for his spot on performance in the face of what has to be one of the most WTF endings I have ever watched.

As I said, the first 2/3 of the movie proceed “rather” predictably in context, however there are some amazing scenes that I’m actually kind of grateful for. The scene with the plane blew my mind and was COMPLETELY unexpected and perfectly executed, and no one sees it coming. The train scene as well is completely out of left field and well executed. As morbid as it may seem, I am actually grateful that they depicted these scenes as realistically yet tastefully as they did, adding just the right hint of gore to let you know what happened, while not being disgusting and perverse. In many, many movies I have often wondered about the impact on the “civilians” and “unknowns” in movies of destruction and chaos that usually gets left out or ignored. I want to know about the everyman and what happened with them. This movie answers that. There are some kind of “cheesy” scenes in the movie that I wish they had done better, but as a writer myself, I understand how hard it is to get across what you really want to say or how to set up a scene that movies the plot line along. I understand this and I excuse those couple of scene that made me laugh more than startled or scared.

However, the last 1/3 of the movie leaves me with a migraine.

SECOND WARNING: Major spoiler
Read only if you don’t care about knowing the end ahead of time (hah I made a funny)

Ok, suddenly the movie shifts to “what the hell?” land. Now instead of a major disaster that John has to stop, we find out that Aliens sent the number message. Yes, Aliens drove the poor little girl insane, and Aliens need John’s son to repopulate a new world. Wait, what?

So these aliens, who look remarkably like angels, take John’s son and Abby (the granddaughter of the little girl they drove insane), to their new world to start the human population over again, while all other humans get blown to smithereens by a sun spot. They plop the two kids, who are in (I think) 4th grade, on a new world with a pair of bunnies. There is indication that there are other space ships plopping who knows what elsewhere on this new world. And we are treated to a scene of earth being wiped out. Suddenly, you realize, they actually had the gall to put the ending of the movie on the front damned cover.

The last scene of the movie just leaves me with way too many practical questions. Namely, how are these children supposed to survive? Hunt for food? Eat fruit from the tree? Other than the two rabbits, you see no other animals, and the only plant life is waves of grain and one giant tree. I would assume they are adding more animals and different humans with the other spaceships, but there’s no real indication, only that you see multiple spaceships all over the world taking off, and then see them again taking off from the new planet.

They just abandoned a bunch of kids on a planet with no means of taking care of themselves; let centuries of knowledge get blown to hell, no medical science, no means of food, water or shelter, and no education to these children of how to care for themselves. There MAY have been some form of education on the ship, but there’s no indication of it.

I feel dumber for having watched this movie to the end. I would have been better turning it off at the trailer scene and imagining my own ending.