Keywords to Success
- acceleration
- focus
- determination
Last week, I misread a form and showed up at an appointment a few hours early. They were unable to change the time. A three-dollar theater next door was showing a couple of films, so I decided to step in and watch a movie (instead of going to a cafe, reading a book, reading the paper, reading the menu of said cafe, walking around, basically anything but a movie). Unfortunately, the only movie showing in my brief window of time was one about toy poodles on Fifth Avenue. I like dogs, so I thought this could be fun. I bought some popcorn (a “medium” sized tub which was roughly the size of a mop bucket). The number of consecutive bad life choices I made that afternoon should not astound you. I have, after all, spent some time paying for bad life choices.
The theater was very nearly empty; there were a few mothers with young children and no one there was alone. I suddenly felt very self-conscious. This movie was clearly not intended for my particular demographic. Thankfully, or not, the lights dimmed.
The accents in this movie are atrociously stereotypical and the special effects leave much to be desired. This is a fish out of water story and the plot is so easy that I heard a couple of infants predicting where the movie would go. And they were right.
I’ve never been able to walk out of movies; I made the conscious choice and paid the price, I will get what I came for if only for the air conditioning and popcorn. I believe I would look weird sitting outside on a park bench eating a mop bucket of movie theater popcorn.
Still, it is not lost on me that I have paid to feel like a broken man and for a moment I wished I were at one of the newer theaters, the kind that serve cocktails, but it’s a bad idea to meet with anyone at 3:30 PM drunk. I finished watching this movie and the other adults in the theater all had the same dead look in their eyes and the children were either asleep or echoing my internal monologue and screaming for the exits.
I’m no Gene Siskel, and I know that I am not the target audience for this movie in particular, but that does not mean I should not be able to see the point of art. I laughed out loud once at a kid’s show about a squeaky yellow sponge man that lives in the ocean, so I’m not prejudiced towards entertainment aimed at children. This is my first movie review and I cannot in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone.
