Everybody is listing their top ten films of 2009, but I haven’t seen half of the ones that I think have the best shot of getting on my list (and I haven’t gotten a single DVD screener yet! chop chop, SAG!). I did a little better (?) with the top ten movies of 2009 in terms of domestic box office. I still haven’t seen The Blind Side (#10) but I did see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (#9), which was overpoweringly ugly and geared towards the very young (and the folks who love to listen to Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary but can’t bear to look at their faces). I watched most of Monsters vs. Aliens (#8) on an airplane and I give it a thumbs up for helping me fall asleep, b’also a thumbs down for helping me fall asleep. Star Trek and The Hangover (#7 and #6, respectively) were both thoroughly enjoyable and I wouldn’t be surprised to see either of them get some Oscar nominations (remember: there are now 10 Best Picture nominees, which is being done to make the Academy seem more populist and less snooty — these movies offer the simplest way to do that). Avatar (#5) looks like the most complicated video game ever made. What I’ve seen makes me think I would really hate this movie, but its defenders (and they are legion) insist that I can’t judge the movie until I’ve seen it in IMAX 3-D. That made sense to me until I realized that I could see Fried Green Tomatoes or Something’s Gotta Give in IMAX 3-D and I would enjoy myself. That’s why they can charge me $18.50 for a single ticket — I can’t recreate the IMAX 3-D experience at home. We saw Superman Returns in IMAX 3-D when it opened and I walked out with a smile. I watched it again a year later (on cable) and found it surprisingly weak. I blame the IMAX 3-D for making me like it more than I otherwise would have. Just like all of these people who claim that Avatar is the greatest movie of all time. The thing the humans are trying to steal is called Unobtainium, for Christ’s sake! Sigh. My pubic hair and penis prevented me from seeing The Twilight Saga: New Moon (#4), but I saw the top three. The first ten minutes of Up (#3) was more moving than anything else this year (animated or live-action). Expect to see it in the Best Picture category. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (#2) was kind of boring (it had its moments but they were fewer and farther between than I expected. And the #1 movie of 2009 — the one that grossed over $400,000,000 — was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. And it sucked eggs. Loud exploding racist eggs.

Give me some time for a legitimate Best Movies of 2009 list.

But before I get all retrospectable on the cinematic tip, let’s see what’s doing in the New York of the Post.

HOOPS STUPES (which I believe is pronounced “Hoops Toupeés”) reveals that the Washington Wizards never told the NBA about the almost gunfight between two of their players (which happened on December 21st, not on Christmas Day — I can’t ever miss an issue of this paper; they’re constantly [and subtly] changing their stories!). In fact, according to this EXCLUSIVE, the NBA only found out about the incident because of the intrepid reporting of (wait for it) The New York Post.

Word on the street is that not only will the Wizards’ general manager, Ernie Grunfeld, will lose his job over this, but so might Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton. Crittenton still has $1,480,000 left on his 3-year contract. Arenas has $100,000,000 left on his. That’s not a typo. One hundred million dollars (puts pinky on lips).

My favorite new development: “It is still not known if Crittenton had his own gun with him, or if he grabbed one of several Arenas had in the locker room.”

Hey, Gilbert? Wanna post anything on Twitter about this?

“i wake up this morning and seen i was the new JOHN WAYNE .. lmao media is too funny”

“i understand this is serious _ but if u ever met me you know i dont do serious things im a goof ball this story today dont sound goofy to me.”

Oh no! He’s using the Chewbacca defense!

Nice piece on the four neighborhoods that will be hot hardest by the impending MTA cuts (“set to take place in mid-2010″): Westchester Square in The Bronx, Fresh Meadows in Queens, Harlem and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. If you’re disabled in Bay Ridge of the weekend, you’re screwed as the R is your only hope and the station isn’t handicapped-accessible.

War criminals.

The Russian government wants to fight “rampant alcoholism” in their country, as well as “the extraordinary number of deaths caused by drinking.” So they’re doubling the price of vodka… to $3.00 per half-liter.

What a country!

Charles Wegmann III, 41, is the son of a retired New Orleans police lieutenant. And a son of a bitch.

He was picked up at JFK Airport on Tuesday night while he waited for his 25-year-old girlfriend to arrive from Turkey. He bought her plane ticket. With a credit card he took out in the name of a dead 7-year-old (he had another in the name of another dead 7-year-old).

Charlie needs to go away for a long time.

There’s a full-page ad on page 6 for a new TV show: The Human Target. It’s a great premise: If you’re the target of a death threat, you hire him to take your place and he’ll catch your assailant(s). They made for great comic books.

Let’s hope the 2010 version (premiering on January 17th) does better than the Rick Springfield vehicle of 1992.

A suicide bomber in Pakistan “killed 105 people and wounded at least 100 more” — at a volleyball tournament.

Can those numbers be accurate? Could there have actually been over 200 people at a volleyball tournament?

The article Muslim loony toon is shot in Mohammed artist attack introduces a new word to my ever-expanding lexicon: Islamoloon. I have already begun compiling a list of other insulting names that the Post might be interested in incorporating. So far I have retardorist, Muslimpdick, suicide bumbaclot, Koranus and penislamist.

Nathaniel Chambers, 45, was arrested for drunken driving. He entered an E-ZPass lane on the Queens-bound side of the RFK Bridge, despite not having an E-ZPass device. When the gate didn’t raise, he started flashing the red siren on his car’s dashboard.

Why did he have a siren? Because he’s the chauffeur for Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Robert Hess. And he was on his way to pick him up and bring him to Bloomberg’s inauguration.

Anyhoodles, there he was, sitting in the E-ZPass line with a flashing siren. Police approached the car and immediately smelled booze. “I am going to pick up the commissioner for the inauguration,” he allegedly told the cops. They asked him to take a Breathalyzer test. He refused (why is that legal to do? Whatever happened to the implied consent law?) and started yelling at the cops (he reportedly called a sergeant a “cracker”).

He was also arrested for a DWI in 2003.

Take a bow, Nate!

HGTV & the Food Network have been dropped by Cablevision (they didn’t have the same clout as Fox did against Time Warner Cable, I guess). An estimated 3,100,000 New Yorkers will be affected by this.

That number made my eyes widen, but then I realized that it means that 3,100,000 people no longer have the option of watching those channels, not that 3,100,000 ever did.

Bookmaker.com is offering odds on who will replace Simon Cowell on American Idol. Piers Morgan is the 2-1 favorite, Quincy Jones pays 3.5-1, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds pays 4-1, Simon Fuller and Rob Stevenson are each 6-1 shots and Russell Simmons is 6.5-1.

But the it’s-just-so-crazy-it-might-work one to watch at 3-1 is none other than Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Even if they hired everyone on this list and John Cleese, I wouldn’t care.

Remember that adorable rapper, Lil’ Bow Wow? He’s 22 now and goes by Bow Wow. He’s also on Twitter. He’s also an idiot. Here’s what he posted early yesterday:

“Face numb im whippin the lambo. Tispy as fuck. Just left @livmiami”

I’ll translate: “My face is numb as I’m driving recklessly in my Lamborghini. I am incredibly tipsy.”

He followed that Tweet with, “Im fucked up!!! Ohhhh damn. Y i drive the lambo. Chris might have to drive after next spot.”

I’ll translate: “I am incredibly drunk and I’m starting to regret getting behind the wheel of a car, though not enough to stop texting as I speed. Chris Brown, who is with me, might have to replace me in the driver’s seat once we get to the next stop light/sign. Which, if I was an attractive Bajan chanteuse, would terrify me.”

Bow Wow later deleted the incriminating tweets and posted, “Apologize for that tweet. it was stupid and immature. not a way i want to kick my #2010 year off. i got too much good stuff lined up. my bad.”

It is still not clear whether or not he was driving a car when he posted his mea culpa.

Page 13 is a full-page ad asking Cablevision customers to demand that HGTV and Food Network be put back on the air.

I have a feeling that Cablevision doesn’t feel the need to respond in kind.

Chuck Bennett’s ART 101 MASTER DISASTER rips into the Saudi Arabian art therapy rehab center for terrorists where the current leader of the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda (Said Ali al Shihiri) was transferred from Guantanamo Bay. The therapy, Bennett argues, wasn’t very effective. True. And if you make it to the sixteenth (16th) paragraph of the piece, you’ll read the name of the guy who let this monster go to finger-painting class instead of being a prisoner.

Shihiri “was released from Guantanamo Bay by President George W. Bush in 2007.”

I’d love to hear what Dick Cheney thinks of that.

More about the abandoned Times Square van. The owner faces up to seven (7) years in prison for doctoring the temporary license plate in the window (see what I mean? This is the first I’m hearing of the temporary plate!). It expiration date on it was November 29, 2009, but George Freyre, 36, changed it to December 29, 2009 — which means that even after his forgery, it had expired when cops ignored it!

B’also? The Detectives Crime Clinic of Metropolitan New Jersey & New York is an actual non-profit organization in the Bronx, but guess who isn’t a member. I’ll give you a hint: his initials are George Freyre.

Doctors said that Rush Limbaugh “did not have a heart attack or heart disease.”

Damn.

When asked if taking painkillers for the chest pain, Limbaugh said “no.”

The “painkillers” for his “back pain” are a whole ‘nuther story, I’m sure.

I miss Chicago.

Three armed men wearing masks forced their way into a home in Chicago and made the 11 people inside take off their pants.Then they shot one of the victims in the leg and ran out with 11 pairs of pants (and televisions). The police suspect that the taking of the pants had two purposes: to get the wallets inside and to prevent pursuit.

But I think they did it because the first thing they heard was “pants theft.”

There’s a great piece about how iPhone owners are beginning to revolt against AT&T, especially now that they’re considering a “tiered pricing plan” which would limit usage (unless folks were cool with paying a lot more).

My favorite part is how the iPhone is gearing up to face competition from Google’s Nexus One, “a snazzy display that is generating buzz even though the tech giant hasn’t even confirmed its existence.”

How funny would that be if there was no Nexus One?

Q: How do you make a museum smell funny?

A: The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New York Historical Society (March 5 – July 4).

Michael Ian Black has written a children’s book called The Purple Kangaroo. It’s narrated by a mind-reading monkey.

Excellent.

Harold Camping, 88, has figured out when the Rapture will happen. Ready?

May 21, 2011.

Take that, Mayans!

The Nets played today. They lost.

3-30.

What’s the opposite of outstanding? Inseated?

Inseated!

The CW has pulled the reality show Blonde Charity Mafia from their lineup (how could they change their mind about a show that features rich assholes pretending that their altruism isn’t a tax dodge?). They’re replacing it with Fly Girls, a reality show about stewardesses on Virgin Airlines!

Finally I can spend more time on an airplane without leaving my house!

This fresh round of snowfall isn’t sticking, which means dry sneakers (yay!) but no snowball fights (boo!).

Stay warm, kids. See you tomorrow.

Is Monday morning’s popcorn whatever’s left over from the weekend? Mildly stale, oversalted… the perfect meal to eat while watching Michael Bay’s latest 2 1/2-hour toy commercial.

Coming attractions included G-Force (what a dream cast… except for Nic Cage), The Last Airbender (what a twist!) and G.I. Joe. I will have to see all of these, I just know it.

The CINEDIGM title card hurt my ears a lot. The DLP title card mildly blinded me.

With stale popcorn in my meaty fist and blood trickling out of all of my head’s orifices, I prepared for the worst.

But not enough. In honor of the disjointed, narratively retarded movie I’m reviewing, I won’t even try to weave these comments together. KA-BOOM!

I am now 100% officially an old man. I winced at the opening logos. THE OPENING LOGOS! So damn loud.

Megatron acts as the narrator (which I believe means that he can’t die in the movie, right?) and even his dulcet oil-lubed voice can’t make the plot comprehensible. There’s a shard that Shia LaBouef (French for “please pass the beef”) hasn’t noticed (it’s in the sweatshirt he’s been wearing for months) which attracts (?) space robots (?) who need it to be larger space robots (?). Also, some of the space robots are already here (they’re”the Fallen” and they want revenge).

I may be off on the plot a little, but that’s because I spent half of the movie in the fetal position on the soda-and-butter-stained floor.

Not sure why I wrote down “Baby bootie boy” or “That was a really creepy move just now.” It might have to do with the fact that Shia’s mother curses non-stop (I loves me some vulgarity but ’splain why it was even remotely necessary to have Mom scream, “You carry this shit!” and “And you can’t do shit about it!” and many other non-story-forwarding outbursts (especially since the movie is already WAY TOO LONG).

Also, kudos for the dogs having sex. Thumbs way up Michael Bay (no, there shouldn’t be a comma in that sentence).

Looking at Megan Fox is pornographic, but in a sad way.

Bumblebee (a giant space robot who speaks using radio clips that I guess he has stored in his space memory banks) cries and has space robot snot running out of his nose. WHERE CAN MAD MAGAZINE POSSIBLY TAKE THIS? IT’S ALREADY A PARODY OF ITSELF!

Aww… Megan and Shia can’t say “I love you” to each other! That’s adorable! For five whole minutes!

Is Frank Welker the voice of Soundwave? It’s a perfect match of Darkseid’s voice from Super Powers: Galactic Guardians!

It is Frank!

Boy, the government sure is stupid. They just fired the good robots for saving the world from the bad robots! Boooooo!

At one point, a human asks (about one of the giant space robots), “If God made us in his image… who made him?”

Answer: HASBRO.

Man, the POTUS is a stupid jerk! And his name is Obama! Wait a minute…

We return to Shia’s college (because this movie needs more navel-gazing). Mom eats a pot brownie and becomes retarded. There’s a terrible remix of “Burning Down the House” playing. Someone non-ironically proclaims “The internet is pure truth!”

Oh no! A hot chick wants to have sex on Shia! Oh no! Whew — the car shot space robot fluids all over them both! Yay! She huffed away covered in space robot car semens!

Either I’m having a heart attack and an acid flashback or this is a steaming pile of shit.

Megatron tells everyone that the space robots need Shia (but, you know, not specifics. Because why would Shia or anyone else — like, say, me in the audience — care about the deets?).

Poor Rainn Wilson.

Ha! A Bad Boys II poster hangs in Shia’s dorm room! LOL!!!!!!

Oh no! The hot chick is back for more sex! And it turns out… SHE’S A SPACE ROBOT!

Robots hate books! Optimus Prime dies! A robot calls Shia’s parents! Dad says “Canadian Moose Poop!” for some reason! Mom spits out escargot! THIS MOVIE IS 300 HOURS LONG! I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE DIRECTOR’S CUT!!!

Oh, look! Ghetto-bots! They talk like colored people! They have gold fronts on their teeth! THEY CAN’T READ!

Wait. Did Bumblebee just play part of a Martin Luther King speech?

I think I need to call a doctor.

No idea why someone said “You want those new teeth you saw in SkyMall?” but I’m sure it was even less funny in context.

Apparently John Turturro (poor John Turturro) works all day in a deli (he was fired after getting robo-peed on in the last movie) and also spends all day as a cyber-wizard with his own website. Sure, why not?

Oh, did I just see Mr. Turturro’s naked ass? Thanks again, Michael Bay!

Oh boy! They, like another recent sequel, are heading to the Smithsonian! LOL! And look! There’s a space robot with a thick Scottish accent! And now a tiny robot is humping Megan Fox’s leg! And you can totally tell which hand Shia crushed in his DUI during filming! And someone shouts, “you landed on my testicles!”

FINALLY someone explains (sort of) the plot and it has to do with The Matrix of Leadership. See, it’s this thing? But if you touch it, it’l disappear. Unless you’re worthy. But if you aren’t worthy, maybe later you’ll discover it’s within you? I think?

Deep Roy? Really? He and Ken Jeong are the new Ned Beatty and Charles Durning (what movies AREN’T they in?).

I’m glad this movie about space robots took the time to let the audience know that American soldiers are the true heroes. Not stupid-ass space robots. Also, Obama is a moron.

Did the Scottish space robot just say “I’m getting too old for this crap”? Again I ask, won’t someone think about Mad Magazine? How do you make fun of that?

Did Barton Fink just start screaming about an “enemy scrotum”?

Did Megan Fox telling Shia “I love you”  just bring him back to life?

Why does Michael Bay hate Egypt and me?

Why did Shia just wink at Optimus Prime (who, surprisingly, didn’t stay dead!)

Will I ever get tired of the credit “BASED ON ACTION FIGURES BY HASBRO”?

Did it really take 3 people to NOT write a decent script?

Will my ears ever stop ringing?

And, of course, when does Transformers 3: Nuttin’ But ‘Splosions open?

D-

Fuck me for being on time. Tons of car commercials, one for the U.S. Air Force, one for Starz (which I’m pretty sure is one of the reasons for the decline of the cinematic box office [why take my family to a movie theater for $50 -- if we aren't hungry -- when I'm already buying cable every month?]), and apparently Sprint thinks that a terrible singer singing a terrible song on a gigantic 3-D Facebook page will make me want their new phone (to Sprint and everyone else that advertises before the movie: I will go out of my way to avoid everything you are pushing since I find it disgusting that I have to watch ads for your crap despite the exorbitant ticket prices [for all non-SAG members of the audience] and astonishingly overpriced concessions [oh, I can't stay mad at you, wheelbarrow of popcorn!]).

And like Pavlov’s dog, every time the lights fade and the screen tells me “Here’s the feature presentation!” I relax and pay attention. And then the radio starts again and the screen goes blank. EVERY. WEEK. But this time as I sank in my seat, muttering invectives at no one in particular, I noticed that 80% of the audience was kids. Not teenagers. Kids. Like screaming for soda kids. Six, maybe seven years old. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why they’re here. I mean, Up is playing next door. Ice Age 3 is upstairs. Surely the parents aren’t dragging the kids along so that THEY can see this, are they? Truly?

But once the movie was halfway done, I realized that big Hollywood movies are, for the most part, becoming porn.

Lemme ’splain. It’s often said that the way to pitch a movie is to boil it down to a sentence (por ejemplo, Short Time was probably pitched as “Due to a blood sample mix-up, police officer and family man Dabney Coleman thinks he has hours left to live, so he tries to get killed in the line of duty for the insurance money,” while The Apple was probably described as “hours of sparkly Biblical homo-erotica carelessly stuffed into an 86-minute musical with God fixing everything at the end by stepping out of his floating gold Rolls-Royce.”

The Proposal was no doubt pitched as “In order to avoid being deported, Sandra Bullock forces her assistant to marry her (even  though he hates her), but first she has to meet his cuh-razy family in Alaska of all places!” And if a second sentence was requested, it would prolly look like “But will this business-minded bitch start to fall for her perfect hunky assistant played by Ryan Reynolds or will he fall for her… or BOTH?!?!” Which is not to say that a movie that can be boiled down to a sentence is bad (Schindler’s List: “Guy saves Jews for monetary reasons during WW2, but grows to have a conscience and saves even more.” Basquiat: “It’s the life story of Basquiat.”). But good movies figure that a simple plot leaves room for character development or suspense or a car chase or Batman. The Proposal has a lot of characters that act like caricatures (charicaters?) but it’s gentle and you don’t have to think very hard and the scenery is pretty and I think I understand now why the kids were there.

It I can put on my big boy pants for a sec, the attention span of America has finally hit rock bottom. Most schoolkids have no idea what an answering machine is, what a VCR is, what it felt like to race home in order to watch something that, after airing once, might never be seen again. A couple can own a 2-disc DVD copy of whatever is currently playing in theaters for less than the price of two tickets. Or they can watch it on cable. Or Netflix it.

On the one hand, I’m glad that Hollywood is helping the theaters out by creating more 3-D/IMAX/can’t-wait-must-see-it-now fare in recent years (I don’t remember ever paying to see a movie twice [including at the $1.99 in Saratoga], but I paid to see The Dark Knight twice and again for the IMAX version [although I feel like Scott Finklepuss might have refused my reimbursement... so we'll stick with paying twice], so either there is a shift towards more must-buy-a-ticket-to-get-the-full-effect pictures [you were right Mr. Castle] or I’ve become even more of a rube in my middle age than I thought). People can now justify taking the brood to see Up in 3-D instead of turning on Nickelodeon and telling everyone to just shut up while Mommy naps.

On the other hand, never overestimate the intelligence of most Americans (m’self included, thankyewvurruhmuch). And don’t forget that most of today’s teenagers had a bootleg DVD copy of Star Wars III the week it hit theaters. Granted, it didn’t seem to hurt the mammoth box office, but this generation of kids will never know the simple pleasure of putting a dollar in a vending machine and getting a soda AND CHANGE, nor will they use “let’s all go to the movies!” as a go-to weekend activity as frequently as those of us without an internet did.

As people start to realize that there’s enough of a backlog now of quality movies (from the last 10 years alone) that if we all stopped going to movies in theaters and waited for the director’s cut DVDs and gave Netflix a workout or took them out of our libraries (for free), we’d never have to stop seeing great movies (and TV shows without commercials, a season at a time) in our lifetime (especially considering Apocalypto! is right around the corner). This is why I will go down the street to see The Final Destination in 3-D, but would have happily waited for the unrated DVD if not for the gimmick.

B’on the other other hand, stupid people love their routines. We fear change. We thought about trying that new restaurant but it smelled weird so we hit Sizzler again. We demand to see Obama’s birth certificate (again). We like the part when the guy got hit in the nuts and then he fell down but then he was OK later. Which is why Hollywood continues to produce (wait for it) by-the-numbers rom-coms that can not only be boiled down to one sentence, they can also be explained by their posters. Even if they’re in Russian.

And it explains the kids. They have ADD. They can’t watch 90 minutes of anything without getting bored. So, the stuck-in-their-rut parents will take their kids to the movies (mustn’t… break… from… routine….) and the kids will watch the movie, play their PSPs, talk to their folks, go to the bathroom, etc. A movie like Memento doesn’t mesh with this scenario, but The Proposal, like a porno, almost encourages you to stretch your legs between the money shots (or funny shots, if you will).

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Sandra Bullock (who should absolutely take this movie’s make-up people to court — she was wearing so much make-up, some of it got in my popcorn) works as a high-ranking publishing executive and a bitch that everyone hates because she treats everyone like shit (every cartoon character, sorry, person working in the office IMs “The witch is on her broom!” to each other as soon as she shows up every day so that they can stop, um, IMing and go back to doing work). Ryan Reynolds is her assistant and puts up with her because he wants to get his book published… someday.

Turns out Sandra is Canadian and her visa is expiring tomorrow and she has to leave the country and quit her job. UNLESS she can convince Ryan to marry her so she can stay in the U.S. and keep her job. He would be made an editor and get a divorce after a year or two. BUT Ryan is on his way to Alaska for the weekend for his grandmother’s birthday party. SO Sandra tells INS that they’re going to Alaska to get married.

Of course, lying to INS is a serious offense with plenty of jailtime, so you’d think it would behoove both of these wool-pullers to really sell their charade (surrounded by tons of Ryan’s family and friends, the two of them have a perfect opportunity to sell this hastily thrown together farce — all it would take is a kiss that didn’t look like k.d. lang trying to seduce John Travolta). But Sandra cannot not be an absolutely detestable jerk for even five minutes (to be fair, something this easy to follow almost requires play-to-the-seats-in-the-back slapstick, so I feel for Ms. Bullock).

And I feel for Aasif Mandvi, whose accent was a breath of fresh air (I have no idea what it was but I loved its unique melody) and whose all-too-brief scene comes all-too-soon in the movie. And I feel for Craig T. Nelson (yikes — Father Time no likey Coach) and Mary Steenburgen as Ryan’s parents. And Betty White as his grandmother. And especially the guy who plays Ramone (the running joke is that in this small Alaskan town, he is the male stripper, general store manager and cater waiter, among many other things). All great actors, all in a wet noodle of a movie.

Also, I have a feeling that after Amy Poehler had her first audition in L.A., Hollywood used black magic to create what they thought was a “better” version in Malin Ackerman. They succeeded in that she is taller and thinner, but failed in that she brings nothing to the table that a photograph wouldn’t also provide (whereas I could happily watch Amy read the phone book).

I also found it weird how awkward the extras are, how this super-tiny town is able to support a general store that sells candy, a candy store and a “fudgery,” how Sandra wears more make-up to bed than she did to her wedding, how she can’t swim but can tread water for five minutes, and how John Candy and Steve Martin had more sexual chemistry in Planes, Trains and Automobiles than Ryan and Sandra do in this movie.

But I must say that I laughed a few times and, despite my not buying most of his character’s choices, I will once again profess my mancrush on Ryan Reynolds. The guy is just naturally funny, which is probably why this over-the-top cartoon doesn’t play to his strengths (if that makes any sense). And I was able to put together a grocery list between money (sorry, funny) shots.

Like a mediocre sitcom or inoffensive background music, The Proposal gives you exactly what you would go to a movie like this for: easy laughs, pratfalls, decades of familial animosity being resolved in minutes, an ending that you don’t expect (if you’re 6) followed by the ending you do expect (especially if you’re 6) — and nothing more.

Not roll-your-eyes bad, but also not something you’d want to watch more than once (if at all).

C+

FULL DISCLOSURE: The original version of this movie is one of my all-time favorites. It’s suspenseful, it’s funny, it’s beautifully shot and chock full of New York character actors that beautifully capture New York City in the 70’s (everything from a supervisor who complains about a female co-worker’s ring falling into “the terlit” to an almost human-shaped Jerry Stiller to Hector “Oh, is Garry Marshall making another family movie? I guess I’ve got another gig!” Elizondo as a lecherous racist hijacker to Robert Shaw, whom I often refer to as the evil John Cazale, though I’ve forgotten why).

I wore out my VHS copy just over a year and I’ve given my replacement DVD more than a few spins, as well (though I certainly appreciate the thought, Scotty — what a very pleasant surprise!).

However. Despite my affection for the original, I actually went into this movie hoping to like it. Seriously. From what I had heard about the production, test screenings, etc., I feared it would be awful, but if I’m by myself (and I’m not in my living room — incidentally, if you’re in the MOVIE THEATER with me, neither are you, jagmo) then I don’t want to watch a shitty movie. I have loads of time to do that at night while my wife drifts off to sleep watching her Northern Exposure DVDs (I think Sarah Palin ruined Alaskan comedies for me, so I watch shitty movies with my headphones on). And even though John Travolta makes me sad for a number of legitimate reasons, I’d heard good things about both the movie in general and his performance in particular. So my expectations were low, but my mind was open.

The trailer for Public Enemies reminded me of the old Movie Math game we’d play to amuse ourselves.

(The Untouchables + Heat) x O Brother, Where Art Thou? = Public Enemies

Of course, I never did see it because America didn’t want to watch Batman chase Captain Jack in the Dust Bowl. Heck, they didn’t even want to see Batman chase rowbits enough to make that the #1 movie! Rowbits!In the future! Or from the future! And Helena Bonham Carter for some reason! Boy, I can’t wait for Parts 2 and 3 of this trilogy!

I should also note that when I sat down (in the tiny room this was showing in), there was one person in the back of the theater and me. After the commercials ‘n sitch had started, a couple of teenagers sat in front of me (I was on the end of the 3rd row) and almost immediately began making out. Thankfully they slouched down to do it (and they were a couple of seats in) so I couldn’t see anything beyond an occasional elbow and (I wish I was kidding) the back of the female’s head when she sat up to answer her phone. But the noises. Oh, the disturbing noises! Many an awkward “ow, sorry” and “wait” floated in the air, dancing with the sounds of a fat 35-year-old eating his wheelbarrow of popcorn before being overpowered by the movie’s remarkably terrible score (the original’s was superb in its hulking simplicity and supreme funkiness; here they’re replaced by annoying train noises and whatever sound a jump cut makes).

The couple would leave about an hour into the movie (I envied both their youth and taste), which made me realize how much I missed being occasionally distracted from this limp noodle of a movie.

But as they left, one of them dropped a small CD that, on my way out I picked up and listened to at home. Here’s an excerpt (two men are talking, Streisand plays softly in the background):

“Howzabout we remake The Taking of Pelham One Two Three?”

(strong nasal inhalation)

“OK. The book, the movie or the TV movie?”

(strong nasal inhalation)

“None.”

“Hmmm….. yes… we own the title, so we could just make a whole new movie from scratch…”

(strong nasal inhalation)

“Well, we’d borrow liberally from all three but this way we could add or subtract whatever we wanted.”

“OK… OK… People always expect remakes to be less complicated, more streamlined… let’s shatter those expectations! Let’s complicate the fuck out of it!”

(two strong nasal inhalations)

“Oh! Yeah! Yeah! I see where you’re going…” (strong nasal inhalation) “…How about the hero is also a thief and a liar! Why does the hero always have to be so, like, you know…”

(two strong simultaneous nasal inhalations)

“Right! An anti-hero! Terrific!”

“…And the hijackers aren’t even after the money!”

“What?”

“Yeah… they hijack the train so that the stock market crashes and their gold would be worth more!”

“Right! Because gold isn’t worth very much nowadays, right?”

(strong nasal inhalation)

“What?”

“Right?”

“What?”

“And fuck that ending.”

(strong nasal inhalation)

“The sniffles?”

“Yeah… that’s dated. We need shootouts. Lots of shootouts.”

Then that track ended and the rest of the disc was Avril Lavigne.

But the conversation, assuming it was authentic, answered many of the questions I had while audiencing.

Right off the bat, Tony Scott (who I think may have never actually travelled in the NYC subway system… or in NYC… or Earth) tries to combine shots of the hijackers boarding the titular train (which is a relatively empty 6 train) with the camerawork of a hyperactive teenager. Because I have a keen eye and was fighting the urge to see what could possibly be making that sound in front of me, I noticed that the train goes uptown, then downtown, then uptown, then sideways… I became a member of the Premiere Magazine Gaffe Squad while in high school. I’m just doing my job, ma’am. Weak continuity makes me sad.

Anyhoodles, one of the passengers is using his computer to video chat with his girlfriend (again, which New York City is this taking place in? Earth-2’s?). Shit’s gonna go down… but thanks to the modern-day setting, the passengers have a connection to the outside world. Granted, it’s a connection that shouldn’t exist and is wholly unnecessary for the purpose of the film, but whatevs.

When we meet Denzel, we learn that he was a big muckety-muck at the MTA but he’s suspected of taking a bribe, so they’ve demoted him… to being in charge of the subway system. I know that someone read this script and thought, “Why would they give such a job to someone they’re treating like a pariah and expect to be firing soon?” and I wish that person had said something to someone of authority.

Matthau was tired, world-weary and snippy, but clever. Denzel just sort of is. He’s a charismatic actor and I’ve always liked him (I even sat through all of The Great Debaters despite his haircut in that film), but there was really nothing especially interesting about his character (it was all told, not shown — his current probation winds up playing a major part in his dealings with Mr. Travolta, another wholly unnecessary addition that distracts the audience from the stunning lack of emotional dimensions). And Travolta… oh, boy. I love Robert Shaw. The Sting, Jaws, Black Sunday… he’s always wonderful whatever he’s in, but his Mr. Blue was perfection. Steely, authoritative perfection. Travolta replaces Shaw’s icy calm with 327 uses of the word “motherfucker.” 308 of them are said at the top of his lungs.

The dialogue that wasn’t gratuitous cursing wasn’t any better. Yelly McScientologist chats up the motorman:

“Where you from?”

“Brooklyn.”

“You Irish?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought so.”

Riveting.

And, like most of the summer’s fare, you can’t have a terrible blockbuster unless a wonderful actor is slumming in it. This is one of John Turturro’s many many such films. This year. And James Gandolfini does a subtle impression of Mike Bloomberg, adding a dash of Ed Koch and 4,000 metric tons of Tony Soprano.

Other discrepancies between the old and the new:

* LOTS of people get killed by the hijackers in 123.

* The Martin Balsam character from One Two Three (sniffly Mr. Green) has no analogue in 123. If anyone in the audience is rooting for any of these hijackers, they are either hijackers or the parents of the actors in the film.

* Thanks to America’s dwindling attention span, a countdown clock occasionally appears onscreen in 123. This reminds me of the story I heard from a lady who teaches at what is considered by many to be the #1 private school in New York state. One of her students (of double-digit age) was unable to read a non-digital clock. In 2009. Which, I fear, is why Tony Scott didn’t just cut to the clock on the wall. Or the watch on Denzel’s wrist.

* We get to see some of the passengers urinate in 123. And one of them is a little boy!

* One Two Three was about people hijacking a train for ransom. 123 is about a guy who invested $2,000,000 in gold before going to prison ten years ago (back then gold was worth about $300/ounce, today it’s closer to $1,000/ounce), who decides that the roughly $7,000,000 he would now have isn’t enough, so he figures that a hijacking will crash the stock market and make gold really valuable(r).

* Did I mention Shaw’s icy calm? Yeah. Johnny T likes to yell “He can lick my bunghole, motherfucker!” He is so… gay.

* In the 70’s, that walkie-talkie was the only connection Matthau and Shaw had. In 123, the aforementioned laptop that works in the tunnels of Manhattan for some reason gets discovered by the news outlets. Travolta sets up a modem or some such so that he can monitor the stock market online. He chooses MSNBC, which is good for the passengers, because that’s the only network that doesn’t have the hijacking as their major breaking story. For some reason.

* B’also? If Travolta’s doo-hickey allows for internet access, how is it possible that no one’s phone rings for the HOURS that they’ve all gone missing?

But the biggest difference is the way it ends. It isn’t the shrewd but lethargic detective work of Stiller and Matthau (and a bad cold) that saves the day — it’s a shootout on a bridge. And I wish I had timed it, but there is a sniper in a helicopter, a dozen heavily armed cops with rifles charging at Denzel and John, Denzel has a gun pointed at John and… for the next three or four minutes, that’s what’s going on. Literally.

Should the film have been made? I’ve stopped caring. You win, Hollywood. DiCaprio is producing a new Twilight Zone movie? Great. Send me a miniature flag with the logo and I’ll wave it. But if you’re going to remake classics, which you will be doing until Apocalypto!, could you not suck all of the fun and suspense out of them and replace them with Hollywood’s shittiest parents (did you see what Denzel did to his daughter at the MTV Reality Television Awards this year? I think I saw pee trickling down her legs.)?

On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the lowest, 10 being the highest), I gave this movie far more time than it deserved.

C-

Next up, The Proposal, Transformers 2, Bruno and Harry Potter (I may have missed Ice Age 3 and that may have been my intention).

Some blockbuster comedies deserve their success (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) while others (Wedding Crashers) fail to amuse me in the slightest.

I love Zach Galifianakis. I think he’s one of my generation’s best stand-ups, but his past cinematic endeavors have been underwhelming in comparison.

My wife and I went to see The Hangover hoping that we would get a few solid laughs and not be bored in between hijinx. We set our bar low and wound up howling for most of its running time.

Most of the people that read my blog have probably already seen this, but if you haven’t, let me assure you that (unless you disike goofy low-brow expletive-laden comedies on the whole) you will enjoy yourself. Here is a brief (and incomplete) list of things that made me smile:

* Fellow JTS Brownie Gillian Vigman had a nice cameo (and, surely, a part in the sequel?) as did Matt Walsh and Jeffrey Tambor.

* Zach helping a baby pretend to masturbate. Twice.

* “They gave out rings at the Holocaust?”

* “You are literally too stupid to insult.”

* “That Jewish actor.”

* Every scene with Leslie Chow.

And make sure that you take a deep breath before the closing credits start. You will be screamlaughing.

That’s all. It’s dirty, it’s funny and it proves once and for all that Mike Tyson can’t convincingly play HIMSELF in a movie (though Tyson was a great documentary).

A-

I still owe you The Hangover (which I will gladly see, as Zach G is a personal favorite) from last week. And this week, it remained in the #1 slot.

#2 was Up, which I did two weeks ago (kinda).

#3 was… The Taking of Pelham 123.

As if my wife’s cancer wasn’t bad enough.

If all goes well on Wednesday morning, maybe I’ll take Teresa along on Thursday (for the former movie, not the latter — I love my wife) and post a review before the weekend.

In retrospect, I guess America’s taste is OK (assuming The Hangover isn’t a train wreck). I just wish they’d have made me see Drag Me To Hell.

And I know they’ll make me see Transformers: So Much Computer-Generated Clanking! next month.

Sigh.

Movies can be magical. Some are so magical, they remain as popular today as when they were first released many DECADES ago. Pixar makes magical movies. Up is magical.

The opening short film? Adorable and magical.

The first ten minutes of the movie? I wept.

The rest of the movie (starring a septuagenarian and the fat boy scout he hates) is a beautiful story of a man who wants to fulfill his dead wife’s life-long dream (despite the logistical improbability).

I briefly considered doing one of my regular “break-it-down-and-expose-the-nuts-and-bolts” reviews, but then I thought, “why ruin any of the magic that I got to experience?” So, I’ll tell you it’s worth seeing (in my opinion, the 3-D version was nice, but I don’t think it was necessary — I’d like to see the 2-D version soon) and that it seems to be geared more to the adults than the kids (or my arrested development is showing), and that it gets a solid A from me (I cried at the end, as well), but that’s all you’ll get.

What I WILL do, however, is break down Armond White’s “review” of Up.

I will bold Armond’s words to differentiate between us and also because he’s Black.

The Way of Pixarism

By Armond White

Pixar rules pop media like nothing since mid-20th century General Motors held sway as the preeminent American corporation (and the bane of grassroots individualism). Every Pixar film—including the new Up, gushed over by Cannes Film Festival shills—is greeted with nearly patriotic fervor. This absurdity clarifies contemporary news media’s unprincipled collusion with Hollywood capitalism.

Wait. Are you saying that Pixar’s movies AREN’T worthy of their praise? That if not for the news media’s collusion, people would see that their animated emperors have no clothes? Really? Or do you just hate White people?

Up’s uninteresting story of an old widower who attaches his home to helium balloons and floats off to Venezuela with an overeager kid in tow follows the same formula as the previous nine Pixar movies. But artistic standards get trumped by a special feature: sentimentality. Pixar’s price sticker includes enough saccharine emotion to distract some viewers from being more demanding; they don’t mind the blatant narrative manipulation of a sad old man and lonely little boy. They buy animation to extend their childhood like men who buy cars for phallic symbols.

1) Armond found Up’s story “uninteresting,” but this is the same man who wrote (in his review of Dance Flick — which he really loved), “No matter how many people get verklempt over the lugubrious Benjamin Button, I know in my soul that history will avenge the Wayanses’ superior age/masculinity farce Little Man and fans who have already forgotten Eminem’s 8 Mile will one day catch up to Damon Wayans’ insightful hip-hop burlesque, Marci X.”

2) His car analogies are getting tiresome. Especially his comparison between buying a ticket to a cartoon and buying a car because you like big penises.

As a child, Carl Fredrickson, already a young fogey, thrilled to the airborne adventures of daredevil explorer C.J. Muntz. But in retirement, Fredrickson sulks; mischief deeply buried beneath blandness. Carl’s not an irascible audience-surrogate like the urban curmudgeon Mr. Magoo. Only Russell, the pie-faced, father-abandoned, 8-year-old scout, is cuter. “Cute” is how Pixar oversimplifies the world.

1) Mr. Magoo was an “audience-surrogate”? Armond, for serious, are you retarded? That’s like saying Toonces, The Cat Who Could Drive A Car was an audience-surrogate. For those of you who aren’t used to reading movie reviews by people who gets erections whenever they confuse their readers, an Audience Surrogate (no hyphen, Whitey!) is “like the audience, normally young — permitting the audience vicarious participation in the hero’s adventures.”* That’s certainly how I felt whenever Magoo yelled at that Asian fellow, or when Toonces’ mouth opened before the car crashed.

2) The kid in Up (Russell) is Asian. Armond just referred to him as “pie-faced.” I find that quite niggardly.

3) Pixar oversimplifies the world IN THEIR CARTOONS as cute? Um… have you ever seen a Disney movie? Or, you know, any other cartoon ever? They’re (almost) all cute (thanks for fucking up my theory, unwatchable Shrek franchise!) — not because they’re “oversimplifying the world,” you sanctimonious prick, but because cartoons do better when the leads don’t repulse children (thanks again, Shrek franchise!). And I’m glad that you found the old man lead (who is cranky, belligerent, borderline-hateful even) cute (or is that you oversimplifying your original review which explained that by saying “I loved it!” when everyone else says “I hated it!” and vice versa, you’ve made a name for yourself in the free-weeklies-no-one-cares-about market?).

Even the montage showing Carl’s marriage to childhood sweetheart Ellie (their wedding, companionship, XXXXXXXXXX, then XXXXXXXXXX), is over-sentimentalized. This silent interlude is no more daring than the utterly conventional Wall-E: It concludes with XXXXXXXXX. Sheesh. Although Chaplinesque music underscores these maudlin scenes, they’re not emotionally pure like Chaplin; they preen. Critics who forget that movies should be about people defend this reduction of human experience.

1) I replaced spoilers with “XXXXXXXXXX” so that Armond’s bullshit can be enjoyed while maintaining some mystery where plot is concerned.

2) Yes. The interlude wasn’t “daring.” What it was was emotionally true. I’m sure that someone like you goes to bed alone every night, wondering what love feels like. But, as someone who shares his life with someone who would bend over backwards for him (and vice versa), I can tell you that the unfolding of Carl and Ellie’s relationship was daring in its TRUTH. Go masturbate while crying, you goateed douchebag.

3) Chaplin never preened? Really. Do you mean Charlie or Oona?

4) Movies should be about people? Really? No wonder you hate Pixar! Their movies are about fish! Monsters! Cars! A rat! Bugs!

5) The reduction of human experience? Are you fucking high? It’s an 80-minute movie that takes YEARS to produce and you’re mad because it wasn’t unspooled in real time? Tell me how the 70-year version of the movie is.

When Up trivializes Carl and Russell’s loneliness—treating it to the same Journey/Rescue/Return blueprint as Finding Nemo, Cars, Wall-E, Monsters, Inc., A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 1 and 2—the predictability becomes cloying. And the inevitable shift to anthropomorphism—Carl and Russell float to South America, encountering a prehistoric bird and mysteriously “talking” dogs—is very nearly depressing. Almost as depressing as Wall-E. Despite some imaginative imagery (gray-blue night storms, dark yet vivid jungle scenes, compositional values J.J. Abrams knows nothing about), Up drops its emotional elements for chase mechanics and precious comedy. This way, Pixar disgraces and delimits the animated film as a mushy, silly pop form.

1) You should read some Joseph Campbell. Or hang yourself. And for more of the “Journey/Rescue/Return blueprint,” swing by a comic book store. Pick any one at random and, if the hero doesn’t win at the end, check the following issue.

2) Oh! Up has imaginative imagery! Well, too bad the imagery plays such a small part in A FUCKING CARTOON.

3) The reason the dogs talk is mysterious until 20 seconds later, when it is explained. Did you watch the movie while dreaming up ways to shit on it? Maybe if you had paid attention, you’d realize that the amount of “anthropomorphism” in this movie is NONE.

4) That’s right! Shit on Star Trek again, in case people forgot that you’re a contrarian by trade and a film critic by error.

5) Yeah! Fuck you for adding humor to this movie, Pixar! And chase mechanics! It should have been much sadder and far more maudlin! Why were no children bawling in my local theater!?!

6) I had to look up “delimits.” It means “limits.” I hate Armond White so much.

7) Saying that Pixar limits what animated films can be is like saying the Beatles ruined pop music with their records. Would Hollywood be as eager to dump trillions of dollars on cartoons if Pixar hadn’t shown them that solid, funny, well-animated all-ages movies will be embraced by everyone except Armond White?

Pixarism defines the backward taste for animation. Refuting Chuck Jones’ insistence that he didn’t create his great Warner Bros. cartoon for children, Pixarism domesticates and homogenizes animation—as if to preserve family values. The only exceptions have been Brad Bird’s Pixar movies The Incredibles and Ratatouille—both sumptuously executed in Bird’s belief that animation should show “how things feel rather than are. Indulging in the human aspect of being alive.” Yet their conceptual weak point was cuteness—same as Up’s glossing over Carl’s XXXXXXXXXX and that inconsistently imagined dog pack.

Did you just say that Pixar “domesticates and homogenizes animation”? Did you accidentally attend the screening of one of Michael Apted’s __ Up documentaries? At least you liked The Incredibles (which was so not about a Journey/Rescue/Return) (wait… yes it was) and Ratatouille (lots of people in that one, so you were OK with the anthropomorphism, right?). Oh! But those cartoons were also cute! Why couldn’t the rat have diseases? Why couldn’t some of the Incredibles have glaring birth defects?

Also, the dog pack wasn’t inconsistently imagined. You were. By your parents. Oh no I dih-ih!

After ripping-off Albert Lamorisse’s classic The Red Balloon, dispersing it into Carl’s thousands of colorful orbs, Pixar then literalizes the meaning of flight as a commercial icon: Up. Here, it’s simply the means to “adventures” and not an ecstatic elevation of individual identity. Last year, elitist film nerds forgot how Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon also dishonored Lamorisse’s beautiful tale—as they cynically overrated the entropic Wall-E.

Um… The Red Balloon is a classic. But just because lots of balloons appear in both movies, you cannot accuse Pixar of plagiarism. Just as I can’t accuse you of stealing some of you smartest observations from the sign held by that homeless man who hangs out in front of Filene’s Basement on Broadway and 79th (he also thought Dance Flick was terrific, I assume). Also, anyone else having a hard time reading that first sentence? The one that whines about how the floating house is merely the means to an end and not “an ecstatic elevation of individual identity”? Yeah. But kudos to Whitey for managing to insult film critics for not screaming “PLAGIARISM!!!!” at The Flight of the Red Balloon (I haven’t seen it, but hey — it has a red balloon in it, so it must be plagiarism). But here’s the best part of the review (and not just because it’s the end):

All this deflated cinema and Pixarism mischaracterizes what good animation can be, as in Coraline, Monster House, Chicken Little, Teacher’s Pet, The Iron Giant. Up’s aesthetic failure stems from its emotional letdown.

Coraline was gorgeous. The Iron Giant was phenomenal. But the other three movies Whitey holds up as examples of what animation should be?

Chicken Little?

Just looking at this promotional art makes me sad. Shitty animation, a fish in a football helmet, a duck that is ugly… uh, weren’t cartoons supposed to be about PEOPLE, Whitey? And boo to anthropomorphing?

Monster House?

This animation is terrible! Oh, wait. This is the Game Boy Advance version. Hang on.

OK. So, dogs wearing collars that allow their thoughts to be heard? That’s bad. Too anthropomorphic. But a house that eats children? THAT’S about PEOPLE!

And Teacher’s Pet?

That doesn’t even look like Clark Gable! Wait. Wrong one.

How is this appropriate for kids? Oh. Sorry. Here we go…

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that Armond “Whitey” White is so utterly filled with shit that every time he burps, four unblemished logs tumble to the floor. Have you ever seen animation this shitty? Couple that with the fact that (I think?) these things aren’t people! They’re… horribly drawn.

That’ll do it for me, but here are some of my favorite comments on the website Whitey posted his review on:

you are an idiot
please turn your computer off and never turn it back on D-bag

by Your Mother

Let me be the first to congratulate Armond on using his dislike for Up (which I haven’t seen) as an excuse to bash Flight of the Red Balloon. It’s not every critic that can create such a penetrating dialectic between films involving balloons. I salute his speaking truth to power etc. etc.

by Vadim

You are a joke.
Go watch another Friedberg-Seltzer movie.
Your opinions are about as worthless as you are.

by Matt

hack. reviewer equivalent of a troll. trolling presumably to wring out clickthroughs. you randomly take a potshot at jj abrams half way through, and in case, you hadn’t noticed – you do a complete plot walkthrough, interspersed with meaningless verbiage. You moron.

pompous meaningless verbiage like:

“yet their conceptual weakpoint was cuteness..” if cuteness is in fact a weak point in an animation directed primarily at children, why is it conceptual? why say conceptual? Cuteness is not a ‘concept’ in the context of the animations you’re referring to – you utter, utter, utter moron.

by swimtwobirds

Im not going to say anything because you clearly get off to being a retard.

by Duke

Well said, everyone but duke.

To read the (many, many) other comments, click here.

And to you, Armond, I say: Please to shut the fuck up.

Good day.

*Googling takes so much time and energy!

Firstly, I’ve noticed something that makes me to laugh.

When I was a kid, Hollywood logic dictated that if a movie was successful, they’d make a sequel and add a “II” at the end of the original’s title. Sometimes they’d jazz it up (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) or try to be clever (the sequel to K-9 was K-911) (see what they did there?), but they always made sure the audience knew it was a sequel. In fact, the movie The Madness of King George was originally titled The Madness of King George III (as it was about King George III), but Miramax decided that most Americans would think it was part three of a trilogy and not see it (and I’ve decided that anyone that might have thought that has still not seen that movie to this day).

But check out your multiplexes: Angels & Demons (without Tom’s mullet and/or Amelie, how are we to deduce that this is a sequel to The Da Vinci Code, despite the novel being a prequel to TDVC?) plays next door to Terminator: Salvation (the fourth movie, not counting the recently cancelled TV series) and will soon be joined by Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (the third movie) (I think) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (both the second film in their respective canons) (man, I wish someone would put these films in respective cannons). And not a single number or Roman numeral in the lot. Same with Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Is the thinking that these franchises are so well-known and successful that no number is necessary? Is this the new status symbol in Tinseltown? The numberless sequel? Or maybe, as is the case with Ben Stiller’s new semi-autobiographical kiddie film, it’s so much like the original that adding a number would just confuse most of its audience?

And speaking of confusing the audience, my mother can stomach violence in movies, but not seeing someone being humiliated. I feel the same way about advertising, which is why pre-movie commercials are starting to make me sad.

The American car industry is going into its death-throes. All of a sudden, “fuel efficiency” trumps “racing stripe.” And it isn’t just our car companies that are feeling it — all those fur-in-ers’ cars that we used to buy in droves? Now we don’t (s’much). And yet… no one is changing up their ad campaigns.

BMW continues to run their insanely annoying “car that drives around in a circle (like a paintbrush kinda!) for ten minutes (and we wasted as much paint as we did gas!)” commercial. Honda now has an ad for their Insight (I think it’s like a hybrid — I was turning off my phone and missed a chunk of their ad, which I’m sure was terrif!) that looks like every other car commercial ever. But what kills me is that the new thing to do is either make your ad look like a movie preview (which, if done well, is a perennial gem) or a car commercial (this would be awesome if dealerships weren’t closing left and right… I wonder if/how this will affect the box office for Jeremy Piven’s The Goods).

A Lucky Charms ad made to look like a car commercial? Bleh.

A Canon Powershot ad made to look like as a car commercial? Bleh.

A Honeycomb ad where a hyperactive boy is a hot potato between a doctor and a vet (see, he’s BeeBoy!)? How can you not find healthcare in this country hilarious? What a brilliant way to sell CEREAL. Even worse, they’ve set up a website for BeeBoy (I shan’t share the url). B’also? In the Lucky Charms ad, we learn that Lucky has big news and if we want to know what the big news is, we have to go to Lucky’s new website (I shan’t provide this url either).

Oh, and eating Lunchables helps you play basketball, apparently.

Look, I get that marketing to kids today is harder (thanks, ADD!) and that you need a hook (once they’re at our website, they can play some cool games!), but a food company’s “cool games” are barely games and never cool. And what could Lucky’s big news be? A new marshmallow shape in his inedible wares? Well, guess what, kids! They all TASTE THE SAME. Pink hearts taste like yellow moons taste like orange Stars of David. Who thought it would be a good idea to add [SPOILER WARNING] what I think is a yellow and red hourglass to the “charms” line-up?

But I reminded myself that I was here to see a kid’s movie, so I couldn’t fault General Mills for trying to reach its target demo (though I have a big hunch that kids will be saddened to discover its just a new shape in Lucky’s high fructose corn syreal [see what I did there?]).

The previews also showed me what movies kids can look forward to in the coming months:

Up (next on my list – thank you, America!) looks gorgeous (what Pixar movie hasn’t?) and should appeal to all ages (I cried at Finding Nemo and made the goofiest wide-mouthed smile as I watched the recent Toy Story 3 trailer just yesterday).

Aliens in the Attic should appeal to the millions of people that keep Disney is business. Since I am not one of them, I will try my best to avoid this awful live-action mess (though Doris Roberts doing kung fu got a nice chuckle from me, but then I turned it into a cough so the people in my row wouldn’t think I was “differently abled”).

The trailer for Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (oh, now I get it! HA!) is the three CGI rodents “singing along” to the 20th Century Fox intro that plays before their movies (you know, with the spotlights and the drum roll?). That’s it. To the two guys behind me (“What the fuck was that?” “Um… gay?”), thank you for helping me through that hard period in my life.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs made me think of that old Shakespeare quote (as opposed to his newer ones?) about the tale that’s filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing. The animation is pretty — it’s almost Pixarian in its meticulousness. But where Pixar movies tug at your heartstrings, Ice Age tugs at your fartstrings. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary? Really? I don’t like to watch them in person (Oh, you do? Rent Welcome to Mooseport, The Pest and Two If By Sea. Yeah.), but hearing them talk while looking at… whatever the fuck Leguizamo is supposed to be… no thanks.

I should also note that I may have been the youngest person in the audience. Of the maybe 20 filled seats, 12 were elderly people (always in pairs!) and some guys around my age. No kids. I loves me some free sparsely-attended matinees.

The movie itself, well, let’s just say that its parts are greater than its sum. If you stop and think about anything in the movie, you will be confused. Just smile and wait 12 seconds and one of your favorite actors will pop up!

Two years after the last film (that is to say, the first film), Ben Stiller is now Ron Popeil 2.0. He invents things that practically sell themselves (like the glow-in-the-dark flashlight) and yet, he makes infomercials with George Foreman in order to sell them, despite their popularity (now THAT’S savvy business sense!). And he did this in the last year and change. After he quit working at the museum.

(Regardless of everything, if you were the only person who could speak to historical figures every night of your life and play with a dinosaur and sitch, why would you ever ever ever quit that job? ESPECIALLY if you had a young child who would TOTALLY ADORE YOU for sharing said world with him? It’s the easiest job in the world! Just smile, Jed. Oh, look! Ricky Gervais!)

Poor Ricky Gervais. He’s so much better than the shit he’s done in the U.S. I can’t wait for his next film (he’s co-writing and co-directing it and everyone from Tina Fey to Louis C.K. to Christopher Guest is in it). It used to be called This Side of the Truth. Now it’s called The Invention of Lying. And this is Ricky visiting my BPF in his pajamas.

But enough about genius. Let’s get back to NatM:BotS.

Ahem (taps microphone). It’s pronounced “cap-ooh-CHEEN” not “cap-OOH-chin.” I am amazed that not a single person working on either of these films realized that. Sigh.

And does Pocahontas speak English or not? I thought she did (on account of she does repeatedly), but then Robin “Teddy Roosevelt” Williams tells Ben “Ben Stiller” Stiller that everyone is going to the Smithsonian where they will remain in their boxes forever (after Ben left, the museum decided that holograms are better than actual statues and sitch), but he hasn’t told anyone (including his girlfriend, Pocahontas) and she’s literally twenty feet away and smiling as he announces this to “Ben.”

Deep breaths, Jed. So what if the Museum of NATURAL History is boxing up its actual dinosaur skeleton? The holographic one will be ever naturaller!

“Jed, are you OK?”

Oh, um. Yeah, Ben. If my eye-rolling is distracting you, I apologize. Oh. He was talking to Owen Wilson. Never mind.

Hey, it’s Mindy Kaling! And Jonah Hill! And Hank Azaria speaking like the guy who narrates “Monster Mash!”And Bill Hader (one of the many scene-stealers who made this experience more enjoyable than it had any right to be)!

Every review I’ve read has fawned over Amy Adams. Listen, she’s a great actress. I loved her in Junebug. She is incredibly talented. Having said that, The Hudsucker Proxy is one of my favorites IN SPITE OF Jennifer Jason Leigh’s poor attempt to evoke a “screwball dame” character (complete with painful accent). Adams’ Amelia Earhart is a less-pronounced but equally annoying accent based on JJL (or so it seemed to me).

And if Hader gets an A+ for his performance, Christopher Guest deserves three of them. His Ivan the Terrible was subtle and hilarious (even when he was forced to amuse five-year-olds by insisting his name actually translates to “Ivan the Awesome”).

Oh, look! It’s Rodan’s “Thinker” and he sounds just like Carl on Aqua Teen Hunger Force! And those three floating marble cherubs that sing “More Than A Woman” even gayer than the Bee Gees? Why, those are the Jonas Brothers! LOL!

But, Ben? If you have less than an hour to save Owen Wilson’s life, why are you casually making chit-chat with…

Oh, look! It’s Craig Robinson as one of the Tuskegee Airmen! Surely one of these guys will start to cough in the background, right? C’mon, TL and RBG! Show some love to your old-school fans!

Sadly, no one coughed or confusedly scratched their arms or fainted. Sigh. What a wasted oppor…

Oh, look! It’s Oscar the Grouch! And Darth Vader!

But why isn’t Amelia Earhart freaked out by how much the world has changed since she…

Is that Clint Howard? Who ISN’T in this movie?

But with the possible exception of Owen Wilson calling himself a “midnight cowboy,” there was little humor aimed directly at the grown-ups.

One last question: If Ben Stiller wasn’t a famous actor and he approached you at a party and started flirting with you, would you find it charming? Or would you ask the chimpy looking Jew to please go away? OK, what if you looked like Amy Adams? Yeah, I thought so.

If you have kids, they’ll probably love this movie. I don’t have kids (until Maury tells me I do), so I didn’t expect to enjoy myself. But, honestly? I laughed a few times. It was a fun film, despite the Grand Canyon-sized plot holes.

But please, America. If there’s a third one, don’t make me see it.

Next up: Up!

I had the pleasure of briefly meeting David Pasquesi many years ago. Watching him perform was enough to garner my lifelong fandom, but meeting him showed me (yet again) that some of the most talented people in the world are also some of the kindest (which makes people like Benjamin Hendrickson — the actor not the ballplayer — all the more disgusting). Seeing him pop up in Angels & Demons put a gigantic smile on my face that only got larger with each new line he delivered (in an Italian accent!).

I would put money down that if you’ve seen over 1,000 movies, you’ve seen Dave (here’s his imdb listing). I think Mayor Daley passed a law in the ’80s that any film shot in Chicago had to employ either Dave or Neil Flynn (you’ve seen him, too: here’s his imdb listing). But he’s a major character in this Hollywood mega-blockbuster (I think he has more screen time than the female lead) and it’s about fucking time. I hope that this gets him even further through the door (if such is his desire) and that I’ll see him (and his buddy with the initials whose name I can’t quite recall) on my weekly jaunts to the Pavilion (and beyond) for many years to come.

I also feel the need to share some epiphanies I had since last week. Firstly, I couldn’t stop thinking about how awkward it was to have a Beastie Boys song in Star Trek. And then I remembered my Celebrities At Their Worst CDs and William Shatner’s nasty argument about the pronunciation of the word “sabotage”

Is it possible that J.J. Abrams was flipping {the guy who was a dick to his castmates, insulted his fanbase, killed his wife [and totes got away with it], almost singlehandedly destroyed the use of irony in commercials, and threw a press conference hissy fit over not being given a role in the reboot} the bird by including that song? I’d like to think so.

Also, ST fans will be pleased to know that “Bones” does get to loudly ask SylarSpock “Are you out of your Vulcan mind!?!” at some point in the reboot. The “I totally see what they did there” applause of your fellow audience members should offer your pelvis something akin to arousal.

I really like the Pavilion. Super-great popcorn. But today I am not in one of their big screening rooms. I’m in a tiny one. It sucks. What sucks more than the smaller screen is the two old pug-faced lesbians who sat behind me as the previews began. They were somehow under the delusion that: a) they were still in their living room; b) the paper shopping bags full of individually-wrapped-in-paper-and-crinkle-wrap-and velcro treats they EACH brought with them wouldn’t be a nuisance to anyone; and c) that John Travolta is supposed to be in the movie whose trailer they were watching (he had spent 30 seconds talking directly to them when one of them had this epiphany).

Also, why do you have to show commercials, then say “here are previews” and go straight into that movietickets.com ad? Why must you turn my multiplex into a den of lies?

In addition to the Transformers 2: Revenge of the Greenscreen trailer, I got a chance to watch one for My Life in Ruins.

Pro: Rachel Dratch. Con: “From the director of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days“

Actually, the trailer is the entire movie (wait until you see Poopy all shaved!). I guess they’re trying to appeal to people that like connecting dots and filling in blanks (I think Richard Dreyfuss might wind up a warmer and happier person by the film’s end, but I’ll only know if America makes me find out).

The Taking of Pelham 123 (already I hate it — The Taking of Pelham One Two Three was a beautiful title whereas this looks like The Taking of Pelham One-hundred-and-twenty-three) has John Turturro (really, Barton?), the visual sensibility of a seizing epileptic (Tony Scott, you so artsy) and a scene where Travolta (not fit to hold Robert Shaw’s cup) and Washington (did Matthau really need to be sexier?) are separated by a chain link fence (if and when I see this, Denzel’s gun has better be empty or I might have to mail out some packages of vomit) (mailing vomit is illegal and messy and I would never do it or suggest seriously that you do it, officers).

Angels & Demons begins with a history lesson about the Pope. I think it’s Alfred Molina’s narration, but the lesbians were giggling because I moved away from their improvised symposium on recycling and I might have misheard. We get to meet a few of the major characters in the film and the basic set-up (people in silly hats are voting on who will next get to wear the silliest hat of all). I learned that the Pope also goes by the name “The Vicar of Christ” which immediately made me wonder who Dibley is.

I also like Ron Howard (he’s directed some great films, produced some great TV, gives great interview), but when he decided to fade from a glowing communion wafer to one of the facilities at CERN (The European Center of Nuclear Research or Something or Other), I knew this wasn’t going to be an exercise in subtlety.

The basic premise (which is already a gargantuan misnomer) is that someone has stolen anti-matter and four of the front-runners in the silly-hat election and is threatening to kill them. So the Vatican sends Dave Pasquesi to get Tom Hanks and fly back to the Vatican. By the time they get there, they only have a few hours until the first murder (which makes me wonder why they didn’t maybe teleconference instead).

Hollywood seems to have taught itself that the best action movies are non-stop thrill rides. The Dark Knight began with a bank robbery and never stopped spinning plates and advancing the narrative forward. Here, we get a lecture on what a camerlengo is (I want to write a Broadway musical based on this movie and call it CAMERLENGO!), see a barely-explained experiment partially stolen (thank God I read comic books or I’d have no idea what anti-matter is) and then watch as Tom Hanks listens to yet still more exposition about the Illuminati and the kidnappings and… it’s pretty to look at (thanks for the haircut, Tom), but it’s also what happens when you try to adapt a long complex novel into a 2-hour popcorn flick. It’s a ticking clock that everyone understands is ticking, but no one (except Saint Tom) really seems too worried about the approaching deadlines for executions (at some point after at least one murder has taken place, the Camerlengo gives Tommy a change of clothes [a priest's black suit] and, as Tom races to try and prevent another murder, he stops him to ask “Would it surprise you to hear those clothes suit you?” to which Tom smiles and calmly responds, “It would surprise the Hell out of me.” and they both smile and I wanted to scream “I hope you don’t look back on this gayballs dialogue as the amount of time you needed to have saved the next guy!”).

This is basically a battle between science (the Illuminati) and religion (the church) as filtered through the action movie structure (think The Bourne Papacy). So once we’ve eaten all our vegetables and understand what’s going on and why, the clock really starts ticking and each clue must be discovered in the nick of time and can they prevent the Vatican from blowing up in time?!?!?!?

Here’s my biggest problem with this movie: the riddle-like clues and the answers to them. It’s like an old episode of the Batman TV show.

ROBIN: What did the Riddler say?

BATMAN: He said, “What has hands, but no thumbs?”

ROBIN: A clock!

BATMAN: Precisely. And what does time do, old chum?

ROBIN: Time… flies? Of course! He’s planning to rob the Flyswatter Museum!

That’s what this movie was like. For every interpretation of a clue that Tom has (and which always turns out right), there are an infinite amount of equally-plausible possibilities. I guess Ron figured that we’d all be so happy to have gotten through all the exposition that we wouldn’t care if the action made little sense — at least it was action!

Tom races away from the guy guarding him in the Vatican library and speeds away in a cop car to Raphael’s tomb. And there he meets… the guy from the library. B’also? If I were Vatican Police and this shit was going on? I’d be freaking out. When does the Vatican Police ever have anything exciting to do? Come on, Vati-cops! I just saw a priest’s corpse being eaten by rats! And another burn to death! Why are you all still so calm????

While Angels & Demons will go down in history as the only film ever wherein its protagonist exclaims, “Of course! Bas relief!” it will also be remembered as a movie that tried so hard to make everyone look like a suspect that no one seemed to be acting naturally.

The Camerlengo at the end of the movie tells Tom that “religion is flawed only because man is flawed.” This is the closest that a film about the struggle between religion and science can come to a compromise. And though I haven’t read the book, that’s what this movie felt like to me. A compromise. A watering down. An abridgment. Or maybe it was an implausible and mediocre book to begin with.

I’d say B/B- (but Pasquesi gets an A) since it has a great cast and (though I may have rolled my eyes once or thrice) a few pretty cool sequences. You can (and will) do far worse this summer.

Oh, also? [SPOILER-ISH WARNING!!!] If you do go see the movie, consider this: Tom Hanks is supposed to be a super-duper riddle solver. Galileo told him to “let angels guide you” and this sent him on a wild goose chase all over Rome ending… at the Castle of the Angels — which used to be a prison the Vatican used to hold members members of the Illuminati. That’s some super-duper riddle-solving, that is.

It is important to note that my mother took me to see the first Star Trek when it originally played and I fell asleep fairly quickly. After that, I watched the final ten minutes of ST:TNG every day in college (it was on before The Simpsons), but despite some impressive acting I couldn’t justify watching a show (in its entirety) where Whoopi Goldberg played a space-bartender as if she was trying to win (another) Emmy (seriously, a space-bartender?). Around that same time, I started to go see the Star Trek movies when they came out (I saw The Undiscovered Something Or Other and every one thereafter; tickets were cheap in college, free in Chicago, free in Westchester… my standards have ebbed and flowed over the years as a direct result, sadly). I really liked First Contact, went to see the one where Kirk dies and thought his death scene was second only to {that shot of Frank Nitti against a greenscreen in The Untouchables after Ness throws him off the roof} in grinding a film’s momentum to a sniggering halt.

And yes, I just used the { and the } in that last sentence. I felt it clarified the sentence — in math it signifies the unification of a part of the equation. If you saw 3 + 2 x 4 = ? the answer would be 20. But if it read 3 + {2 x 4} = ? the answer is 11. I felt that the sentence needed some extra punctuation, so I added the squiggly parentheses. I think I’m going to do it from now on (as I loves me some run-on sentences that tangentrify and contain nonsensical words I make up on the fly – like “tangentrify” and “youth market.”)

And I kept seeing them because, though I am not a fan in the slightest, I have always had an interest in pop culture (were I prettier, I would have proven it on The World Series of Pop Culture, but VH1 has a knack for putting the wrong people on TV [see: VH1]). B’also because no one was making any Star Wars movies (and then BECAUSE someone was making Star Wars movies).

So as I talk about the movie, understand that besides catchphrases (and other things you learn about a TV show through Mad parodies and SNL sketches), I have:

a) no attachement to the original series

b) no great knowledge of the original series

c) low expectations as I thought Cloverfield was awful and Transformers was boring (I vaguely remember saying “really?” to myself when the car from outer space peed on John Turturro and then doing a crossword for the remainder of the movie)

d) puh-lenty of spoilers as true fans of Star Trek have already seen this film 10 times

PREAMBLE

Whenever I’ve gone to a comic book store at any point in the last ten years, I’ve gotten depressed. Out of the hundreds of times such an event has occurred, I can count on one elbow the number of times I have seen actual children in the store (and if they’re there because dad or mom is picking up their weekly books — for themselves — it don’t count). Somehow, comic book companies have managed to hook a generation (or two) who used to buy comics for 35 cents, 50 cents, 65 cents, and now race to the store every Wednesday to spend $3.00 on a single 22-page comic book (some books are going up to $4.00 any week now — thanks, Marvel!). It is almost impossible for a kid to become a fan these days. Of the movies? Yes. The cartoons? Yes. The comics? Nope.

Likewise, there are no kids in this audience (to be fair, it’s 1:45 on a Wednesday). No teenagers. There are old men (a couple of REALLY old men) and men my age (one even has a female with him!) and that’s it. As I sit down, the commercials start.

I used to drive my dad’s old BMW. It broke down one night on the way back to college. On I-95. It was freezing and I had volunteered to give some friends a ride thereby screwing up many people’s evening plans.

BMW’s nine-minute (more like NEIN-minute, am I right?) commercial with the drawing of the circles and then the car drives in the circles? Worse. I vaguely remember Mike (or maybe Ian?) cheering me up in the office of the guy that towed the car. No one cheered me up when I watched this ad again (it ran TWICE). And Sean Taylor’s commercial for Enzo’s STILL HAS NOT BEEN AIRING (to my knowledge). Make some calls, Sean.

Another observation: Why is it that whenever they want you to know your theater is equipped with high-quality picture or high-quality sound, they show you a blurry tornado of color and loud screeches of noise?

I really am an old man before my time.

My pregnant wife! Hurry! We have to go see a movie! Let me push you in a chair and then drive into our bushes! Have you miscarried yet? RUN! The movie is starting soon! And I obviously care more about my whore mother than my wife and jostled child! And it’s a good thing the cop chased us here for the movie that’s sold out but that he has a ticket to! And now my mom is going to make out with the cop! Movietickets dot com, seriously, cut it out.

TRAILERS

Angels & Demons (Da Vinci Code 2: The Rise of the Illuminati) actually looks good. I missed part of the trailer because Bill O’Reilly was in the front row and he started screaming, “Why do Ron Howard and Tom Hanks hate God?” over and over until {the retarded lady that asks everyone where they’re going even though the ticket-ripper tells each person where to go when they first enter and it’s not a complex floor plan at all} and {the two guys who text and talk {sports and bling} all day and occasionally sweep popcorn around the carpet} made him leave. This is a movie that will be #1 soon, so I’m looking forward to that week.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra has a pretty trailer. But right away I thought, “This looks nice, but… why does a G.I. Joe movie need this much CGI?” And then in big letters I was answered: From the director of The Mummy. Yeah. On the one hand, the movie is based on the comics NOT the cartoon, which is great! But Marlon Wayans in a suit that gives him super-powers? Anybody have an issue number for me? I’m lost. It feels like all of the special effects are cool, but nothing (besides the moment Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow see the same markings on each other’s blades for the first time) felt G.I. Joe- specific. Were this a run-of-the-mill Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson movie, I’d have thought, “Wow! That looks like silly fun!” but when you cast the kid from 3rd Rock From The Sun as Cobra Commander and Doctor Who as Destro? Maybe, you know, we could see them as we remember them? Destro in a helmet maybe? Just for a second? Or Cobra Commander… at all? No? Well, thanks for the shot of Dennis Quaid where he looked like he’s smelling poop (see: Dennis Quaid when he isn’t smiling) and the woman standing behind him solely to be flatteringly lit! I say this is the first Fill In The Blanks Movie of 2009.

Unless Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen comes out first. The second movie in a row to be based on action figures (look for Voltron, Candyland, Stretch Armstrong, My Little Pony and whatever else movie executives used to play with COMING SOON!), this is a loud ugly mash-up of jump-cuts of clanging metal and screaming and running. I am not looking forward to its #1 weekend(s). Good to see Barton Fink playing to the height of his abilities again (will the space-car make space-doodies on him this time?).

I should also note that for the last three weeks, I’ve seen my afternoon movie on the big screen at the Pavilion. It isn’t IMAX, but it also isn’t one of the tiny screens the art films get shown on. Which makes me think this whole “see the movie that did the most business last weekend” idea is sound.

THE MOVIE

We open with a loud noise. I’m thinking if I were a fan, I’d recognize it. But I don’t, so it’s just a loud noise. There’s a ship and it has troubles with another ship. The second ship? EXAMPLE 1 OF T.T.T.K.M.I.M.S.F.M. (the thing that kills me in many science-fiction movies). I don’t care what year it is or what planet we’re on: there is absolutely no reason to build a ship that looks like that. It’s structurally unsound. I imagine (and I’m using almost 35 years of life to base it on) that the future is about minimalizing. Making things simpler. Easier. Faster. More efficient. Many sci-fi (or is it now SyFy?) films show things as different in the future, but less efficient. That’s ridiculous to me.

[SIDE NOTE: I love Clifton Collins, Jr. and have for years. Not only is he a great actor, but even in ridiculous make-up there's no mistaking whose mouth that is. I just read that back and feel the need to remind you -- and myself -- that I am happily married to someone with lady parts.]

Eric Bana, however, is not as recognizable. In fact, I’m pretty sure that for at least half the film, Tom Cruise was his stand-in (on many apple crates).

Gee, the captain of that doomed ship sure sits in that chair like Shatner did. Is that… our Kirk? No… it’s Kirk’s father! OMG! And his mom is totally having him in a rocket that’s escaping a doomed ship! While there’s a battle! Cut to woman birthing! Cut to lasers! Nurses! Explosions! Screaming mother! Dying father! More lasers! Baby boy! J.J. Abrams has issues!

[SIDE NOTE: You know your husband is about to die. Don't ask him what to name the baby. Name the baby after him. No brainer. B'also? If your dying husband asks you to name him Jim before 'sploding? Don't name him James. No brainer.]

We meet young James Tiberius Kirk while he’s taking his stepfather’s antique auto for a joyride. His father (voiced by Heroes‘ Greg Grunberg!) calls him on the future-car-phone to chastise him, but James hangs up and blasts… “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys? Really? And a cop tries to pull him over b’instead? He jumps out of the car as it skids off of a gigantic cliff. The cop was on a hoverbike (and could therefore catch up easily). And I discover that after knowing him for 4 minutes, I hate new Kirk. He’s a douchebag.

Then we meet young Spock. He lives on Vulcan where… buildings hang underneath cliffs? Really? That makes sense to people in the future? To hang buildings under cliffs and not connect them to, say, the ground? EXAMPLE 2 OF T.T.T.K.M.I.M.S.F.M. (“Hey, J.J.? You know how Vulcan is supposed to be different than Earth?” “Yeah?” “Wull, what if the buildings were like bats?” “Does that make sense?” “Uh… no… but buildings on Earth make sense, so not making sense would be different. Right?” “Great job!”)

Young Spock is picked on by his Vulcan peers because they have no emotions but he is half-human and therefore has emotions. And yet, they pick fights with him. Is that logical? I mean… racism (or speciesism) is illogical. So… why are they picking on Spock? Even worse is the fact that, when we meet the boy who would be Sylar, he explains that this is the 35th time they are trying to elicit an emotional response and that they will never succeed. Then one of them says something about his mother being inferior because she’s an earthling and he responds emotionally (if only they had figured out that his mother was the thing that would get a rise out of him, it might not have taken so long!). We meet Spock’s parents. His father is… Ben Cross?!? And his mother is Winona Ryder?!? Good lord, poor Winona has the old tired eyes of a 70-year-old heroin addict. I hope that’s make-up.

And Sylar is now Spock. And I realize that J.J. Abrams is a shrewd businessman. Dig this:

Star Trek has a rabid fan base. The reboot is populated almost entirely by people that have been part of projects with similar cult-like fan bases. Ben Cross (Dark Shadows), Chris Pine (Fantastic Four), Zachary Quinto (Heroes) Simon Pegg (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead), John Cho (Harold & Kumar), Leonard Nimoy (an episode of The Simpsons) even Tyler “Madea” Perry (Fat-Suit Passion Play V: Oh No She Dih-ih!) has been given lines. It’s almost as if Abrams wanted to make sure that every nerd base was covered when putting the poster together.

Anyhoodles, Spock stands before the Kryptonian Science Council (or a Vulcan equivalent) and is accepted into the special place for smart Vulcans. But the head of the council gives him a back-handed compliment and Spock decides to join Starfleet instead. He tells the council to “live long and prosper” in one of many, many, many shout-outs to fans. At least in this case, Abrams has tweaked it to resemble the old Woody Allen line (“The other day a guy hit my car with his and I said unto him, ‘be fruitful and multiply’ but not in those words.”)

And if Spock is a man now (barely) than has Kirk aged similarly? Yes! And now he’s The Human Torch! We’re in a bar and here’s EXAMPLE 3 OF T.T.T.K.M.I.M.S.F.M.: bar glasses. In the future, bars will serve beer in a thin glass about 9 inches tall, but with the bottom of the glass two inches from the table it rests on. So you get only 7 inches of beer. By my own logic, that would imply that beer is stronger in the future. Which makes sense. But that glass is different, yes, but impractical.

Jim hates his father. Maybe if his mother had named him after his dad, he’d feel differently? Luckily, a Starfleet Captain broke up a fight he was in and spent the night drinking with him. He challenges him to follow in his father’s footsteps by leaving for Starfleet Academy the following morning. So (to spite the captain or his father or me), he does. But he doesn’t pack bags or change hos clothing from the night before which is ridiculous.

And who sits next to him on the shuttle? A doctor complaining that his wife “took the whole planet in the divorce and left him with nothing but his bones!” And that’s how McCoy got the nickname (I guess). Fade to bleech.

THREE YEARS LATER

We’re back with Bana and Collins, the baddies who killed Kirk’s dad. They’re waiting for something. It’s very loud. That viewscreen would be easier to use and see if there wasn’t so much crap dangling everywhere on your ship, dummy! Meanwhile, Kirk is having sex with a green-skinned lady (get it, fans?).

Kirk cheats on his final and is brought in front of the Kryptonian Science Council (or the Starfleet equivalent) where he must answer to Tyler Perry. Spock designed the test to be impossible, but Kirk reprogrammed the system to help him ace it. They are each presenting Tyler with their views. Then Spock makes a snide remark about a captain not being able to cheat death, just like Kirk’s father (Now it is Spock who is the bully! Emotional and illogical!).

[SIDE NOTE: Everything flies in the future. Why are there still bridges?]

Also, the relationship between Uhura and Spock? Don’t make no sense. B’also? He’s her teacher. That’s not frowned on in the future?

Now we see the uniforms. Like the titular hero of Bryan Singer’s homo-erotic/messianic reboot Superman Returns, our heroes’ outfits are designed out of fabric made up of 1,000,000 miniature Star Trek logos.

Were I a fan, I might also find New Chekhov’s accent a fitting tribute to whoever played him before, but I’m not. So it was horribly distracting. In what part of Russia is “Victor” pronounced “Wictor”?

Oh, Isabella Rossellini is in this? Holy fuck! That’s Winona Ryder again! So haggard!

I just realized that Bruce Greenwood (the captain that convinced Kirk to join and the captain of the ship Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu and Kirk are all currently on) was in Thirteen Days! The ship is being captained by JFK!

Enter Chopper. I mean Tom Cruise. I mean Eric Bana. He contacts JFK. He asks JFK who he is.

“Christopher Pike, Captain of the Enterprise.”

“Hi, Christopher. I’m Nero.”

[SIDE NOTE: Every person in the theater found this exchange to be laughably awful, especially considering that Nero is super-evil.]

Nero sends Collins to fetch the red matter (what is this, Angels & Demons?) and JFK puts Spock in charge and stowaway Kirk (long story) is the new First Mate (or whatever it’s called). So, here’s the crew of the Enterpise and how they got there. McCoy because the first doctor died. Kirk because he stowed away on the ship and was able to make a connection that 20 other people should have made already. Uhura because she has Spock wrapped around her finger and forced him to change her assignment. Sulu because the first guy has “lungworm.” So many odd coincidences! And Spock and Kirk (who hate each other) are forced to be teammates (it honestly felt like the beginning of most Kirk/Spock “slash fiction” stories… or so I’d imagine).

And again, Russians never say “zee” instead of “the” or “Qwerk” instead of “Kirk.” Just because someone did a shitty accent 40 years ago doesn’t mean you have to do a shitty one now, Chekhov. Fans would have been OK with a couple of Kiptin!’s.

Now Kirk, Sulu and Olsen put on the suits from the G.I. Joe trailer (great cross-promotion!) and try to destroy the jammer Nero is using on Vulcan. The jammer is a drill. It is lowered from the ship on a fairly thin mangle of wires and bullshit (EXAMPLE 4 OF T.T.T.K.M.I.M.S.F.M.). John Cho demonstrates here why he gets top billing (and also the alphabetical order and Eric Bana opting for a “and Eric Bana” credit at the end). Great scene with Kirk and Sulu. Where’s Olsen? Um… his suit was red (get it, fans?).

Back on the Enterprise, there’s an old Jew! A lady with a giant Afro! If only the Roddenberrys could see their dream of a multi-culti spaceship finally coming to fruition kind of! And Chekhov having the epiphany that he needs to run to another part of the ship to manually teleport people screaming “I can do zat!” over and over was painful.

Holy shit! Chekhov killed Spock’s mom! Nice ret-con, J.J.!

EXAMPLE 5 OF T.T.T.K.M.I.M.S.F.M.: the blatant metaphors for humanity. “Vulcan is populated by 6,000,000,000 Vulcans!” Where have I heard that before? What has 6,000,000,000 people on its planet? God, I should know this…

Uhura kissing Spock? Ruh. Dih. Q. Lus.

This is the actual no-foolin’ dialogue following her hugging and kissing the barely-reciprocating Vulcan.

“What do you need? Tell me.”

“I need… everyone to continue performing admirably.”

Followed by more kisses. Boo.

[SIDE NOTE: Nero has been chilling in the past for so long, he had time to shoot a mini-origin story for himself on hologram. Seriously! He shows JFK! It's as silly as it sounds.]

For no logical reason, “Bones” yells, “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a _____” (get it, fans?)

We also learn that Nero is the reason the current crew isn’t going through what the original crew went through — his destruction of Kirk, Sr.’s ship was due to him travelling into the past, thereby creating an alternate timeline. You with me? Excellent.

Hey, fans! Did you see Spock use the Vulcan nerve pinch on Kirk? Wasn’t that awesome, fans? Yawn.

Wait a minute. Spock is mad at Kirk (who destroyed the jamming device and is responsible for ALMOST saving Vulcan instead of no one knowing it was in danger, so Spock shoots Kirk onto an ice planet where he is almost killed by a poorly thought-out space crab/spider monster that has ten legs and no traction? Spock is a total douchebag. What does Uhura see in him? And who will save Kirk?

Leonard Nimoy, of course. Nero put Spock on this planet so he could watch Vulcan be destroyed. There’s a Starfleet outpost nearby and I guess he could have tried to save Vulcan, but whatevs. He has a nice cave. And fire.

Turns out Spock accidentally sent Nero to the past. Holy shit! Spock killed Kirk’s father! Nice ret-con, J.J.!

EXAMPLE 6 OF T.T.T.K.M.I.M.S.F.M.: Hundreds of years from now, people in space will say, “You know we have a saying on Earth…” followed by things that have never and will never be said on Earth. Bones just yelled, “You know we have a saying on Earth: If you’re gonna ride in the Kentucky Derby, you don’t leave your prize stallion in the stable!” Let’s try some more ourselves! “If you’re gonna super-size your fries, you don’t leave your wallet on the train tracks!” “If you wanna win the game, you don’t spend months teaching the other players how to beat you at the game you’re going to play against them!” “If you want an egg roll, you don’t order a pizza from a Mexican restaurant in Cairo!”

That was fun. Speaking of which, with not much time left, here comes Simon Pegg. And he may sound like Wee Hughie from The Boys, but he is a joy to watch as Scotty. “Are you from the future? Do they still have samwitches there?” He’s the highlight of the movie (for me, at least). What sucks is that Scotty is credited with discovering the way to teleport onto a ship that is moving at warp speed. But he learns it from NimoySpock. Who learned it from Scotty in the future. Nice ret-con, J.J.!

But then he gets teleported into the inert reactant tubes that feed into something or other… looks like EXAMPLE 7 OF T.T.T.K.M.I.M.S.F.M., as the inner workings of the Enterprise look similar to the hull of the Titanic. Luckily, Kirk pushes the button that opens a hatch and Scotty falls 30 feet to the floor (following a solid minute underwater in a pipe). But he’s OK.

SylarSpock finds out that Kirk is on the ship and tells his security guards to “set phasers on stun” (get it, fans?). One of the guards, who Kirk was fighting in that bar 3 years ago finds Kirk and Scotty and HE DOESN’T STUN THEM. He hates Kirk, Spock gave him permission to stun him and he has him dead to rights, but he doesn’t fire. Very frustrating.

NimoySpock tells Kirk that he needs to get a rise out of SylarSpock so that he’ll relieve himself of duty and Kirk will be the guy in charge of the ship. He might have mentioned that all Kirk needs to do is talk about how human his mother was and he’ll go coo-coo bananas, but whatevs. He gets a rise out of SylarSpock, who resigns and now Kirk is BMOC. And he sits in the chair like Shatner (get it, fans?).

So in addition to the ret-conning on crew members killing each others’ parents and being Starfleet’s second choices across the board, Kirk is now Captain Kirk because Spock punched him and resigned and JFK made Kirk second in command.

Kirk and Spock teleport onto Nero’s ship to save JFK. They appear in the middle of 10 evil people, but since the ship is structurally challenged, they don’t get killed, find cover 1,000 yards away and kill everyone. Yawn. Oh, I should note that Kirk makes a jump and winds up in the exact same position he was in when he drove that car off that cliff… nice foreshadowing, J.J.!

They find NimoySpock’s ship and Spock sits in the pilot’s chair and it moves slowly around so that he is facing the controls of the ship. SylarSpock’s response? “Fascinating.” (GET. IT. FANS?)

More catchphrases. Scotty, Chekhov, yawn. I think the fans are placated, J.J. Howzabout you just finish this so we can all go home?

EXAMPLE 8 OF T.T.T.K.M.I.M.S.F.M.: breaking your own rules. A single drop of “red matter” destroyed Vulcan. A gigantic ball of red matter (maybe 100,000,000,000,000 drops?) is detonated, but it doesn’t destroy 100,000,000,000,000 times as much stuff. Not even close. Boo.

Then SylarSpock sees NimoySpock and thinks it’s his dad and he says, “Father?” and NimoySpock sloooooooowly turns and answers, “I am not our father.” He also gives SylarSpock the EXACT SAME advice that Ben Cross gave him over 3 years ago. “Put aside logic and do what feels right.” Maybe if he hears it from himself it’ll take?

[SIDE NOTE: How come whenever SylarSpock does the Vulcan hand thing with the fingers, he's shot at a weird angle? Because he can't do it. Abrams had to glue his fingers together. So lame.]

The movie ends (seemingly for the eighth time) with NimoySpock doing the old TV intro. I wonder if that was added so the fans would have something to notice.

Honestly? It was fun. Someone said that now, Star Trek fans no longer have to be ashamed around Star Wars fans. And despite finding that sentence hilarious for many reasons, I agree. This is easily the best Star Trek movie I’ve seen and I’d happily see a sequel. As long as Sulu and Scotty get more to do. And Uhura and Spock don’t make out anymore. And they explain why JFK’s blood was green.

Overall, a B+

Nice movie, J.J.!