Movie Madness

On Saturday night, Mike and I went to the Mustang Drive-In just outside of London. The two screens didn't have great line-ups, but we figured that we could watch Sahara (which I reviewed here) on the first screen and then xXx: State of the Union on the other screen by driving the car around to the chain-link fence between the two screens. Much to my surprise, we discovered that the Mustang had built a ten-foot wooden fence between the two lots. Apparently they've done some nice renovations, including an expanded playground for kids, and a new fence was part of the upgrade.

So that plan was shot down. Triple X was the main one that we wanted to see so we ended up watching Guess Who for the first show and then Triple X. We could have followed that up with Will Smith in Hitch but that would have ended after 2:30 am so we opted out of the third show.

We had KFC, chips, slushies and cookies so we were set for the night. Guess Who turned out to be smarter than I expected. I thought that it was fine because it focused on Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac rather than the cute young couple. I'm not recommending it for anything except DVD but it was all right.

xXx was the action flick that we were expecting. Ice Cube was fine in the lead role but that idea that he was "badder than the old xXx" was laughable. As Mike mentioned, it's a case of telling us who the person is rather than showing us who they are. Xzibit had a role as the head of a chop shop, playing off of his TV show Pimp My Ride. The movie was fine even though it included a large number of horrid one liners and a tagged-on setup for another sequel. I thought that the first xXx movie with Vin Diesel was way better and apparently the public agrees with me since this movie had an opening weekend box office that was two-thirds less than the original.

Last Friday my entire family went out to see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was almost identical to the book except for a few parts that I didn't mind at all. I won't detail them to protect you from unwanted spoilers, but the humour, imagery, characters and the manic energy were all straight out of the book. And besides, who doesn't love having a couple of muppet-like creatures wandering about? I thought that it was quite entertaining but it was definitely geared to the sci-fi crowd, which would include me. And yes, I would recommend reading the original book but the other four sequels in the trilogy aren't nearly as good.

As I mentioned above as a passing reference, I do want to comment on the move Hitch as well. I saw this one a few weeks ago with my sister and it was actually quite good. I'll take this kind of romantic comedy any day: Heavier on the comedy and lighter on the romance. It was a good role for Will Smith and it had a nicely original concept that worked quite well.

And lastly, I wanted to mention one thing that I saw this past weekend that was on the small screen rather than the big screen. On Sunday, Fox resurrected the long-dead Family Guy animated television show. It was cancelled two years ago and it's just coming back now. I figure that they actually recalled the show a year ago but it takes about 8 months to make one episode of an animated series, according to my sources. Throw that together with two new episodes of the Simpsons and a King of the Hill episode and it was a great schedule.

The opening scene from Family Guy was hilerious because they immediately asked, "Hey, wasn't our show cancelled?" Peter, the head of the household, then begins a monologue explaining that Fox had to devote more of their schedule to other shows. He then lists off several dozen shows that Fox has aired and subsequently cancelled since Family Guy was originally aired. He concludes that, "if all of those shows get cancelled, I suppose that there's a slight chance that they could bring us back." Granted, the scene plays much better on TV but I thought it was a great segue to the new season.

*whew* That's it for me and I need a break after an hour and twnety minutes of writing. I think I'll go to the lobby and get some popcorn...