Yikes, I've been neglecting my poor blog. I'd like to think it's because I've been doing so much interesting stuff that I have no time to sit and record my thoughts, but one glance at my facebook page or twitter feed will show you this ain't true. Of course a closer look at the piecemeal comments and activities there will show why I might not be blogging as much. Just as I feel I am growing more light-hearted with age, I am also growing more light-brained. I prefer not to think about it, and thus my blog suffers. Sorry, little bloggy. But the event that will always trigger a return to my blog has occurred, and this brings me to why I am here today. That's right, I went to see a movie. (Cue dramatic swell of music.)
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
The ads for this movie tantalized me back during the Olympics. I'm a sucker for fun John Cusack movies, and throwbacks to the 80s only entice me further. David did not understand my fascination with such a raunchy mindless movie (he was concerned for my pleasure, not his--isn't that sweet?), but still he agreed to accompany me to the drive-in on the film's opening night. With such lofty expectations (maybe lofty isn't the right word) the movie could hardly excel in my final estimation, and indeed it did not. However, it wasn't a waste of time.
Hot Tub Time Machine centers on a trio of middle aged men who have grown apart since their glory days as debaucherous youths. Now facing the sad realities of adult life (lost dreams, shattered marriages, etc) they are thrown together for a weekend and decide to make the most of it at a ski resort they used to frequent. (Inexplicably) joining them is one of their nephews.
Cusack is the nominal star, but his character Adam is fairly flat, and he virtually phones in the performance (I'm excited to finally use that phrase). Clark Duke is amusing as Adam's nephew Jacob, played as the modest-quippy-geek type Duke is building a career of (check him out on ABC Family's Greek or the deadpan online show Clark and Michael). Craig Robinson plays Nick, a former singer now married and working for a dog care business. And the most outrageous--and in this case funniest--of the characters is Lou, played by The Daily Show's hilarious Rob Corddry. Lou is a foul mouthed, hard drinking, insecure man-child whose antics are at the center of the laugh-out-loud moments of the movie.
The plot barely holds together and centers on a hot tub that takes the guys back to the mid 1980s, where they must recreate what turned out for some to be a pivotal night of relationship letdowns and inappropriate sex. As that combo implies, the movie never quite figures out whether it's trying for heart or pure outrageousness. Like the 80s teen sex movies it attempts to harken back to, HTTM at its best succeeds only on a sophomoric level, though it's sometimes a very funny level. So the movie didn't live up to my hype. But it delivered laughs, had a good soundtrack, and kept me awake on a Friday night. No need to relive the night, but I certainly won't regret it either.
REMEMBER ME
First a bit of explanation...
My intention had been to switch venues in order to watch When In Rome instead of She's Out of My League, which was what was paired with Hot Tub Time Machine as a second feature. Thus we had to relocate within the drive-in during intermission. I had scoped out the other screens to see where The Bounty Hunter was playing, which I thought was paired with When In Rome. Logical, right? So we maneuver, find a space, and await a Kristen Bell-Josh Duhamel fluff movie. This would all be a lot easier to do if, a) I could recall from one visit to the next how best to determine what is playing with what at the local drive-in, or b) the 6-screen outdoor theater were not so elaborately walled off and riddled with oddly parked cars and bits of tire-threatening flea market detritus. Five minutes into the movie we "chose"--after a dark slow moving murder scene unfolded without titles (maybe I missed them?)--I turned to David and said, "This doesn't seem like the start of a romantic comedy." Boy was I right.
So I didn't intend to see what I ended up watching, and--once I'd figured out what it was--knew nothing about the film other than the names of its stars (Robert Pattinson, the British actor who is so pretty and square jawed as to be occasionally distracting, and Emilie de Ravin, the Australian actress who plays Claire on the tv show Lost). Indeed, I spent a full quarter of an hour contemplating how we could politely move our car to the opposite end of the complex, where I now saw brightly colored scenery at the start of the lighthearted rom-com I'd expected to settle into. This was not helped by the quiet, deliberate pace of Remember Me (a title I had to look up after we got home). But I gotta say, in the end I actually liked this movie.
Remember Me is about two damaged young people who get together under somewhat false pretenses and then have to deal with their family traumas (past and present). There's basically no soundtrack, the scenery is nothing special, and the various foreign actors playing New Yorkers with accents can be irritatingly distracting (to me, although maybe you don't care). But just let yourself sit and watch and wait, and the movie delivers. I think anyone who knows too many details of the story would be very disappointed, but with an open mind and a patient mood you might find you like this movie too. Read nothing more about it, just check it out. How's that for a rousing endorsement?
