My Night At The Movies
Last night Cakes, Moose and myself hit up the Regal to catch Spiderman 3. Going to the big blockbuster type movies on their opening nights is always an experience in and of itself. Its like two separate events. You have the actual movie experience and then you have the sold out theatre of people to deal with as well. And like any "big" movie opening night, you have every random scummy douche minority asshole in existence in attendance. Last night was no exception. Oh there will probably be some spoilers below but I'll try to limit them.
1. The movie.
I thought the movie was good overall, very intense. The story direction was questionable in places, but I understand that certain things had to happen lest people get upset by unhappy events/endings. With that in mind, the movie could have been better but it wasn't bad by any means. I thought all the actors/actresses turned in fine performances. In the end it was a typical Spiderman film. Had some funny/cheeky designed moments and some unintentionally hilarious moments (more on that in the next section). Even though it was about 2.5 hours long it did feel a bit rushed and overwhelming at points because there was so much going on and so many story arcs playing out and eventually intersecting. Another half hour would have helped out. Its looking like a 3.5 star out of 5 film.
2. The crowd.
My first inkling that something was horribly awry was the posse of like, 15 Asian kids up in the ticket line when we first walked in. Thankfully moose had pre-ordered tickets so we didn't have to deal with it but said group ended up across the isle from us taking up like half the theatre.
Then we have the typical lame ass theatre moment that happened kinda early on in the film. I forget what happened (some monologue patriotic point or something) but all I know is some douche in the crowd kinda started clapping, and then a few more people joined in. Thankfully it did not escalate into a full theatre clap outburst but it got close enough where I had to say "Lame" pretty loud.
Then we have my favorite thing about a large groups of people. The inability to distinguish between whats funny and whats not funny. Not funny: when Peter and MJ are in the park and shes being blackmailed in breaking up with him and a fly happens to land on Toby Maguire's face for a brief moment. Half the room shouldn't start laughing during an emotional and tense scene like that because a fly happens to come on screen for a minute. People are so dumb that they only laugh at stupid obvious shit like that and not the biggest unintentional lol in the whole movie which I foreshadowed above and will explain now.
Peter has just gone to Harry's mansion seeking his help as the Green Goblin in rescuing MJ who has been kidnapped by Venom and the Sandman. Harry refuses on account of Peter killing his father and nearly killing him twice earlier in the movie. After Peter leaves Harry's butler comes on screen and reveals to Harry that his father had in fact killed himself and that Peter/Spiderman did not deal him the fatal blow. Then he gets all serious and emotional and busts out the best line in the movie: "I loved your father, and I love you..." (there was more but that's all i can remember because at that point I started laughing like an asshole.) And the kicker is, no one else in the movie laughed during this scene save for me and moose, who merely chuckled I think because of my reaction. But come on, the old butler who has like 3 lines in the entire movie who suddenly says this line that's just dripping with overt sexual connotation; that shit is hilarious.
"Oh hi I'm the butler, I used to want to F your dad when he was alive and now I kinda wanna do you Harry cause you're so cute and got a big bulge." People don't laugh at that but they do at a stupid fly. Good one.
The only other outburst happened when Peter accidentally smacks MJ in the face when hes fighting some bouncers at a jazz club.
So in review, slightly better than average movie, worse than average movie crowd. We did get some sweet previews though. Balls of Fury, The Bourne Ultimatum and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. So some good stuff on the horizon.
