If you’ve read my posting about United Airlines you will see that I saw six movies that I wanted to see over the course of my plane journeys. (Well five and two-thirds thanks to an early arrival in London on the way back.)
The films in question were Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, The Lake House, Cars, Lady in the Water and Trust the Man.
Going through each in turn, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was pretty much as expected – an entertaining crowd pleasing romp. Not any sort of life changing movie experience, but pretty entertaining, and very definitely a set up forAt World’s End coming next year. Incidentally, if you see it, make sure you wait around right until the end of the credits – there is one more scene.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend was also a film that lived up to expectations, in that it was amusing in places, but not massively funny. There are moments that were quite funny, but it did get decidedly cheesy, and very schmaltzy at the end. I do think that a lot more could have been done with the whole concept. It passed the time, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again. Incidentally it was quite a surprise to see Eddie Izzard in it too.
The Lake House was a film I’d heard a lot of discussion about. It is a remake of a Korean film, Il Mare. Both films have a very sci-fi based concept at their heart, with two people communicating through letters posted in a mailbox, but who are in time, two years apart. There are however a couple of key differences between the two films in that the original Korean film remains true to the sci-fi concept, whilst the US version uses it as a starting point, but then changes the bitter-sweet ending to a happy one introducing a great big paradox in the process. Having said that, if you switch off any sci-fi nit-picking tendencies you may have, it is pretty entertaining, and from a romance point of view the US happy ending is definitely feel good. Certainly I think Beth might enjoy it, so I’ll see it again at some point, and I may also check out the Korean original if I can find it (the American DVD version is apparently the Korean film dubbed into Chinese and badly converted).
Cars was, like the other Pixar movies I’ve seen over the years, a really great movie. The plot is essentially a remake of Doc Hollywood with animated cars, so instead ofMichael J Fox being a surgeon doing community service, we have Owen Wilson as a speedway car. There are loads of car related jokes and puns, and even Michael Schumacher turns up briefly. For example at one point in the film the cars go ‘tractor tipping’ with all the tractors behaving like cows in the field… There is also a great sequence in the closing credits with a whole series of scenes from other Pixar movies re-rendered with cars – so it’s a scene from Toy Car Story for example – and I’ll leave you to work out what they’ve done to A Bug’s Life… Definitely one I’ll be picking up on DVD.
Lady in the Water definitely wins the confusion award of the six, and probably benefits from not being watched on a tiny airline screen. Like most of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies there is a lot going on, and a number of layers. However unlike some of his earlier movies, I think you need to be able to follow some of the more complex layers to try and get what is going on. On a first viewing I really think that it didn’t quite work. Unlike other films he has made there was no big twist at the end, and Shyamalan himself had a much bigger acting role in the movie than his previous brief cameo appearances. I suspect that I’ll probably take a look at the DVD, not least because the DVD releases of his movies usually explain a bit better what is going on!
The final movie of the trip was Trust the Man. I’d seen clips of the movie during a couple of TV appearances by Julianne Moore a couple of months ago which I’d thought were quite amusing. The plot focuses on an actress played by Moore, her husband played by David Duchovny, her brother played by Billy Crudup and his long time girlfriend played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. At the opening of the movie, Moore has just taken a stage role, having for a long time been a film actress, and her husband has given up a career in advertising to be a house husband, and her brothers girlfriend is getting increasingly frustrated and wanting to settle down and start a family. As the movie goes on the relationship between Moore and Duchovny becomes increasingly strained, especially when he starts an affair with a recently divorced mother he meets collecting the children from school. I saw about two-thirds of the film during the flight, and in places it is really quite funny. It’s definitely something I intend to get hold of, not least so I can see how it all ends!