double feature

I treated myself to a double feature last night. Hey -- I have no friends, and I'm on spring break, so screw it.

Bought a ticket to Coraline 3D. I felt like a super cool dude, buying that particular ticket, all by myself. The gum-smacking teenager behind the counter thought so anyway. I distinctly saw a lifted eyebrow when she slid me my change. $13.50 for one fucking film. Are you joking?

I'd already decided I was going to theater-hop, but that was insane.

Walked in about five minutes after the show started. Fumbled with my itchy 3D glasses for a couple scenes. Then proceeded to be completely dazzled, and then lost, in the world of Coraline. If you haven't seen the movie... seriously... va. AHORITA.

Coraline is an endlessly inventive grab bag of whimsy and eye-popping visuals. Either that or it's a blow-by-blow recount of a particularly bad acid trip. The storyline is pretty simple: a brave, headstrong little girl moves into a new house -- she doesn't like her neglectful parents, so she's ecstatic to discover a little door behind the wall that takes her to an alternate reality, in which her Other Mother and Father live. They look exactly the same as her real parents, except they have buttons for eyes, and they give her everything she could want. It seems too good to be true -- and of course, it is.

I respect Neil Gaiman as a writer, and that's mostly the reason I paid full price. I could actually get into a long discussion about the story of Coraline, but I'll leave it that I was satisfied and totally drawn into the plot as it unfolded.

But the way it played out, I was too busy being stunned by the visual imagery to worry about much else. The director of Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick, also directed this film, and the same aesthetic is applied here. (I think it was executed even better in Coraline than in Nightmare. Blasphemy?)

One more note: it felt like the film was meant to be viewed in 3D. It was very much "an experience", and I don't think it'll have the same effect on a TV screen without the funny glasses. But Coraline has real heart, as well as a certain magical quality, that mean it's probably going to stick around for years and years to come.

After the movie finished, I headed into the bathroom. Then turned around and walked straight out, into another theater.

I Love You, Man was playing at 10. It was 9:20. I had a spare fifty minutes to kill. Don't question my math. Regal always shows some bullshit previews before the real previews start. It's not worth it to show up on time to movies anymore.

I walked into a showing of Race to Witch Mountain. The alien angle caught my interest, being that my script is somewhat alien-related, and I wanted to see how another writer was handling the issue.

The long and short of it: not well. I'm lucky I changed my main character's name. He used to be named Jack, which is such a cliched "hero name" in movies -- and also happens to be the name of The Rock's character in this movie. They must have said his name fifty times in the first twenty minutes. The bad guys all called him "Jackie". I really dodged a bullet here, I think.

It opened with The Rock as a cab driver, ferrying some fares around Las Vegas -- before a mysterious pair of kids shows up in his backseat and makes him drive out to the desert -- where it's revealed they're not really kids at all, but aliens in kid form, and they're being chased by the FBI. Then one of the kids wrecks an SUV just by standing in front of it -- (why would the FBI try to run him over, if he was an alien in kid form??) -- and I'm sure you've seen that scene in the previews.

Now to be fair, I didn't see the whole thing. Hell, I only saw part of the first act. But here was my biggest problem with the movie.

The dialogue was lame and felt totally "written". I'll give you an example, if you're still reading. In one of the opening scenes, The Rock drives Carla Gugino to a random Strip hotel. They have an obvious conversation about living on other planets (foreshadowing??). And wonder of wonders, it turns out that Carla Gugino is in town to give a speech at the UFO convention. She hands him a brochure and exits the car. The brochure has a list of the speakers at the convention. Now keep in mind, SHE NEVER GAVE HER NAME. Yet The Rock reads down this list and then says out loud: "Dr. Alex Friedman." Hmm. That must be Carla Gugino's character's name. Thanks, The Rock. I don't know what I, Joe Moviegoer, would have done without you. I wonder if she's going to end up figuring into this plot somehow?

Thankfully I didn't stick around long enough to find out. Once The Rock went into the pimped-out fridge, it was time for Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, and judging from the previews, Lou Ferrigno.

I Love You, Man has a great concept. Being a straight-laced guy and finding a new "best friend" is not easy. I should know. I'm a farmer.

Rudd plays the awkward "girlfriend guy" who relates easily to women, but is incapable of "guy talk". His attempts to be one of the Dudes fall hilariously flat, until he meets Sydney Fife (Segel) -- the brutally honest, comfortable-in-his-own-skin, macho foil to Rudd's fundamentally uncertain economic girlie man.

Jason Segel = comedic gold. That pretty much sums up my review. Any time he was on screen, the movie had an anchor and stayed on sure footing. When he was off screen, the emphasis shifted to the ultra-formulaic, by-the-numbers plot, and that's when the movie faltered. With the exception of some brilliant work by bit players (Thomas Lennon and Jon Favreau nailed their bits out of the park), and some inspired pieces of improv comedy by Paul "Slap da bass" Rudd.

I wanted to love this movie like I loved Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Instead, I liked it. The script needed two or three more drafts. But overall, the actors transcended the material and made the end of my self-date pretty enjoyable and satisfying.

What do you call it when you date yourself, anyway? Masturdating? Now there's a movie.

Anyway, that was my night tonight.