I hadn't set out to make this a reviews blog, but entertainment seems to be my main source of subject matter these days. It happens during times of boredom. I've found myself having video game dreams several times in the past couple weeks. Hopefully something else will come along soon.
The theater (that is, cinema) in my town gives a significant discount on Tuesdays. It used to be $2 per ticket (earning the title, "Twoonie Tuesdays"), but they upgraded their projectors and upped the price to $3. Still a good deal, so it's a good time to see a bunch of movies in one day. This is the first of my Threenie Tuesday review series. Fingers crossed.
The first movie I saw tonight The Pirates! Band of Misfits, the newest feature film by Aardman Animation, the company responsible for Chicken Run and the Wallace & Gromit cartoons. It wasn't a particularly interesting film, not nearly as clever as anything else I've seen from Aardman.
The premise was innocently silly enough to get my interest: the Pirate Captain (that's his actual name, as far as the movie is concerned) and his motley crew of... well, pirates, set out to win the Pirate of the Year award by being... the best pirates of the year. Piracy here is treated like it is in a lot of children's entertainment: a noble profession full of glorious, misadventurous amusement. The "bad guy" is (do you really care? I'll say it anyway, just in case) ***SPOILER ALERT*** the Queen of England, whose motivation is clear from the start of the film: she hates pirates.
Now, I understand how cliche it is to go on a rant about declining values in children's entertainment, the corruption of our youth by the media. That's been covered by much louder, dumber people than me, and I see no reason to add to the noise. Besides, children's entertainment has been screwed up for a long time. Have you ever heard a nursery rhyme or fairy tale? There's really very little room for values to decline here.
I will say, though, that this film has the unfortunate, but not uncommon, problem of not knowing who its target audience is. Big mistake, especially for a comedy The theater in which I saw it was far from full. There were a few young adults other than myself, but mostly it was parents with young kids. The kids were not laughing. They didn't understand most of the jokes, which is honestly a blessing. It was humorous enough to elicit a few chuckles from us twenty-somethings, but no more than any other slapstick comedy could. It was too juvenile for the adults, and too mature (if you can call it that) for the kids. If they had zeroed in on the kids' humor and made it more innocent, or tried to appeal to the adults and make it really irreverent, the element of genuine humor wouldn't have been so sorely absent.
Beyond that, the usual marks of the Aardman style were definitely missing. The characters were underdeveloped and underutilized, giving the audience little reason to invest in the action or gags. The antagonist in particular was not nearly despicable enough for me to care, especially in comparison to the terrifying Mrs. Tweedy from Chicken Run. Overall the dramatic tension ranged from medium-low to very low.
Maybe at some point I'll devise a rating system for my reviews. For now, I'll just say I didn't like it.
I also saw the newest Jason Statham vehicle, "Safe." I have thoughts on that too, but I've done enough blogging for one day. I'll post my review of that in a couple of days.
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