Holiday Weekend.

Anna and I went to see two movies over the holidays. Eragon on Christmas Day and For Your Consideration yesterday (the 26th).


We both agreed, Eragon was the more worthwhile film.




I considered just leaving it at that, but I feel that our judgements were more or less ruled by both our expectations of the films, and the circumstances in which we saw them, so making a head to head comparison is hardly fair.

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1. Anna and I had passed a number of cineplexes on our way out from the city on Christmas Day and had thought it would be fun to stop at one on the way home, perhaps as a way to extend the holiday. We hadn't checked ahead for showtimes and just expected to go to whatever was playing when we got to the theater.

"Eragon?"

We were still a bit hesitant, but after a few tense moments we took the plunge. And I'll remember it as a worthwhile experience. It wasn't a great movie, by any means, but I was able to laugh at it (instead of along with it, at times) and not knowing anything about the story ahead of time, I kept giving the film the benefit of the doubt (when the plot would fall apart, for instance). I likened our viewing of the film to that of someone going to see The Return of the King without knowing who Tolkien was. I'm pretty sure that's a generous critique of Eragon, but it's really all that I want to put into it.

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2. I was lucky enough to have the next day off as well, and Anna and I spent much of it reading and relaxing, but we planned to go see an afternoon show of For Your Consideration before dinner in Uptown. You might say we were planning the rest of our vacation around seeing what we assumed would be a good movie. Needless to say, we built this one up.

Only to have it crash down all around us! Boom!

I don't really have the spirit to pan this film right now, and you may have noticed that this entry has been sitting as a 'draft' for a while... So -I'll go quickly- the film begins as most other Guest productions do - all of the characters in seemingly separate stories and situations - the anticipation building as we realize the [quirky/awkward] roles they're all about to play in each other's lives. But this time the film never really takes us anywhere. We stay stuck in undeveloped roles and over-developed jokes. It just wasn't as fun as it should be.

What was fun though, was seeing a bit of A Few Good Men the other week and realizing that the witness on the stand (Dr. Stone) is, in fact, Christopher Guest!

Hrmmmm.