Cars

Fairly cute movie, good amount of humor but nothing terribly original. As much as I hate NASCAR, I love Pixar.

The usual opening animated short was absolutely great. They should make a whole 2 hours movie of these shorts.

As to the movie for which I went to the theater: Lightning McQueen is the hotshot rookie sensation tied for the lead in the Piston. He's got skills but he's an arogant bitchhead. On his way to his last race he falls out of his Mack truck and gets lost in the middle of nowhere. He then gets in lots of trouble and has to fix things. Flah flah flah. He meets good people (read: cars). Yadda yadda yadda. Learns the lessons he needs to learn and off he goes to win with the support of his new friends.

So we all know the story is pretty predictable and formulaic. The animation is fantastic as usual. Lots of little jokes for kids and lots of little jokes for adults. Lots of little things to be watching for (like flies being VW bugs). One question: how do the cars reproduce? Since they have cars doing everything, do cars build other cars? Do the cars have sex? Being this is a kids movie, I'm betting the former so then who built the first car or who built the thing that allows for the construction of the first car? Flah flah flah.

It's an endearing, enjoyable movie. But it doesn't really jump out and isn't heartwarming like Nemo or Monster's Inc. Many of the side characters were more interesting than the main characters. Luigi (voiced by Monk) and Guido. Owen Wilson's Lightning wasn't all that appealing. The entire racing premise was just dull.

I also really enjoyed the ending sequence in the drive in theater watching "Toy Car Story" and "Monster Truck Inc." That was quality.

I need to stop going to any movie that could possibly be construed as a kids movie at any time kids may be in attendence.

3 of 5.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

This movie was highly disappointing. It's sad that it took in so much money over the weekend and beat Spiderman's record.

The first Pirates: fantastic! It was witty, clever, good action, acting and plot.

This pirates movie: blows. I was totally let down by everytyhing. A kid on the radio summed it up as "Funny and dumb."

My problems in the movie
1. It was far too long. The scene where Depp is ruler of the people was completely pointless. Could have been cut.
2. Not nearly as clever and funny. It was as if they were trying too hard to recreate the magic of the first one. For example, Depp's big roundabout descriptions were too much. They were out of place. No witty banter. Ugh. Complete lack of fun this time around.
3. Too much focus on special effects. The characters they created were fantastic and amazing and looked really good but I'd rather have good plot. Put more money into writing.
4. Too many thick accents. I had no idea what many people were saying.
5. I had no idea what was going on. Ever. Too many things were going on that didn't make any sense and too many people kept randomly popping up without explanation. No wonder the movie was too long. It was too long and I still don't know what was going on!
6. The end. It just ends. Bah. Had there been a bit more closure, things may not have been so bad but I left with a bad feeling on that too.
7. Orlando Bloom. Can he play any other characters? Can he act? I don't think he can anymore. He better hope for more Lord of the Rings movies somehow. Spin offs for the elves.

What did I like:
Depp still plays a great character. The character is fun even if written poorly. You know the potential for good humor is there.
The effects were great and the new creatures were awesome to see. They were fun to watch.
There were some funny parts. Not al lthat many but there were.
I think somewhere in there if you can cut off some of the excess there may be an interesting plot. I want to see what happens with it.
I do like the semi-surprise at the ending.

I know there's a sequel scheduled for release next May and I'll probably see it just so the story is complete. But I don't recommend seeing this one so you're not angry you have to waste more money to see the next one.

2 of 5.

Superman Returns

Very similar to my feelings on the recent X-Men movie. Not a bad movie, but nothing spectacular.

This movie was supposed to have a loose basis on the previous Superman movies. I admit I've only seen bits and pieces of thsoe, never the entirety in one sitting. This felt completely different than those.

It was slightly darker and deeper. This can be good. Spiderman is a fantastic movie because he shows vulnerability and humanity. Maybe that's hard to do with Superman because he's not human? But he has emotion. Superman has deep personal conflicts, mostly involving Lois. Lois has some of those, too, involving Superman and Cyclops, I mean her husband Richard. And Lex? He was kind of lame. I love Spacey and think he could be great as Lex but the character was written so blandly. He didn't seem neither evil nor genius enough. And he was just so boring.

The movie itself is very well made. It was beautiful to watch. Very smooth. Good effects. Superman spent a lot of time picking things up (or catching them) and putting them down - airplanes, cars, giant metallic globes. Was this to show off their technological prowess in movie making? I was impressed with Brandon Routh's portrayal of Superman. I didn't realize his voice was that deep. He had the clean cut lines of Christopher Reeves. I can't really tell you if he can act because he didn't have a whole lot to say. And the plot? Meh. Wasn't a very interesting conflict.

I wanted more with Superman (show me he can act, plus he's the main character). I wanted more of the kid (he was funny and cute). I wanted to read Lois's article (I think a nice little narration of the article as he goes about saving people would have been awesome).

It was good but I felt unsatisfied again.

3 of 5.