Movie Review – Ill Informed Slander

Given that on the monumental Perth-Dubai flight (aka Logan’s Run 2: Escape from Perthawitchz);

• The sound crapped out on the entertainment system while I was watching “Bolt”,
• The flight attendants on board refused to admit there was anything wrong with it for an hour, and even when it was restarted the silence was just replaced with static, and
• I have the attention span of a 4-year old at the best of times, made considerably worse by being jacked up on enough caffeine to kill a racehorse

I ended up reviewing not just Bolt, but every film playing on that god-forsaken 10hr flight in complete silence. And since I didn’t watch many of them for more than about 30 seconds, that’s the extent of the review for each.
Enjoy

Frost Vs. Nixon
First thing I flicked to after cracking the shits with Bolt. Only recognised it because I’ve been wanting to see it and knew the actors. However after 30 seconds I was just left with the impression it was about two grown men sitting around discussing how Nixon used to drown kittens.

Frost: Mr President there have been unconfirmed rumors that after the breaking of the Watergate scandal, you began drowning kittens in the Oval office to help relieve the stress – any comment?

Nixon: Yes I drowned kittens, it was a wonderful release to hold their adorable little heads under water, watching the life slowly drain from their eyes. Sometimes I’d let them get a breath, just so I could hear them scream.

Frost: Awkward. You realise of course that this will outrage animal rights groups all over the world, and is undoubtedly illegal?

Nixon: When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal! People should be drowning kittens everywhere!

Frost: …..I’m sorry?

Valkyrie
Wound up watching this again on a later flight, but I could have saved my time since my initial silent assessment was surprisingly accurate – 120 minutes of sub-par Nazis sucking so much at being Nazis they either killed themselves or got lined up against a wall and shot. Also, it appears Tom Cruise has sucked so much cock so hard, his left eye has imploded.

$10 for a gobby, $50 for bareback no kissing

Confessions of a Shopaholic
The crazy ranga bitch from “Wedding Crashers” (the one Vince Vaughn couldn’t get rid of) gets her own movie – only this time she plays a delusional crazy ranga bitch that runs around tripping balls and imagining that mannequins are convincing her to buy more bullshit clothing. This whole thing offends me on a range of different levels – not just because she feeds the “all hot gingers are meth users” stereotype, but because it tries to legitimises shopping addiction.

If you think you’re addicted to shopping for the sake of shopping, trust me when I say you don’t have an addicition.

You’re just a moron

The snow leopard you skinned for that had a family, bitch

Bride Wars
Anne Hathaway can make most things pretty watchable, but this looked particularly shithouse – almost as if Kate Hudson wrote a film she then starred in.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what this is.

Marley and Me
Over-grown, rude-headed beefcake wags it’s tail and knocks shit over for 2 hours. Jennifer Aniston and a Golden Retriever also feature.

Owen Wilson recalling the taste of dog shit

Mrs Doubtfire
Finally got to the Emirates “Movie Classics” channel, only to find it was showing a “classic” case of Robin Williams being boringly family-friendly. I thought Mrs Doubtfire was funny as hell when I was 8; now watching a man having to change quickly back and forward between being an old Scots woman and a homeless guy (sorry, “out of work voice actor”) 15 times in 15 minutes gets old very quickly.

Brendan Fraser in “Something so mediocre it should have gone direct to DVD”
Exactly what it says on the label

Transporter 3
Since any film Jason Statham stars in is about as dialogue intensive as a car ride to an abortion clinic, I was pretty sure the lack of sound wouldn’t detract from the cinematic experience. Then I realised I was watching a Jason Statham film, and that there was nothing to detract from in the first place.

The only actor with less expression
than Keenu “What if I can’t, what if I fail” Reeves

This film was made even worse by the fact that when I flicked over to it, some scraggy-looking skank was making Statham strip really awkwardly while she remained painfully clothed. Since these films are generally aimed at adolescent boys who are still checking for their first pube, I rightly assumed that any scene involving a bloke stripping would be a precursor to a particularly awesome sex scene, made even better by not having to hear “Bald and Surly” grunting while he bent Miss Venereal over the BMW’s bonnet.

Of course that would have helped relieve the frustration of using an entertainment system with no sound, and Emirates wasn’t going to allow that. Instead, I patiently endured 5 full minutes of male stripping, only for it to cut straight to the only downside to sex – cuddling afterwards.

Cuddling and cats drove Nixon to Oval-office psychosis

So in conclusion, make sure your mp3 player is fully charged and your headphones working before you board an inter-continental flight. Otherwise you’ll wind up imagining dialogue for a political history film head that involves euthanising family pets.