Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

      I didn't like the first movie, "the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." But, it grew on me. I was forced to watch it three times. Twice, I was invited to a friend's house to watch a movie with a bunch of people, and the movie being shown was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The second time I didn't want to be rude and say I have already seen it. The others seemed to be really looking forward to the movie. I don't know how I got stuck watching it the third time, but I think my family was involved. By the third round, I grew an appreciation for this movie.

     That is how I grew up the courage, patience and perseverance to see the sequel! Without the first movie being hurled at me three times, it would never have happened!!

     I liked this movie right away, and it didn't take three times for me to warm up to it. I like it better than the first one. But, it's not as dramatic and blockbustery as the first one was. Blockbustery isn't a word, but you get the gist. The first movie shows how 4 friends stayed together during a summer apart by mailing lucky jeans to each other. They were all three different sizes and figures, but by some strange magic, the jeans fit all of them. They would mail the jeans with a letter saying if anything lucky happened to them while they had the pants.

     The sequel was the same. They were four friends apart because they all had different plans for the summer. They mailed their jeans to each other in rotations. It was a lot to follow, because there were four completely different plots for one movie. It reminded of me of soap operas. Days of of Lives, for example, have many characters and plots.

      The movie was well acted, written, and really deep. It was a lot to take in all at once because each of the main characters learned a big life lesson and came to a big realization in the movie. It wasn't like a fake or contrived or forced upon lessons they all learned. Through really serious and great acting, and very gifted writing, they perfectly fit all four plots together to perfectly convey some real healing and realizations in this movie. These four girls had a lot of pain and heartaches of different kinds but they were all able to find some wisdom to get them through it and out of it.   

Dinner for Schmucks

    This is the first thing that I have seen with Steve Carell that was hilarious. (I didn't think his other stuff was funny.) I laughed out loud, not "LOL" figuratively, but literally, through much of the movie. But, that was just me. Humor is in the ear of the hearer?

    Though it had some cheap sex humor, or silly stuff in it, I thought this was a sophisticated comedy. I was impressed with tiny little details. I was thinking to myself, that, whoever wrote this movie is more intelligent than the average writer of scripts, especially for comedies. It just had a lot of subtle features, most people would have taken for granted if they weren't paying attention. I can't quite explain it, but it was just precious in some ways. This movie was loosely based on a french film called Le Diner de Cons. I want to watch that movie too.

    This movie is about a guy trying to get his girlfriend to marry him, and so he thinks that moving ahead and getting promoted will help his chances. He works at an equity firm ran by creeps that like to throw a dinner once a month making fun of the biggest idiot he can find. He has to find an idiot to take to a dinner party to impress his creepy boss and co-workers. The comedy just starts from that premise, and it becomes one of the funniest comedies I have ever seen.

A Thousand Words

    On the internet, I saw a lot of bad reviews for this particular movie. They said it was done before. You know, I see a lot of reviews like that. People saying they hate the movie because it was like other movies they have seen. I guess Solomon in Ecclesiastes was right; "There is nothing new under the sun."

  Well, despite what critics have said, I can positively report that the plot of this movie was new to me. I haven't seen anything quite like it before. Eddie Murphy plays a guy who finds out he will die when all the leaves fall off this magical tree in his back yard. Every time he speaks a leave falls off the tree. Eddie is basically trying to not talk in much of this movie for this reason. The comedy part is the silly ways he tries to live his life without talking.

 "It was not realistic!!!" Another common criticism of movies, (And of this one.) a criticism that I make sometimes too. But realism is not what this movie was aiming for. It had a fairy tale like aspect. Disney could have done this movie in cartoon version. They would just have had to change a few of the main characters to a prince and a princess and they would have been set.

   I liked the feel and vibe of the movie. I liked the moral of the movie, and the message it conveyed. It was not only a silly comedy, but it was trying to tell us some moral and message. It was well executed. I liked the main characters and the side characters. They were fun to watch.

   People say this movie is stupid, no good. But, I like the fairy tale, clean, moral atmosphere it created. I enjoyed it. Only thing that I can think of is that I was a little bored in a middle part of the movie. Not too many things can be perfect.

The Accidental Tourist (the movie)

     This movie is from the 80s! I grew up seeing the book, the Accidental Tourist on the bookshelf at my parent's house. My dad read a lot of books by the author Anne Tyler, who of course, wrote The Accidental Tourist. I haven't read the books. But, I watched the movie! I really did like this movie a lot.
     I might read the book that was written in 1985. It won a Pulitzer, and other awards. The movie was made just a few years later in 1988. I love the eighties. I don't know what it is, but even eighties movies, have something special about them. 


     I really ragged on the movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. If you read my recent review of that movie, you would know I don't particularly care for it. I bring up that movie because it was hysterically and painfully, grasping at straws trying to show exactly what this movie, The Accidental Tourist showed, with much more realism, grace, finesse. This movie rung much truer to me. It did exactly what Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tried to do and failed; to show the pain and remorse of the loss of a loved one, and how they found a way to heal from it. 


   Sorry the to the people who made Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: You don't have to show someone crying and screaming and having tantrums and write the most ridiculous inconceivable plot, and have the most obnoxious main character to convey the pain of death and coping with the loss. 


   What this movie did was show pain and coping with it in a much realer, realistic, reasonable, way that really resonated with me and spoke deeply to what is true to me and in my own life. At least to me. It was well written, and acted. I really enjoyed this movie. 

The Vow

    My boss at work said that this movie was good. I decided  to check it out. I don't have any really strong opinions about this movie. I can't say it was good or bad, or if I liked it or not. Sorry, lame review I have got going. Don't have the magic movie reviewing mojo going on.

   This movie is really loosely based on a true story. When I looked up the true story, the plot seemed more interesting than this movie. I wondered why they didn't stay truer to the real life story it was based on. The movie is about a husband and a wife that get into a car accident. The wife looses her short term memory and can't remember ever even being married to her husband. She doesn't remember her husband, or that she is married. She is very apprehensive about going home with this strange man when she wakes up from her coma.

   The movie is about the husband fighting to keep their marriage together, when his wife frankly doesn't even seem interested in him any more.

   In a way, come to think of it, I did like this movie because I found it to be very interesting, and not for what it is at face value. Though this is a romance movie, or a testimony to keeping the faith in marriage in love, I was much more interested in the other facets of this movie, that didn't even have to do with the boy girl relationship.

   This women was a completely different person five years ago. She forgot the last five years of her life, and waking up to the decisions she made in the last five years were a true shock to her. She didn't know or understand the person she had become. She wasn't even sure liked her new self. She wanted to go back to her old life altogether. Seeing her go back to her college friends, and spending time with her family, it really was like a whole different society and standing from the new life she made for herself. 


   Other than her self exploration, I found her relationship with her family and rebuilding that even more interesting than the relationship with her husband as well. She hasn't spoken to her parents and siblings in years. When she wakes up in the hospital, she is shocked when she figures this out. She realizes her husband and her parents never met. She doesn't believe that he is her husband. She questions him, if you were really my husband, why haven't you met my parents? This was a big part of the story line.