Reviews of objects that should be reviewed, part one hundred nineteen.
Laws of Attraction, C+
When I write the greatest romantic comedy this side of Eric Rohmer, in it I will have a man and a woman who hate each other, and through a set of convoluted circumstances they will accidentally/drunkenly/to-get-a-green-cardly marry each other, and after spending time together as a married couple, they will find that they still hate each other, and thus when they find out that they were never actually married at all because the minister was actually just a hobo with a Bible, the man and the woman break it off and find other more suitable partners, and then at the end everyone is married to someone that the audience can reasonably believe is a good relationship for all involved. That is very much not the plot of Laws of Attraction (spoiler). Also, dear Julianne Moore's agent, if you let her do comedy in the future, please make it as unslapsticky as cinematically possible, because no matter how hard she tries, Moore's demeanor is at a 86-to-87-degree angle with broad physical comedy.
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Super-Size Me, B-
Hypothesis: Eating at McDonalds is detrimental to one's health.
Hypothesis test: Have a man eat at McDonalds at every meal for 30 days. Have him munching down 5000 calories a day, which is about 1000 calories more than eating the most calorie-rich value meals at McDonald's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (How does he do it? Multiple sodas, multiple breakfast sandwiches, shakes for desserts, et al.) In addition, have him stop his general exercise even though changing one's exercise routine necessarily biases the results in favor of the hypothesis.
Test results: The man who ate 5000 calories a day did gain weight and had worsened health.
Conclusion: Thus, eating at McDonalds is detrimental to one's health.
Not bad otherwise, other than approximately 30 too many shots of people in the 350-450 lb range (because of course we have no idea what a morbidly obese person looks like).
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Big Fish, B-
(Necessarily kinda spoilerish, but I’ll try to be vague.) Rating doesn’t accurately portray my feelings of the film, which would have been a low B+ if it had ended with the affecting, lyrical shot of the fish swimming away rather than continuing through a D+ final five minutes of the film -- five minutes which (in the penultimate scene) actively destroy any ambiguity regarding Albert Finney’s stories along with (in the ultimate scene) rendering Billy Crudup’s reasonable counteropinion completely moot. (Please compare/contrast with the swimming fish scene, which simply shows that there is a part of the father in the son, along with a slight admission that there can be momentary healing in stretching the truth to mythic proportions.) Still, a lot to like in the first 110 minutes, even if Ewan McGregor : young Albert Finney :: two plus two : thirty-seven.
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
