Movies!

[zeldaophelia]

Friday was a drive-in night, which was great and probably the first time I've been to a drive in in almost 20 years. The double-header was Over the Hedge followed by Mission: Impossible 3. (Spoilers for both.)

Keep in mind, this is my favorite comic strip of all time. I've been reading it daily for at least five years and before that read it whenever I had a paper in hand. This comic follows some 'wild' animals as they live their lives and so it. It makes for some very interesting commentary on human habits, when it comes do to it. That said, I LOVED the movie. There were a few things that were different from the strip, but it sorta had to be for it to work as a movie and I expected that. Garry Shandling was PERFECT as Verne - exactly the voice I heard in my head while reading the strip. Same for Steve Carell as 'Hammy' - you couldn't tell it was the 40 year old virgin when it came down to it. Bruce Willis was good as RJ also - not quite the voice that matched my imagination, but still it worked well.

One thing to note is that in the strip its all about RJ and Verne with 'Sammy' as a strong secondary character. There are other characters that are occasionally brought in for a strip or two (a skunk, some chipmunks, a bird and so on) so that other secondary characters were in a way all new, but not really. There have been some great tie-ins between the comic strip and the movie of late. About a month or two ago RJ was attempting to explain to Verne about how their mirror images were similar to themselves. And in the process 'Sammy the Squirrel' who belonged on our side of the mirror exchanged places with 'Hammy the Squirrel' from the other side of the mirror. Occasionally during the strip we get reminders that Hammy is still on this side, so it was funny to see that it was Hammy in the movie. Also, last Thursday's strip was another great tie in. ;)

Anyways, my verdict is that the movie was definitely worth the six bucks at the drive-in. And I wouldn't mind seeing it again. It'll definitely be on my DVD list when it comes out.

OMG Whatever you do don't waste your money on this piece of crap! :-L

I am an old school fan of M:I. I LOVED the TV show in both incarnations, though I know/remember the second version better. And THAT was still better than this. I had hope for this considering that JJ Abrams is apparently an old school fan as well and was trying to get back to the franchise's roots. Well, he tried.

Thoughts:

I'm getting tired of the same plot over and over again. I've seen all three M:I movies. All three have the same freaking plot. The whole bad apple in the barrel plot. In fact, the plot of this one is almost exactly the same as in the first one. Agent goes bad, Ethan freaking Hunt gets framed, has to retrieve something for the bad guys, the saves the day. Same. Freaking. Plot. Blech. The original show was on for seven years and the the remake was for two. I think they may have done the bad agent plot THREE times in nine seasons (if they did at all, I'll go through my M:I book to find out). Not in every single episode.

So we're trying for the whole team approach this time and all. Great. But you know what? If that's what they were really going for, what was with Jonathan Rhys Meyers? Not that he isn't great eye candy, but he was basically John Polson's character Billy Baird revamped. Why not bring back the character that the viewers already know?

Which ties into another problem I had with the movies. The only characters over the course of the three movies I've had any emotional investment in - cared if they survived or not - are Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames) and Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton in movie 2). I couldn't have cared less if Ethen died at any point. I couldn't have cared less if one of the two new people died (which is why have Billy back could have helped, we already knew him - hell they used him for a video game!). Even with the whole 'conversation to make us more sympathetic to the girl before she got shot.'

Why didn't Katie get the part of the wife? That's supposedly how she and Tom met, through her audition. I heard at one point it was because she was doing Batman Begins, but you know, that hit the theaters while they were still filming. In one way I actually liked Michelle Monaghan better, I think she's a little prettier and she is a good actress and maybe this will help her get a film career off the ground. At the same time, she and Tom had no chemistry. At least hopefully he and Katie would have had better chemistry. Well, if she wasn't looking like a zombie.

JJ needs to learn that conventions he could use on the TV screen just don't work on the big screen. There were so many 'pregnant pauses' that I thought the screen was going to have a little of kittens! And we don't need to spend several minutes just watching Tom run through Shanghai. Just. Running. If we're going to spend minutes watching him running then maybe the place he's getting to should be a little closer. So, you know, the audience doesn't get bored.

Slowest. Action. Movie. Ever.

I was expecting the cortex bomb thing to actually go boom. It was rather anti-climatic. Would have been better if, you know, the entire helicopter when up.

I thought we missed the scene where Tom had the crap beat out of him (where the test audiences supposedly cheered) when the film broke. But KNOW WHAT?! We didn't (apparently it was the scene with Davian at the end)! I hit themoviespoiler.com and found out we just missed the first freaking bit of the conversation about Maggie Q's kitten when she was growing up. (BTW, can we get a WTF? Because yeah, WTF.)

The 'steal the item' scene - biggest rip off ever. Apparently it was just watching Tom slide down the roof and then later (after the conversation about the kitten) him coming over the radio about how he fucked up and can't get to the roof.

The Rabbit's Foot. Biggest Ripoff Ever. Why don't they just come out and say 'well, we can't come up with a good reason to do anything, so we're going to have a really stupid plot device and then joke about it in the end.' WTF?

The scene with the wife just before the end. *facepalm* Good freaking God woman! You don't just calmly say to your husband (after he just pointed a gun at you BTW) 'what are we doing in China?' You say (in a high-pitched and bordering on HYSTERICAL voice) 'What the hell is going on? Why was I kidnapped? Why was I nearly killed? Why did I just watch you kill someone else? Why did I just have to kill to men? Including your boss? And why did I just have to kill you and bring you back? (Especially WTF on the bringing back part.) And WHY THE HELL ARE WE IN CHINA?!?!?'

The dying and coming back via CPR part. Insert massive eyerolls there. Again with the taking too long. I mean, the audience knows that Hunt isn't going to die because Tom isn't going to let his Gary Stu character die. And even I know that he probably wouldn't have come back after that long (remember, she took the time to stop and kill to men after killing him before bringing him back). At least not without the potential for permanent damage.

The movie wasn't even MOCKABLE! Which is how it gets the worst action movie ever award! This is coming from someone who went to see Ultraviolet! The difference being that Ultraviolet was a B movie and it knew it was a B movie. M:I 3 was a B movie that thought it was a mega-hit and took itself seriously like that. You know, a scene with Ethan on a Merry-Go-Round with a little kid spinning around and leaning back would have actually made this better. The only part you could even slightly mock was when he had the cortex bomb in his head at the end. Then you could mock him about letting a little headache get him down. ;)

The ONLY bright and shining point about this? The way they end makes it very easy and plausible for there to NEVER be ANOTHER M:I movie again. *whew*

OMG PLEASE! Don't waste your money on M:I3 in the theaters. At least spend the price of one ticket to rent it so you can watch it with friends and throw popcorn at the movie screen. ;)