The lights went out Monday night, so me and the roommate and the neighbor decided to go the movie theater, which is in a part of Nairobi that is outside our neighborhood's old-ass electrical grid. Only thing showing: Along Came Polly. Crap film which was only partially salvaged by Philip Seymour Hoffman's turn as a fictional ninth Brat Pack alumnus grown up all sad and pathetic.
So I was following a bit of a theme when I took a break from research tonight to watch a Scott Baio film: A Wedding for Bella. It was per the roommate's suggestion, which would usually be strike three (1. Scott, 2. Baio), as we have sharply divergent cinematic tastes. Fourth strike should be that the world doesn't seem to need another romantic ethnic movie in which Tyrone/Naruhita/Juanita/Magdalina/Nicolita learns to see his/her grandmother's recipe for fried pig's feet/sliced eel/flan cakes/souvlaki/smoked mozzarella as a metaphor for family.
Strike five is that it's shot on a Clerks-esque budget and has at leat one Clerks-caliber performance. So that's half an inning right there.
And yet: wow. I see this movie and I belatedly realize that I haven't seen decent dialogue on a screen in a while. I realize that all the talking shoved into Lost in Translation and Adaptation is just the clever ambivalent crap.
I won't waste your time with the easy Baio related jokes. And I know that "Last night I watched this Scott Baio movie I read about on a blog," is not the best slickest line to throw out at the water cooler.
But if you were planning on going to see Hellboy tonight, you might want to think about passing it up and renting this movie. Mike Mignola probably does not need any more money now, but the guys that made this movie probably do.
