Skip The Missing
Posted on November 26, 2003 at 10:17 am | No Comments
I consider this message a public service. Sure, mileage on movies may vary, but heed my warning on this one.
We saw a preview screening of Ron Howard’s new film The Missing last night, and we’ve never been so glad a movie was free. Even a few cool previews might have helped the movie go down, but we didn’t even get that. It was an over-long, uninspired, plodding, and fairly unoriginal meditation on all-too-familiar themes. At one point I was so untertained that I started rootin’ for the bad guys.
Waiting for it to start …
Amie: So, I’ve heard nothing about this movie… have you?
Me: Nope… but I’m guessing that someone goes missing.
Amie: Thanks.
Me: Then I suppose someone else spends the rest of the movie looking for ’em?
And there you go. Throw in some forced, hackneyed Native American mystical mumbo-jumbo, Tommy Lee Jones doing his best Tommy Lee Jones (must… hunt… fugitives!), Cate Blanchett slumming, and one ugly-ass, stereotypical villain, and you’ve got yourself a grade-A snooze-fest.
This movie was based on the book The Last Ride by Tom Eidson, who also happens to be one of the big-wigs over at Fidelity Investments here in Boston. Three rows of the theater were set aside for what we assumed were his friends and Fidelity co-workers… sure enough, dozens of suit-wearers wandered in just before showtime. Now, I have no idea how the novel compares to the film, so no disrespect to Mr. Eidson is meant here. Still, it was fairly amusing to see the final credits appear and hear dead silence in the theater… until those reserved aisles realized “Wait, we should probably clap!”, and so they did. All alone. Three solid rows of enthusiastic supporters, and not a single clap anywhere else. Sorry, Mr. Eidson. I can only hope they butchered your book.
There’s a lot of movies out there right now, and your time and money would be better spent on Elf, In America, 21 Grams, or the Station Agent. Opie Cunningham might want to focus on his television projects, because Arrested Development is freakin’ hilarious.
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