Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Giant Robots...mega-floods...a typical night off

Against my better judgement, I went to the drive-in last night (yes alone). Despite working my ass off that morning, I knew I was going to be up all night (I was). For seven bucks, I had something to do until 2:00AM. What was playing?

Not much. The drive-in I frequent is playing it safe by really only showing "kiddie" type movies. Which is a shame (I really wanted to see the new Die Hard movie outside...where I saw parts 2 and 3). It was a toss up between Harry Potter and TRANSFORMERS. Now despite what you might think, I'm not a Potter "hater" per say. But I find the books are waaaay better than the films (which are, let's face it, a bit watered down). Though I do enjoy Alan Rickman. Anyway, I ended up seeing the giant robot movie.

As a kid, I wasn't as into Transformers as you might think. True, I grew up in the '80s...but my thing was He-Man (you know, "Master of the Universe"). In junior high/early high school I used to watch the excellent Transformers: Beast Wars. That one featured all the old bots, but instead of cars they were all animals. It was all early CGI (like reboot). If you ever get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it.

Basically, my hopes/expectations weren't up too high. Michael Bay is the Devil. As a serious movie/film buff, he work is pretty much bringing down the industry/art...blah...blah...blah. What the fuck do you want? They're giant robots! Bang bang BOOM! Ripped lads and sexy lasses looked hot as shit blew up all around them. The robots looked great. The military got represented in a positive (unrealistic?) way. God bless the USA. I hated it and I loved it. Michael Bay's only great movie is THE ROCK, everything else he's ever done is just a pale imitation (the lead character at one point has to flag down some choppers with a flare on top of a sky scrapper a-la Nick Cage at Alcatraz).

The only thing about this movie that surprised me was Shia LaBeouf. I kept hearing so much about this guy, I was curious to see if the hype was worth it. Granted, this isn't the best vehicle (pun intended) for an actor to show off his "chops," LaBeouf earned my respect. Is he truly the next Tom Hanks/Harrison Ford? Only time will tell. I will say that I was worried to hear that he would be playing Indy's son in INDIANA JONES 4...but after seeing TRANSFORMERS I think he'll do just fine. He plays that in-over-his-head average guy who wants to be brave/tough quite well (which is the act Ford uses for Indy). I'm almost hoping the rumors of a JONES JR. trilogy with LaBeouf are true.

The other movie was EVAN ALMIGHTY. Which was about as good as a Jim Carrey-less sequel can be. I was worried how they were going to fulfill Evan's prophecy but still remain (sorta) accurate to the Bible (I don't know much about religion, but the dude did promise not to do the whole "flood" thing again). The ending was (almost) worth the hour of bird poop jokes. The whole time I was watching it, I realized how much Leah would probably like it (lots of animals). Was it worth my money? No, but thankfully I only paid $3.30 to see it.

God bless the Drive-in. Oh!!! I almost forgot!!! I got to see the 1-18-08 trailer before TRANSFORMERS. It was scarier on the big screen...but frankly, it's lost some of it's teeth since I've seen this (awesome) parody:

No comments: