I like Hallmark movies. A lot. I like to have them playing on my tablet while I’m putting a puzzle together out on the lanai.
Neither one of those activities take too much brain power so I can easily do both at once. It’s a great two-fer activity…exercising my mind and indulging in a guilty pleasure.
I’ve never been much into movies otherwise. Just sitting and doing nothing else for a couple hours in front of a screen is just not my thing, whether I’m at home or I go to a theater. But I have noticed that our last 2 years of retirement involved more theater movies than I’ve seen in the previous 10 years combined.
One of the things I hate most about going to a theater is the previews of other movies coming soon. When a friend and I got to the theater quite early after lunch last week I was dreading the previews. Turns out, with good reason. The previews of the first three movies were so awful I realized that they’d make a great blog post. Enjoy!
First up was a campy film set in 1955, chock full of big name stars (probably all with 5 second cameos). I didn’t actually see any of them on the screen, but their names were prominent in the trailer. Asteroid City is (from Wikipedia) “an upcoming American science fiction romantic comedy-drama film” (identity crisis much?) “directed and co-produced by Wes Anderson.” I have no idea who Wes Anderson is or what else he’s done, but apparently he’s known for his inherent eccentricity and for the way his films are “shot and constructed.” Trailers are supposed to make you want to come back to the theater when the film is released, right? To me it just looked stupid and completely uninteresting. But that’s me…a pop culture illiterate from way back. Strike one.
Next up was a Disney/Pixar film called Elemental. Again from Wikipedia, in a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy are about to discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common. This computer animated romantic comedy-drama film didn’t look all that interesting either. I kind of like the premise of a movie showing how much we all have in common (if they can do that without getting too woke preachy) but their film logo doesn’t give me much hope about getting that done. Strike two.
I thought the third preview was called Barbie Land. Nope, just Barbie. The iconic Barbie. As in doll, but played by real people. The movie promo says “to live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you’re a Ken.” I guess Barbie escapes Barbie Land in the movie. Twitter has a Barbie generator that’s apparently a big hit so far. Still, and again, nothing about the preview interested me to even consider coming back to the theater to see this movie.
To be fair, I am sure I am not the target audience for these films. But it’s interesting to me to try to discern who is. Because at a 1 p.m. showing of a film on a Friday afternoon during the school year, you’d think someone from the marketing department would consider their audience then. Although, maybe they did. If I had grands, maybe I’d think, hey, I’ll take them to see these movies when I can. But I don’t and I won’t. Strike three.
Just for good measure there was another stupid movie previewed called Teenage Kraken, a computer-animated coming-of-age fantasy action-comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation. Strike four. Maybe three and a half. It’s from the same people who made Shrek.
By this time I’d whipped out my phone and began taking notes for this blog. Thankfully, the next two films previewed were ones that I might consider seeing (that is, they didn’t seem stupid), though I’ll probably wait for them to stream rather than going to the theater. The first one, titled Ordinary Angels is the story of a struggling hairdresser who finds a renewed sense of purpose when she meets a widowed father working hard to care for his two daughters. With his youngest critically ill and waiting for a liver transplant, the fierce woman single-handedly rallies an entire community to help. The preview made it seem like a feel-good story with a message. Interested, yes.
And finally, a war drama film called White Bird. Wikipedia talks about this film being made based on a graphic novel (the new-speak word for comic book, I think) although it’s not animated. What struck me as interesting was a grandmother seemingly giving a “lesson” to her errant, bullying grandson about how the world worked back when she was a young Jewish girl in Nazi Germany. It also is tied in somehow with a 2017 film called Wonder which may or may not have been a hit. I never saw it. Heck, I never heard of it.
Sometimes, in retirement, looking for things to fill time and take up space in our lives, it’s easy to get deluded into compromising with people, places, and things we might not otherwise choose. I need to remember not to sell myself short. Keep looking. There are plenty of books, activities and people worthy of your time and energy. And maybe even a few movies.
P.S. Two weeks post surgery. Minor complications. Please, if you’re so inclined, keep praying.
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