Quick recap: George and Ken plan to go on a jewelry heist so they bring in two Americans to help them pull it off: Wanda and Otto, who are lovers but pretend to be brother and sister so that they can backstab the other two later. The jewelry heist comes off almost perfectly except that no one trusts anyone and every man is in it for himself. Hilarity ensues.

there are in fact fish in this movie.

Fun(?) Fact: A guy in Denmark thought the scene where Ken gets fries up his nose was so hilarious, that he died laughing. That’s not an exaggeration by the way. He LITERALLY died from laughter.

literally.

My thoughts: I had high hopes for this film a) because several people recommended it to me and b) because Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the funniest movie ever created. In retrospect, maybe my expectations were too high because I only found myself actually laughing a couple of times. I’ll be the first one to admit that reviewing a humorous movie is the hardest job because humor is so subjective.  That is, unless you are one of those people who have paid money to see Grown-Ups 2. If you are, it’s time to rethink the sad direction your life has taken.

One thing this movie has going for it are the characters. Jamie Lee Curtis as a comedian was a surprise and Otto, played by Kevin Kline, stole the show. The two played off each other so well as Wanda went back and forth from being so turned on by him to thinking he is the stupidest person alive, which he kind of was. Many of my favorite scenes involved Otto spying on Wanda and Archie and then trying to cover up for why he was there. And since I’m on the subject of Archie, John Cleese was wonderful. Archie starts off as a whipped puppy dog with his wife always telling him what to do and his job as barrister not giving him any respect. But then Wanda enters the picture and he slowly starts to transform. My favorite scene of the whole movie is the one where he is dancing naked and singing in German and then in walk a family with children. It perfectly illustrated Archie’s bad luck.

The character that was the most complicated for me was, of course, Ken. I understand the reasoning behind adding the stutter to become a part of who Ken was, but it just turned me off to the comedy anytime he tried to talk. The scene where Otto sticks fries up Ken’s nose just made me feel sorry for him and I especially hated Otto eating his fish in front of him. I knew there was humor in the irony he was such an animal lover and when he had been given the job of murdering the old lady, he kept killing her dogs on accident. But I just didn’t laugh. For many people, Ken was the one who made them love the movie, but it just wasn’t for me. At the same time, I’m not really sure if taking away the stutter would’ve been a good idea, either. I was happy when he ended the movie as a hero of sorts, but that came after feeling sorry for him the whole time.

On a positive note, apparently Michael Palin was confronted by a group of stutterers for how he portrayed their disability and in turn, created a center in London to help children who stutter.

Final review: 2/5.  comedy is much harder to pull off than I realized

How I watched it: this one is on Netflix Instant!

Up next:  either The Best Years of our Lives or The Departed. It depends on which one Netflix decides to send me first

Quick Recap: Dante Hicks works at a convenience store, which seems awful enough. The story starts with him being called in to work after closing the store the night before. Thus begins the day from hell. His buddy Randal, who works next door at the video place, frequents the shop throughout the day to keep company and sometimes make things worse. There are also a wide variety of customers to add to the hellscape that is the Quick Stop. I mean, the movie is called ‘Clerks’. It’s about Clerks. I don’t know what you were expecting.

Kevin Smith is ok in my book because he understands the greatness of Degrassi.

Fun (?) Fact: Knowing how this movie was produced made me appreciate it a little more. For example, the movie is filmed in the same convenience store Smith worked at, and he was still working there throughout the movie’s production. That’s rather impressive.

My thoughts: I’ve always seen this movie as more of a ‘guys movie’ rather than actual good cinema. Maybe it’s because almost every guy I have dated has attempted to get me to understand how profound this movie was. In fact, the first time I watched ‘Clerks’ was with a boy I had a major crush on in high school. Admittedly, I paid less attention to the movie and more to my feelings towards said boy. Moving on. At its surface, this is very much a guys movie, just as most romantic comedies are marketed to women. There is plenty of sexual humor and Star Wars philosophical discussion to tide almost everyone over. And that sort of thing just doesn’t appeal to me. I’m not a prude by any means, but I just didn’t find the discussions all that funny or enlightening. Especially the last scene which I won’t spoil here, but I just found gross. Unless Kevin Smith wasn’t trying to be funny and this was something he has dealt with and in that case, hats off to you, sir.

So one would think I just hated this movie based on the previous paragraph, but that’s not true. I felt a little guilty realizing all that I had missed the first time I watched it. But like I said, I was 18 and with a boy I liked and I had absolutely no experience in life as of yet. But now I’m older and although my minimum wage jobs weren’t as dire, I worked with people who had these experiences. People who were wonderful to talk to and smart, but they were either in a rut or had just enough to get by and enjoy life. I have no idea if that was the ‘point’ of the movie and I have no desire to look it up, but when presented with obstacles, everyone either falls into the ‘Dante’ camp or ‘Randal’ camp. I absolutely loved the fight between the characters at the end of the movie as Randal calls Dante out for all his melodrama. As he says, ‘I wasn’t even supposed to be here today!’, Randal has to remind him how much he brought on himself either through bad choices (cheating on his girlfriend) or being too uptight about things. Throughout the movie I saw Dante’s viewpoint of hell but after Randal talks to him, I realized that we create our own version of hell. Randal seems to be in just as much a dire situation as Dante, but he is aware of that and is happy enough with the situation. Maybe happy isn’t the best word to use, but he has made peace. After all, he’s just a video store clerk and and Dante is a convenience store clerk. Monkeys could be trained to do their job. So, you either stress over it or survive the shift and go out and be happy. That’s a pretty good lesson for a ‘guy movie’.

Final Review:  3/5. I’m glad I rewatched this when I was older but it doesn’t endear itself enough to me to watch it again.Then again, this is a favorite movie of my husband so I might not have a choice.

Up next: Splendor in the Grass