Steven Harper Piziks

I subscribe to three different news feeds that specialize in media news so I can keep up with the latest media information for my media literacy class.  For weeks and weeks, a single story has dominated the headlines: the "gay moment" in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

By "dominated," I mean the top four or five stories EVERY SINGLE DAY discuss this topic.  If you read media news, there is IS no other story.  They do try to vary the narrative.  How is the lyingly-named One Million Moms reacting?  What about that drive-in movie theater in Alabama that won't show the theater?  How much gay is there?  Is LeFou an appropriate LGBT breakout character?  Gasp--Malaysia won't screen it.  Gasp--Russia is slapping an "adults only" label on it.  Can we squeeze another interview out of a cast member?  How many times can we re-quote the director's original statement?  And on and on.  The news eats a sandwich, vomits it onto a plate, eats it again, and barfs it back up, fork at the ready.

Really, the only question is: will this have an impact on the box office?

Psh.  No.  It won't.  Did you see how much extra publicity this whole thing is getting?  No one is talking about anything but this movie.  Every network and news outlet has done multiple stories on it, and consumers are snarfing the vomit sandwich right down.  Couple that with nothing else opening this weekend (because no studio wants to compete with a major Disney opening), and you have the perfect set-up for a record-breaking blockbuster.  One Dozen Moms has their boobs in a bunch over this, but they only helped it happen, so maybe they need to learn from their mistakes and shut up.  They won't, but they should.

Anyway, we got a close up and personal dose of the phenomenon.  I wanted to go see BEAUTY AND THE BEAST because I use the 1990 movie in media literacy class to talk about abusive relationships--Belle is trapped in a relationship with an abusive beast who isolates her from friends and family, won't let her work or leave the house, expects her to fulfill his every wish (breaking the spell), pushes for a fast commitment, threatens violence, and shows sudden mood swings.  Textbook abuser.  In the end, Belle loves the Beast so much, that she literally changes him into a kind and gentle prince.  Great message to send our girls: when your man abuses you, it's your job to love him enought that he'll reform.  The abuse is YOUR fault.

Did Disney change this around for this new version?  I doubt it, but I want to see the movie so I can comment appropriately during the domestic violence unit.  Darwin and Maksim came along for the ride.

When we arrived at the theater for the 1:45 matinee, however, the ticket seller said, "We only have a few front-row seats left for that showing."

I conferred briefly with Darwin and Maksim, and they said they were okay with that, so I asked for three tickets.

"Oops!" said the seller.  "It just sold out!  And so have the 2:45 and the 3:30 showings.  The 3:45 still has some seats."

We didn't want to wait around two hours, so we decided to wait until next weekend.

If this is any indication, however, One Dozen Moms and the other groups did their job--the show will shatter all kinds of records.

Saturday we all went to see the Lego Batman movie, mostly because Maksim wanted to see it, and partly to get out of the house on a Saturday evening.

Batman and the Joker are facing off in a self-aware Lego universe.  The Joker is upset that Batman refuses to acknowledge him as his #1 enemy, and so embarks on a master plan to destroy Lego Gotham and force Batman to admit the Joker is indeed his arch-enemy.  Meanwhile, Batman is also dealing with the ramifications of spending his life alone.

First and foremost, it's a silly movie.  They go for jokes first, and if that's what you're in the mood for, it's very funny.  The animation is great, though some scenes are a little too frenetic to follow what's happening--so much is going on in a single frame, you just can't follow it, and the movie seems more designed for home viewing on a DVD player with a really good frame-by-frame pause button.  The movie seems to have a hard time mixing both heart and action--the plot moves along at a good clip, then comes to a dead halt while the characters emote at each other.  After a while, you're able to predict the next emotional beat.  It overall lacked the punch of the first Lego movie.

But the comedy is fast and furious, with many references to Batman from the 1940s comics, to the 1960s TV show (lots and lots of those), to the Tim Burton Batman movie, to the Dark Knight.  The Justice League and Super Friends make cameos, including Zan and Jayna and Gleek (remember them?).

Maksim enjoyed it very much and wants to see it again.  Aran liked a great many one-liners, but wasn't enthralled.  Darwin and I felt . . . meh.

In all, it was a fast, light, silly movie for the kids or the "gotta see 'em all" Batman fan.

(While Steven is unconscious from surgery, we will be providing a pre-approved blog for your comfort and convenience.)

Over the weekend, Darwin, Aran, and I went to see FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM.  Our verdict:

Bleah.

The moive deals with a 1920s New York divided between the no-maj (muggle) world and the wizarding world.  The no-maj's suspect there's a magical world, and they're gearing up to fight against it.  Meanwhile, the evil wizard Grindelwald has escaped custody and is expected to do Something Awful any minute.  Finally, Newt Scamander arrives in New York from England with a magic suitcase filled with magic creatures who keep escaping his custody.  If that sounds like a lot to keep track of, you're right.

Is there good stuff?  Sure.  It's fun to see the Harry Potter world in 1920s America.  The movie focuses on magical animals instead of spells and potions, a potentially fun new area to explore.  The effects are lovely.  Dan Fogler as Mr. Kowalski is a delight as the stand-in for the audience as he's accidentally thrust into a wizardling world he can barely understand but gamely does his best to master.

But...

The movie has serious pacing problems.  Things take forever to get moving in the beginning. We  spend too much time dealing with unimportant issues, like the annoying niffler's thieving and the preparation of food in a witch's kitchen, and not enough time on actual plot points, like what the villain wants and how he intends to get it.  The latter is annoyingly muddled and confused.  Less time on special-effects creatures and more time on human character develoment would have been a better scripting choice.

Plot holes abounded.  There seem to be a gazillion witches and wizards in New York, and we see several times that they have the power to repair entire destroyed buildings and elevated train systems with a wand wave, but they can't seem to get their acts together in time to stop a single magic creature.  The reason Tina (Katharine Waterson) was disgraced as an auror makes no sense.  (I won't spoil it, but really--there was no reason for it to have happened.)  The American wizarding world apparently can have two people executed with no trial and no chance for the victims to say a word in their own defense, purely on the word of a single agent.  What on earth?

The characters are also dull and lifeless.  Eddie Redmayne plays Newt Scamander as a hunched, stammering, bumbling idiot who spends most of his time staring at the floor.  At the end of the movie he says, "I've changed so much," and my instant response was, "How?"  He hadn't changed on tiny bit.  Tina, his female counterpart, is his exact match.  She's shy and stammering and wimpy and totally unable to stand up for herself or raise her voice above a murmur, even when lives are at stake.  Apparently at one point, it's supposed to be a major victory for her when Newt makes eye contact with her, and she gives a tiny hop of suppressed ecstasy.  Mysteriously, I didn't feel any of it.

Maybe it's an English thing.  JK Rowling herself wrote the script, and the Brits seem fascinated by the stammering, blithering, noodle-backed incompetent as a protagonist.  I've seen it in book after book, movie after movie, TV show after TV show.  It's almost as if the English are afraid of confidence and competence.  I wish they would stop it.

(This paragraph has mild spoilers in it.)  Mr. Kowalski, our muggle baker, is the only character of any interest in the movie.  Rowling (the screenwriter) wanders dangerous close to the bumbling fat man stereotype, but she barely swerves aside in time.  He's fun to watch, and we're rooting for him, especially with his unexpected romance.  And at the end of the movie, every bit of his adventure is utterly negated. I was disgusted.

Aran pointed out that the main characters are all outcasts, an over-used trope that he hates.

My main thought as I watched the movie was, "Man, this screenplay needs editing."  I rather suspect that Rowling wrote the thing and refused rewrites.  "I don't need the grief," Rowling says.  "Take it or leave it."

And the producer took it.

The animals had their own problems.  Admittedly, I've never much liked Rowling's mythical animals.  She rarely uses established fairy tale creatures and instead makes up her own entirely.  Rather than being refreshing, this comes across as hand-waving.  She can have literally anything she wants, anytime she wants, because--magic!  In this movie, it means Newt can whip a handy creature out of his case to meet any situation.  Animal ex machina.  Additionally, since I've never heard of nifflers or bowtruckles or squiddlemuffleticklebuddlepdiddlekumquats or whatevers, I don't CARE about them.  In this movie, we're supposed to care that these magical creatures are being exterminated, but we never see them be anything except destructive.  They maliciously break into bank vaults, smash windows, give human venemous bites, destroy zoos, and smash entire buildings, but we're supposed to worry that THEY'RE being hurt?  With one exception, the animals are annoying or dangerous, and are in no way sympathetic.  They're only pretty.

The movie was a disappointment for all three of us.  We were hoping for some cool historical urban fantasy and instead got a muddled storyline with unsympathetic characters.  Not recommended.

Darwin and I went to see FINDING DORY on our Mackinaw Trip.

Our reaction: Meh.

It wasn't =bad=.  But neither was it =good.=

Hank the septopus (an octopus with a missing arm) was awesome, and stole the show.  The camouflage and disguises he uses are screamingly funny, and his propensity for escape is realistic, if everything I've read about aquarium octopi is true.

However, Dory as a main character doesn't work very well.  Her relentless optimism is a plus, but her famous forgetfulness, which is funny in a supporting character, makes her problematic when she takes center stage.  She is able to remember things when it's convenient for the plot, and never any other time.  There was also no explanation for her memory problems.  Her parents don't share it, and neither do any of the other fish like her.  So why is Dory forgetful?  This is never explained.  The settings ae also dark and grim.  We keep returning to the same kelp forest, where the lighting is dim and the colors are muted.  The aquariums that make up most of the rest of the show are sterile, empty cubes of water, or rusty, nasty pipes, or (in one memorable scene) a battered mop bucket.  There are a few exceptions, but gross and grim rule the set, which drags down the audience.

There was also too much back-and-forth in the plot.  As in, Yes! We found Dory's parents!  No--just kidding.  We didn't.  Yes!  We found them now!  No--just kidding.  They were moved.  Yes!  We found them at last!  No--just kidding.  They were moved again.  This kind of stuff happens all throughout the movie, and rather than building suspense, it becomes frustrating and annoying.

Also, by setting the movie in an aquarium theme park, Pixar boxed themselves in, and had no good way out of it. The main characters are continually casting about for ways to get from Point A to Point B.  Hank the septopus is the only character who can reliably get from one tank to another, but there is a lot of silly scooping Dory into cups, coffee carafes, and even sippy cups in order to bring her along for the ride--which is what she usually does; just come along for the ride.  Since she can't do anything in the environment of the aquarium, Hank has to do everything while Dory just sits in her cup and talks to him, or screeches in fear whenever they tumble down some stairs or rush headlong down a ramp or something.

All these flaws obscured the fun parts of the film, and stopped it from being a solid, enjoyable sequel.  In retrospect, I would rather have waited for the DVD.

I haven't talked to my high school friend Brian d'Arcy James face-to-face in probably 15 years.  I think the last time was way back when he was starring in TITANIC on Broadway.  Still, I follow what he's up to.  Mostly he does Broadway shows (look up SOMETHING ROTTEN to see what I mean), but every so often he makes a foray into television or the movies, and it's always fun to catch him.  So I was really looking forward to SPOTLIGHT.

SPOTLIGHT focuses on a small group of reporters at the Boston Globe as they work to uncover and report on the horrifying scope of the pedophilia crimes and cover-ups in the Catholic church.  The movie has been glowingly reviewed elsewhere, and this isn't so much a review as my own reaction, both as a movie-goer and as a person.

The main reason I wanted to see the movie was that Brian was in it.  He plays Matty Carroll, one of the reporters at Spotlight, the investigative arm of the Globe.  I told Darwin the movie had finally arrived in the Detroit Metro area, but he was clearly uninterested.  "Let me put it this way," I said.  "I am going to see this movie today.  You can come with me or you can stay home."  Darwin feels left out when I do things without him, so he elected to come.

We timed things to arrive only a few minutes before the movie started.  It was a Saturday at 5:00 on a holiday weekend.  Who was going to be there?

To our surprise, the theater was packed.  A great many audiences members were older, in their sixties and seventies.  (Later I realized many of the victims discussed in the movie would be that age today.)  Darwin and I were forced to sit in the whiplash seats way down front, and even after we found spots, yet more people filed in.  At last the movie began.

The film totally threw me, and this is hard to do.  It's hard to figure out where to start talking about it.

(I don't know if it's possible to spoil this movie.  It's based on reality, and everyone knows how the ending comes out.  However, in case you've been living in a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears or something, what follows reveals a fair amount about the action.)

The movie stays tight with the Spotlight reporters.  It follows them through the dogged leg work of uncovering a sickening, horrifying scandal that grows bigger and bigger at every turn, but there's no action. This is a drama, not a thriller.  The movie takes place in relentlessly ordinary places--in records basements and among bookshelves and in judge's offices and at kitchen tables and on front porches.  The reporters are as far from glamorous as you can get.  Brian is a Hollywood handsome man, but you wouldn't know it in this movie.  The awful mustache and bad haircut are typical of a man who pays little attention to his appearance to focus on his work.  The camera often focuses on Michael Keaton, the Spotlight editor, and shows his face as a wreck of wrinkles.  Rachel McAdams, another reporter, usually shows up disheveled, with poorly-applied makeup.  It looks like Mark Ruffalo, the final reporter, and Brian are both carrying some middle-age spread, but if you look closely, you can see they both have athletic builds and they've created a skillful illusion using costuming--baggy khakis, bad sweaters--and carefully bad posture. These are ordinary shlubs who sit behind desks and deal with paper and telephones, not action heroes who pack pistols and punch bad guys.  Only Billy Crudup as the smarmy lawyer McLiesh is allowed to be a snazzy dresser.

The settings show much the same skilled banality.  Salt is scattered carelessly across a restaurant table.  Kitchen cupboards show wear around the edges.  Eyeglasses are smudged around the edges.  And looming over everything is the church.  Church towers glare down over tracts of houses.  Cathedrals frame parks.  Church bells ring on city streets.  A parochial school's windows stare across the street to the Globe's office.

But we never, ever see inside the church.  There are no scenes of cardinals and bishops gathered in dark spaces trying to decide what to do about these upstart reporters.  We only see the results of the church's machinations--empty files of court documents, lawyers who refuse to speak, adult abuse victims with needle tracks on their arms or who weep unexpectedly in a park after telling a reporter how a priest coerced him into giving oral sex when he was twelve.  We see the horror on Matty's face when he realizes one of the pedophile priests is now living quietly half a block away from Matty's own house.  (Matty has children of his own.)

We don't see courtroom drama, either.  The one moment it looks like we might, when Ruffalo's character is watching a Catholic judge hear arguments about releasing documents that would damage the church, the camera pulls away to Ruffalo's conversation with a rival reporter.  And in any case, the judge doesn't issue her ruling right away--it comes weeks and weeks later.  Over the phone.  This is not The Good Wife.

But the movie is never dull.  The director is highly skilled at creating tension and excitement during what were, in real life, long paperwork searches.  He and the cast show us the stakes at every moment, both personal ones and wide-ranging ones.

Each reporter has his or her own bailiwick.  Brian plays the relentless researcher who can find anything in print, and never mind the dead rat in the basement.  McAdams is the good friend who gets reluctant victims to talk (including a retired priest who unexpectedly and happily babbles about the boys he's raped).  Ruffalo thrusts and stabs at bureaucrats and lawyers who refuse to talk, using words like weapons.  And Keaton pals around with high-rollers, pulling out information and dealing threats over glasses of scotch.  Their excitement at discovering something important becomes our own.

As the scope of the crimes and coverups grows, and the reporters realize that they aren't dealing with three priests, or even 13, but 90--and that just in Boston--the largely silent audience gasped and murmured.  Their quiet question: how many monsters are living among us even now?

At the very end, the story has broken and Mark Ruffalo's character takes a copy to a lawyer named Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci).  Garabedian has been working with priest abuse victims for decades and has tried to get the story into the news before, but either reporter apathy or active interference by the Catholic church got in the way.  Garabedian glances over the newspaper, thanks Ruffalo, and shoos him out of the office.  Why?  He has clients waiting--a mother and two small children.  The children were both raped by a priest, the church is offering a settlement to cover it up, and Garabedian's work continues.  Just because the story breaks doesn't mean the crisis has ended.

Brian has the only two really funny moments in the film.  One comes when he drops a pile of the newspapers that break the story on the front porch of the pedophile priest in his neighborhood.  The other is in a scene with Rachel McAdams.  He says he's working on a book to take his mind off the scandal.

"What kind?" she asks.

"Horror," he says wryly, and the audience laughed.

Just before the credits roll, the movie lists other cities that have reported pedophilic attacks by Catholic priests.  Three columns of tightly-packed text appears on the screen, and the audience gasped in shock.

And then the text was replaced by another three-column set.

And then by another.

I don't know why, but this is the point where I started to cry.  It was awful.  I couldn't stop myself.  The screen blurred and I couldn't read anymore.

When the cast credits rolled, no one in the audience moved.  Every single person remained motionless in their seats, as did I.  We were a good way into the credits before we were able to get to our feet and shuffle toward the exit.

I overheard people conversing in hushed voices.

"That was a good movie.  Harsh, but good.  More people need to see it."

"I've always been anti-New England.  Now I have a new reason to hate Boston."

We can't forget this.  We can't let this drop.  No one is doing enough to stop it--and make no mistake, it's still going on.

Go see the movie.  Forget The Hunger Games and The Good Dinosaur. This is the movie everyone needs to see.

I heard great things about the horror movie IT FOLLOWS. I'm not a horror fan, but Darwin loves the genre.  I make him sit through super-hero movies, so in the spirit of being even, I sigh and attend the occasional horror movie with him.  When I saw the rave reviews about IT FOLLOWS, I thought, "Well! Here's a horror movie I might enjoy and it'll be a nice surprise for Darwin--a horror movie I'm not complaining about!"

I got the DVD.  Darwin was pleased with the idea, and we settled onto the couch to watch.

It was awful.

Plot synopsis: a girl has sex with her slightly older boyfriend and discovers that he has, as a result, passed a strange being on to her.  The being can change shape and will slowly, inevitably lurch toward her until it catches up with her.  When it does, it will kill her.  There's no way to stop it.  You can only outrun it.  And no one but you can see it.  The only way to get rid of it is to have sex with someone else and make it focus on them, turning you into a world-class asshole.

It's a great set-up, but the execution was awful.  The pacing was slooooooowwwwww.  And not suspensfully slow.  Boring and slooooowww.  Everyone sits around doing relentlessly ordinary things--brushing their hair, watching old TV shows, having ordinary teenage-type conversations.  (The girl's parents inexplicably vanish about fifteen minutes into the movie, and their absence is never explained.)  And NOTHING HAPPENS.  Finally the being lurches into view and there's a frantic few moments of rushing about to put some distance between the girl and it, but then everyone just sits around talking again.  You can easily take a bathroom break and pop some corn without pausing, and you'll miss nothing.

You also start to realize that the idea of the being is pretty stupid.  It walks.  Slowly.  So you only need to drive to Point A, wait 13 hours, and drive back home.  The being will have to turn around and lurch back toward you, at which point you just drive away again.  It's annoying, but not impossible to deal with.

The whole thing comes across as a metaphor in search of a plot.  The being is a stand-in for the consequences of sexual activity, apparently.  Trouble is, the metaphor doesn't SAY anything.  And the story is so thin, we don't care.  The characters, like the setting, are relentlessly ordinary, which means there's nothing remotely interesting about any of them, so we don't care what happens.  Die or not, so what?  They're flat and dull as a Detroit sidewalk anyway, so when someone dies, it's a bit of a relief.

I truly don't understand the rave reviews the movie earned.  Perhaps movie reviewers sit through so many movies, the films all seem the same after a while, and anything vaguely different comes across as brilliant by contrast.  I don't know.  I do know that there was no real story, no real suspense, bad pacing, poor cinetography, stilted acting, embarrassingly-bad dialogue, and plot holes you could lost a tank in.

Skip it, folks. Really.

Yesterday I dragged Darwin to see FROZEN with the boys and me.  I mean--animation!  Disney!  It'll be fun!  About halfway through the show, Darwin leaned over and muttered to me, "We need to talk about your taste in films."

I couldn't contradict him.

FROZEN was awful.  Yeah, the animation was lovely.  It always is these days.  But the story was muddled and full of holes.

(MILDLY SPOILERIFIC STUFF FOLLOWS.)

So Princess Elsa develops snow magic powers.  Why would this mean she has to be isolated from the entire world?  How would making her cold and unfeeling prevent her from misusing her power?  It seems like that would turn her into a little psychopath.  And who was running the kingdom with the king and queen dead and both princesses closed up behind "locked gates" for all those years?

The movie lacked for a clear antagonist, too.  At first it looked to be the visiting Duke of Wesselton, but he was nothing but an annoyance.  The movie has a secret villain, but his identity isn't revealed to Anna or the audience until the movie is nearly over.  When Elsa flees the castle in tears because she's lost control of her power (and why would a simple pair of gloves stop her ice powers when later her ice breaks her free of a pair of iron gauntlets?), it looks like Elsa might turn into the antagonist, but Anna firmly maintains Elsa would never hurt anyone.  And she doesn't.  Even the big snow creature Elsa conjures up to defend her ice castle doesn't do anything but roar.  As a result, the movie is utterly lacking in tension.  Not once do we ever worry the characters are truly in trouble.

And how does Kristoff suddenly become family with the trolls?  That came out of the blue.  The opening sequence shows him as a boy cutting ice with a bunch of guys we assume are his family, and then we see him spying on some trolls doing magic, but nothing happens to show Kristoff losing his human family or having any other connection to trolls.  Other than plot convenience.

And finally, WHY IS IT BAD THAT ELSA HAS ICE POWERS?  Holy shamoly!  You mean we have a queen who can freeze an entire fleet of ships at will?  Let's train that little sucker up!  No one will be able to invade us, like ever!

The story wanders around, looking for something to do, pulling the audience along with it like a bunch of lost puppies.  Even the musical numbers were mediocre.

A true disappointment and a waste of money.

Yesterday I told the boys we could go see a movie. Three of interest were playing: HUGO, ARTHUR CHRISTMAS, and THE MUPPETS. I let them vote, and we got two votes for HUGO, so off we went.

I was expecting something . . . rather different.  I'd heard about the book, though I hadn't read it.  Sasha had done so a couple years ago for a school project, but I hadn't.  I got the idea it was supposed to be an adventure story with steampunk overtones, so I was set for that.

I wasn't prepared for the pace.  The movie was s-l-o-w-w-w-w-w.  And it was definitely a character story, not a world or plot story.  It certainly wasn't an adventure, by any stretch.  And there was lots of steam but little punk, despite all the clockwork.  I also found very little tension in the story and not much to like among the main characters.  The little girl came across as snotty and annoying, and Hugo was whiny and wimpy.  Could the boy do anything but skulk in corners and beg for things and run away from people?  I got =bored=, to tell the truth, and started to drift off.  Aran nudged me awake when he noticed I was falling asleep.  For me, the only saving grace was being able to see the movie history stuff come to life, though it quickly became clear that even this was a self-indulgence from the director and, likely, the reason Martin Scorsese wanted to make the film in the first place. ("Don't you find this fascinating?  I find this fascinating, and you should, too. Yes, you should!" Fortunately for Scorsese, I did. More or less.)

The surprise?  Maksim found it very interesting.  He scarcely took his eyes off the screen.  And Sasha was totally enthralled.  "It was exactly like the book," he said afterward with satisfaction.  "Exactly!"

Aran said, "It was boring."

Well, we can't all like the same thing--imagine what a haggis shortage there would be!

On Saturday morning, Sasha slept way, way in.  At 10:00, he slouched out of his bedroom groaning that he'd forgotten he was supposed to go on a field trip with the film and video club to the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and they were leaving at 9:45.  Oops.  He begged me to drive him over to the high school and see if they'd left yet.  I took him over there--it's only three minutes away--and we found the bus just getting ready to leave.  So he lucked out there.

A bit later in the day, I took Aran and Mackie to see HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON.

It was great fun.  I liked the dialogue and the characters quite a lot.  I'm not sure why they decided to have the adult Vikings talk with a Scottish accent and the kids talk with an American accent, but whatever.  The best line in the movie is when Stoick, the dad, hands Hiccup, his ne'er do well son, a warrior's helmet.  "Your mother would have wanted you to have it," Stoick says.  "It was half her breastplate."  Aran and Mackie couldn't figure out why I was laughing so much.

A couple of caveats, though--you definitely don't need to see it in 3D.  Unlike AVATAR, the 3D elements add nothing to the film.  Don't bother paying the extra.  Seriously.  I've also come to learn that Dreamworks ordered movie theaters to clear 3D screens for DRAGON (bumping ALICE IN WONDERLAND).  Theaters that failed to comply would not be allowed to show DRAGON in 2D.  I wish I'd known this before I went--another reason to see it without the stupid glasses.

The movie itself is worlds better than Dreamworks' last production, the horrible MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, though, and worth seeing.

The boys wanted to see it, so I took them.

Meh.

Dreamworks does this a lot with their animation.  They take an idea with a lot of cool visuals in it and they barf it up on the screen without remembering that story and character actually make a good movie.

MvA starts when Susan gets smacked by a glowing meteor on her wedding day and grows to fifty feet tall.  The government whisks her away to a special prison for other mutated monsters, including cockroach-y mad scientist, a blob without a brain, the missing link between fish and humans, and a godzilla-sized fuzzy bug which also doesn't have a brain.  The trouble is, none of them have heart, either.  A squiddy alien invades the earth, so the army offers the monsters their freedom if they repel the invasion.

The performances are decent, especially Reese Witherspoon as Susan, but the script is so poor, the movie dies.  The plot wanders all over the place and never has a chance to build.  There's absolutely, positively no suspense.  I mean NONE.  The bad guy is a buffoon villain, and not once is there a moment when it seems possible he might win.

Each character is supposed to have a talent and a flaw.  I think.  Blob dissolves everything but is really stupid.  Missing link can swim really good but he scares people.  Dr. Cockroach can build machines out of nothing but is insane.  Insectosaurus is huge and strong but has no brain (oops, we did that one) and he's attracted to bright lights.  I think each one is supposed to overcome his flaw throughout the course of the movie and use his talent, but it doesn't quite work out that way.  They never really overcome their flaws and never fully use their talents.  And oh yes--the "surprise" ending with Insectosaurus ain't a surprise.  Not only did I see it coming, a little kid in the audience shouted it out long, long before it happened.

The dialogue is never very funny.  Once in a great while it earns a chuckle.  Usually it's just okay.  Often it's embarrassingly bad.  You could tell they were trying to be funny and failing.

Give this one a miss, folks.  Especially since they charge extra for the 3D glasses.