This week we decided to test Jason's dedication to both the BYT cause AND sparkle motion by sending him to see the latest Rock comedy featuring football AND tutus. I mean, rules are rules and it was number #1 on the box office this week. (thank God we're starting to reimburse him for expenses). He lived. And what would make him feel better is if you drunkenly tell him you're not stalking him BUT love his work this weekend at the Cat. Deal? Deal.
Here's my game plan: get drunk & cry.
Can you smell what the Rock is cookin'? CAN YOU SMELL WHAT THE ROCK IS COOKIN' JABRONIES? I can. It's his own soul over the fiery, fiery coals of the Hell that is Hollywood.
I guess there comes a time in every action star's career when that star needs to shed his tough guy persona and appear in a lovable children's comedy. Arnold joined Sinbad in Jingle All the Way, Vin Diesel mumbled his way through the Pacifier, and Stallone acted(loose term) in Over the Top*. Now The Rock(or…Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, as he is billed**) stars in the Disney film, The Game Plan.
The Rock plays Joe Kingman, a self-centered professional football player, with an Elvis fetish, who evidently believes that everyone speaks in football metaphors. One day his long lost daughter shows up on his doorstep, and, GUESS WHAT?!?!, it turns his life upside down! HAHAAHA!! LOLOL! LMAO!!! SMITGDEBs***!!!
I can crow about the plot all day long, because it's one of the most hackneyed, trite plots ever to be filmed, but I have to be fair. This IS a Disney movie, and this is obviously for kids. I actually found it refreshing that a movie aimed at children didn't try to be everything to everyone, like Shrek or other recent supposed "Children's" movies. There isn't any subversive humor, and there really isn't any sly inside jokes specifically designed just for adults to understand. This is a movie that is totally for 9 year olds.
Which makes me wonder: why I was sitting in a theater watching it with 8 other people who weren't in fourth grade?****
I guess everyone else was there to see the Rock, who buffoons his way through most of the movie. This is disappointing, because I've always enjoyed watching him on the screen. The surprising thing is that he's much better in the sappy dramatic parts of the film than he is in the comedic areas. There was actually a very sweet part where he sings an Elvis song to his daughter, and I must say, I got a little misty. Of course, I'm on new meds now, and the fact that Queer Eye has just started its final season makes me bawl uncontrollably. So take my tears for what they're worth.
Pretty much all you need to know about the film can be summed up by the final lines in the movie, which I will describe to you now, in screenplay form...
JOE KINGMAN, sweaty and tired after throwing the winning touchdown pass in the Football Championship Game, stands among a sea of reporters looking throughout the crowd, searching for someone.
His daughter, PEYTON, pushes her way through the crowd, smiling, and jumps into his arms.
PEYTON
Daddy, Daddy! You won the Championship Game!
JOE KINGMAN
Peyton, I've won much more that that.
They hug and cry, and the camera zooms out.
CUE ORCHESTRA SWELL
FADE TO BLACK
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm all cried out. I have to go get a hug now.
Next Week: Another goddam kid has magical powers and has to save the earth in The Seeker, and Ben Stiller & the Farrelly brothers continue their precipitous fall from hilarity in The Heartbreak Kid. Til then, I'm stocking up on Kleenex. Stay dry, kids.
*Now, technically Over the Top isn't a children's comedy film, but it did have a kid in it, and there' nothing funnier than slow motion close-ups of Sly's retard sneer in the middle of an arm wrestling match.
**You see, he is a serious actor now.
***Stabbing Myself In The GodDamn EyeBalls.
****Obviously, the perks of writing this column. Cale gives a mean foot massage.
God loves a cheerful giver.
Cynical jaded hipster.
You can call me cynical. You can call me jaded. But I draw the line at you calling me a hipster.
You guys are like the Black Cat poster children - stop denying you aced the self-test at the end of the Hipster Handbook.
uhhh...yeah. I didn't take the test. I was too busy making a Hot or Not list.
No, see? We're just cool. It's just natural. We like what we like and we don't like what we don't.
Hipsters on the other hand want to like what we like and don't want to like what we don't like. They spend inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out what cool people (Jason and myself) like or don't like, and then pretend they came up with it.
Hipsters worry about what show is appropriate to be seen going to, or what music is appropriate to have on their ipod.
Cool people don't give a flying fuck what show they are seen at (Turbonegro) and I don't have an ipod. Fuck I don't even have a phone (can't speak for Jason.)
See?
P.S. I'm not really cool.
What I mean is this:
I'm just a trucker hat on a real trucker.
I thought you were a real trucker hat on a vespa.
I'm just hepped up on trucker speed is all.
I'm hepped up on vespa speed. Which is kind of like that sugar free chewing gum with caffeine in it.
Why don't the three of you hipsters just get a room already and call it a night?
Any more of this mutual appreciation and I'm gonna have to add bulimia to my list of personal pathologies.