Monsters! ...in an Adventure with Fraternities

It's not that Monsters University is a bad movie. It's just... unimaginative and feels rather tired.

Don't get me wrong; it has a couple of good jokes – the hippie guy singing folk songs in the quad, the mild-mannered mom who listens to death metal, the Carrie homage, and, well, I'm sure there were a couple more but right now I can't remember them – but most of MU is a parade of knowing winks to an audience who has already seen 2001's (totally brilliant) Monsters, Inc.

There are also the sentimental life lessons that so many "comedies", particularly other Billy Crystal films (one thinks immediately of City Slickers or Throw Momma from the Train or Mr. Saturday Night), feel that they need to teach us instead of spending more time telling jokes and making us laugh. In Monsters University these pearls of wisdom include:

1) The cool people are not really that great to hang out with and are actually a little mean. Instead of trying to spend time with the cool people, look at the group of nerds with whom you are stuck: some of those guys are pretty interesting, even if they are totally socially awkward.

2) Being a total control freak and a nerd really pays off in the end.

3) Sometimes you actually can't be what you've dreamed your whole life you wanted to be. A little cyclopean monster who resembles an olive with legs is not scary, no matter how hard he wants to be.

4) And last but not least: friendship, man. That's where it's at.

Now I'm not saying all these sentiments aren't lovely, I just wish I spent more time in the movie laughing and less time "learning" lessons like these. I put learning in quotation marks, because no one here is actually doing any learning. When a movie spends most of its running time confirming my beliefs about children, friendship, morality, teamwork, etc., and telling me things I think I already know, I generally start to feel that there is a problem. There are lots of new things to be said about friendship. And there are lots of new things to be said about popularity, homosociality, teamwork, nerdhood, and social awkwardness. But Monsters University sticks with the old clichés.

Train Movies: Part 2

So, as I am watching train movies, lately – there will (at least) be a part 3 of this post – I thought I would finally watch John Frankenheimer's 1964 picture The Train. I was cool with it. It is ostensibly an action movie (most of these train movies are), but The Train is also trying to be a picture about "doing the right thing" and "the value of art to the nation" and other things I care a lot less about.

But don't get me wrong; this is a really exciting picture. Frankenheimer doesn't have the reputation he does for no reason. There are some awesome explosions and very cool train crashes. There is also a really, really exciting sequence where the people on the train and the people in the French resistance in local towns all trick the Nazis who are riding on the train. In other words when it is an action movie, it is exciting action movie. The down-time is less interesting. (Do I say that about every action movie? Pretty much; yeah.)

One more thing: Jeanne Moreau is in this, and goddammit I love her. She is not the largest part, but she is riveting for every moment she is onscreen.

And now here's where you start to think I am a crazy person. I also watched Danny DeVito's 1987 film Throw Momma from the Train, which is a kind of comic adaptation (perhaps a spoof) of Hitchcock's masterpiece Strangers on a Train. DeVito directed this comedy and Billy Crystal is the star. And Anne Ramsey got an Academy Award nomination for playing DeVito's hateful, shrill, mustachioed mother. (A nomination that I completely fail to understand. She just screams and looks ugly. Wash your hair!)

I was never into these Billy Crystal comedies – City Slickers, Mr. Saturday Night, etc. – they all are geared toward these life lessons that we're supposed to learn. You know: the importance of friendship and get out of the city and back to nature and family is all that matters. I hate that kind of stuff, mostly because I don't believe any of it. But the real cardinal sin of these films, of course, is that they aren't funny. I mean, this is a problem, guys. (I've posted about this before, so I will shut up about it now.)

There are, sadly, not really a lot of trains in the movie, either, although they are a kind of motif that runs through the whole film.

Okay, one more thing, and it was 1987 so I deserve a break for this, but I kinda thought Billy Crystal was hot in Throw Momma from the Train. Seriously. I mean, it isn't a reason to watch the movie or anything like that, but he really is kinda sexy.

Tonight, Jaime, John, Xiomara, Derek, Tim&Jim, Samantha, and my lovely friend Wahima all came to the show.  The show was okay, but mostly, I think, the actors are and look tired.  They seem to all miss me too, which is good, I suppose.  I think I remember being really excited when the director would come back and watch the show.  Maybe on Thursday I'll spend the show backstage with the actors.  I will definitely go down on Thursday and talk to them.  They need it, I think.  Matt (once again) did some silly jokes that he came up all by himself.  They weren't funny (again).  Grr.  He makes me mad.  I can't tell him not to do jokes I haven't approved every night.  Dammit that makes me mad.  Ah well.  Brittney and Michael get better and better, quite honestly.  I think Mike Steger really is quite a star in this show.

It's funny, I wish all of my friends had come a couple weeks ago when the show was still mine.  Now it is the actors' show, and it seems weird to have my friends coming to see it.

After the show, I decided not to go see The Bourne Supremacy.  I went home and made myself one of the best gin and tonics I've ever had.  (Sometimes I am brilliant with the liquor.)  The roommate headed out almost exactly when I got there, so I sat in my living room and watched Billy Crystal's movie Mr. Saturday Night.  It's no good, unfortunately.  It's like a two hour Tracey Ullman sketch with Crystal in the Tracey Ullman role.  It would have been a much better movie if Woody Allen had directed it, I think... or if Milton Berle had played Crystal's part.  Ah well.  It was a nice quiet evening.

I started work on Pterodactyls today.  Officially.  This show is going to be really tough, and so much fun.  Next week I will make some calls about it, I think.  YAY.

Forget about the boy.

Forget about the boy.

Forget about the boy.

There is no boy.  I'm full of shit.