My Take on a Couple of Newer Films

Greetings, Fire Enthusiasts. I hope everyone is doing well these days. I hope you are happily reading, writing and living.

My wife and I spent part of last weekend’s three glorious days off watching a pair of films, and I thought I would tell you about them.

The first film was Thor. We saw this one in the theater. We were looking for something to see as a family and we ended up choosing this one. Now, I must tell you that I grew up with Marvel Comics, so I was well acquainted with the mythology. However, considering the subject matter, I was not all that convinced that the filmmakers would be able to pull it off.

Thankfully, I can report that the film was pretty good. Even my wife thought it was okay, which surprised me. At first the film was too serious, but once the action turned toward Earth, we began to get some humor in the story which made it a good experience. If you like the Marvel films then I would recommend this one. It is definitely better than the terrible Hulk films.

This brings me to what I would call a disappointing film, Love and Other Drugs. Everyone and their mother knew that both Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway were going to be very naked in this film, but I guess I didn’t expect them to be completely naked most of the time. On top of that was the storyline of his brother who had no redeeming social qualities whatsoever. Also, seemingly every dirty word in the dirty-word handbook was used, and used frequently.

My hope going in was that although the film was R-rated, the payoff would be well worth it. Unfortunately, though it is interesting to see Hathaway’s character deal with her affliction and sweet to see her and Gyllenhaal’s character together, I found most of the film difficult to watch with my wife in the room. We've seen some things and heard some language in our twenty-plus years of movie-watching together, obviously. I just didn’t feel that this one was worth it.

Please don’t misunderstand, I’m no angel. My eyes like to see eye candy like the next guy. However, as a body of work, I did not feel as if the story (which was a good premise) warranted the huge amounts of profanity and nudity that ended up in the final version of the film. I expected more from Edward Zwick. He’s the director who gave us Glory, Legends of the Fall and The Last Samurai.

Okay, I’ve said my peace. What do you folks think? Have you seen either film yet? If so, do you agree or disagree with me? How so? Am I making too much of Love’s nudity? As an amusing aside, a day later I caught a commercial for a showing on television of Hathaway’s film, The Princess Diaries. She looked so innocent and sweet in that, but I was suddenly picturing her naked. I almost jabbed out my eyes! Lol!

We’ll talk soon.