I saw . . . this: Part 7

Because sometimes, more than one paragraph isn't necessary.

Idiocracy (2006)

Too many critics got me a little too hyped up for this comedy about an average guy (Luke Wilson) who wakes up 500 years in the future to discover that he is now the smartest guy alive. Both for its limited screen run and its quiet DVD release, critics were bemoaning how the genius of this film would quietly slip away. Yes and no. The satire is as deft as it was in writer-director Mike Judge's equally ignored Office Space, but the humour just didn't feel on the same level to me. Given that both Children of Men and V for Vendetta* came out last year, maybe I should just be glad that someone is willing to look at the lighter side of the world going to hell in a hand basket.

*That movie gets better every time I watch it.

Love and Death on Long Island (1997)

I can't tell you the number of times I've tried to watch this movie. I rarely make it past the opening credits. It's the kind of movie that I think I should watch, but I never quite get around to it. I finally suffered through it, and what suffering it was. I just don't get this movie. What is it trying to be? Am I supposed to feel pity for this acclaimed author (John Hurt) who falls for a B-movie actor (Jason Priestly) and flies across the Atlantic to stalk him? Should I find this bizarrely amusing? It's too bad the suffocating air that hangs over the movie like cigarette smoke prevents me from feeling anything other than weighed down and vaguely annoyed.

A Better Place (1997)

I could not, for the life of me, remember why I put this movie on my ZipList. I became briefly convinced, for reasons unknown, that Paul Rudd was in the movie, but that wasn't true. Jason Lee has a wee part, but it wasn't worth sitting through the movie to see him. Could it be that I like Eion Bailey that much? Maybe. Whatever the reason, it wasn't a good one. This movie is a terrible mess. Nothing about it reflects a single moment of what high school is really like. Barret and Ryan speak like they are reading rejected Dawson's Creek scripts, and the whole thing ends in the least believable manner possible.

Dead Man on Campus (1998)

This is not a good movie. Not at all, to be honest. For a brief time, when it first appeared on my parent's satellite lo these many years ago, I watched it. I watched it repeatedly. I watched it so often that jumping in in the middle didn't bother me, as I knew it so well. I knew it wasn't good, but I liked it. Now that's the perfect movie to add to your ZipList. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, "Hey, why did I like that movie where Tom Everett Scott and Mark-Paul Gosselaar try to get find a suicidal roomie and push him over the edge, so they can get As?" The answer: it's kind of funny and mostly stupid, but, by golly, Zack Morris is still way cooler than you.

Get Shorty (1995)

I quite like Scott Frank's adaptation of Elmore Leonard when it results in Out of Sight. Here, not as much. It's not a bad movie; it's a perfectly acceptable way to spend an afternoon. It's funny enough that you don't regret the time you spent on it. Danny Devito and Gene Hackman, as a celebrated actor and a B-movie producer respectively, were fantastic. Still, I'd rather watch the other one.