I'm sure you've heard of The Hangover if you paid any attention to the 2009 summer movie season. When the trailers came out in the spring, it looked like another one of those atrocious movies where a couple of guys get really drunk, forget their wild and crazy night, then have to piece together what happened over the course of the movie. I've never seen one of these movies get acceptable reviews, and the quick plot summary isn't interesting enough to get me to go see one. Thus, I assume they're all awful.
When The Hangover came out, this was the generally accepted way of thinking about it. "Doesn't that look terrible?" could've been its tag-line. But then something happened: people started seeing it and liked what they saw. Reviews popped up all over the place praising it. Friends of all kinds said it was the must see comedy of the summer. It was apparently the funniest thing ever, and therefore I felt a little guilty when I never got around to seeing it. And let's face it: this is not the kind of movie I'd pick up from a video rental place.
Fall came and I returned to college. Carleton has this awesome program called SUMO. Don't ask me what it stands for, but what it does is find two movies a weekend that are either somewhere between theater and DVD release or classically awesome and screen them multiple times over Friday and Saturday. It's a great thing to do if you're bored on a weekend night, especially if you like movies. Since that last sentence seems to specifically describe me, I tend to go to a lot of SUMO movies. This week, as you no doubt have guessed, they showed The Hangover.
I wasn't even planning on going, to be honest. Few of my friends wanted to see it, and I still wasn't intrigued enough to check it out myself. After all, what's sadder than seeing a guy bonding movie all by yourself*? Then 11:30 on Friday night rolled around, and I happened upon a friend making her way over to the Olin lecture hall to attempt to stay awake through the subject of today's review. (Generally the drunk people yelling at the screen help with that awake thing.) I followed her over, and...
What a mediocre movie. I mean, I liked it, but it was super average. The plot is nothing we haven't seen plenty of times before. The crazy antics of the night before are exactly what you'd expect from a blackout bachelor party set in the silver screen version of Vegas. The jokes made me smile but rarely laugh. What was so wonderful about this movie that it made so many people recommend it to me?
Here's my theory. I believe this is a perfect case of The Saturday Night Fever Effect at work. A term stolen from the book First Among Sequels in which the characters discuss the movie their effect is named for. The idea is that if you go in expecting Saturday Night Fever to suck, then it will be great - an eternal classic. But if you go in expecting that classic status, it turns out to suck. Expectations completely change your opinion of a work. I've seen this thing at work even on movies I've seen before. When I saw the first Harry Potter movie, I thought it was bad. A week later when I saw it again, I thought it wasn't half bad. This is because the first time my expectations were through the roof, and the second time they were in the toilet.
I think The Hangover is a victim of this effect. People must have gone in expecting crap since that's what the preview seems to promise. Then when it wasn't crap, they told everyone it was solid gold. Then everyone else went expecting solid gold and, well, it didn't deliver.
Perhaps I'm over thinking this. Maybe the people that actually went and saw it were just the kind of people that goes to a movie like The Hangover even before they've heard it's good. These people would be used to low quality films, so an average one would knock their socks off. They told their friends, and their friends went and found what was actually there: a few laughs and tolerability.
Whatever the case, The Hangover is an okay movie. The important thing to take away here is that I want to study the way expectations shape our experiences. Such a cool idea. I'm trying to think of other movies that have been colored by what I've heard about them, but I'm falling short. Catch-22 wasn't great for me probably because the book was so amazing. That's a common occurrence with adaptations, I think. I bet I wouldn't hate Spiderman 3 as much as everyone else does since I'd go in expecting nothing. Little help, anyone?
SAM'S VERDICT: Okay. Delivers exactly what it promises.
*Answer: twelve dead puppies**.
**Be glad I didn't go with my original answer***.
***You thought this was going to be the original answer, didn't you? Instead I'm just going to say "WOOOO NESTED FOOTNOTES".
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
An Evening With The Coen Brothers
week ago I went to the Walker to see the Coen Brothers. Live. Talking about movies. This started to come about a few months ago when my dad told me about this 25th(?) anniversary of Blood Simple talk they were giving. Apparently my parents are members of the Walker, so they got first crack at the stupidly expensive tickets. Yay massive disposable income. My mom didn't especially want to go, so my dad said he'd get 3 tickets and that if my sister didn't want the 3rd I could bring someone from college.
An interesting conundrum! Who would I invite? I have several friends from town who I'd love to bring to a talk like that. DBlock and Joey come to mind, and Danl is not a bad backup. Sadly none of them were in town, so I started thinking of people at Carleton. Turns out most of my friends here are either not very interested in movies or I don't know well enough to invite on what looks sort of like a date except my dad is there, too. Awkward. (Yes, the majority of the college people I like spending time with are girls, so that last sentence makes sense.) Silly me, I'd forgotten Joey was going to Olaf this year and didn't get around to inviting him until he was already busy with rehearsal for some unspecified thing. Lame. Turns out my sister took the ticket anyway, so no harm done. I like the theoretical question, though. You've got an extra ticket to some cool thing that you're going to with a parent. Which of your friends do you offer the ticket to? Almost like one of those boundaries things. Once I know you well enough to offer you that ticket, I know we're tight.
We left early so we could eat Thai food for dinner. It wasn't the greatest, but I like most anything branded as Thai food. Plus, free meals. That means so much to a college student. It was rainy and cold out, which sucks. I remember last year we had such a beautiful fall and this year it's just dreary. Stupid Minnesota getting my hopes up.
The line to get into the performance hall was long even though we were 10 minutes before doors opened. Everyone was dressed up except me in my unicorn-riding-a-motorcycle t-shirt. Also everyone was suspiciously middle aged. Given the price of the tickets I'm not surprised. I'm probably one of the few kids who would've tried to get tickets to this thing at 17, so I don't know what I was expecting. Different age groups are just scary.
They had this slide show on the giant screen going for the 30 minutes before the talk that showed pictures of all the other people the Walker had had come for this lecture series. Elena and I talked about how creepy that one guy looked. You know the guy. This guy:
Holy shit, guys. That guy is freaky looking. John Waters of Pink Flamingos fame. I still haven't seen that, but judging by what I've heard that's a good thing. I recognized maybe a 3rd of the people.
After way too long, someone finally came out on stage and started introducing the men of the hour. Blah blah blah, they're awesome, go see their new movie, this was the room Blood Simple premiered in, etc. Shut up and give me my Coen Brothers, lady. She complied with my request pretty quickly, and voila! There they were! Huzzah! Standing ovation!
This other guy came out with them. Some movie critic who was there to ask them questions so they'd have something to talk about. Problem was, he was all "oooo, film theory" and they were all "yeah, we pretty much just like telling stories. Aren't stories awesome? We like reading, too." Then the critic would go "yeah, what about this thing? What about that film theory thing?" and they'd go "yeah. Um... yeah?"
My favorite exchange pretty well summed up the whole night. The critic plays this clip from Miller's Crossing where an Irish gangster's house gets shot up while Danny Boy plays in the background. It's a great scene, beautifully timed to the music and very important to the movie. This guy gets shot like 100 times by a tommy gun at one point but the movie is stylized like that so it's okay. Anyway, great scene. This gets shown and the critic asks "Why Danny Boy?" to which they reply "Um... because he's Irish?"
Overall, a bit disappointing. I felt like I didn't get a whole lot out of it. It was hilarious just how casual they were - just a couple of guys that make movies doing their thing. Hopeful, in a way, because it means maybe I can be that guy some day. I just gotta go find me a friend to write with. That's what college is for, though. Right?
An interesting conundrum! Who would I invite? I have several friends from town who I'd love to bring to a talk like that. DBlock and Joey come to mind, and Danl is not a bad backup. Sadly none of them were in town, so I started thinking of people at Carleton. Turns out most of my friends here are either not very interested in movies or I don't know well enough to invite on what looks sort of like a date except my dad is there, too. Awkward. (Yes, the majority of the college people I like spending time with are girls, so that last sentence makes sense.) Silly me, I'd forgotten Joey was going to Olaf this year and didn't get around to inviting him until he was already busy with rehearsal for some unspecified thing. Lame. Turns out my sister took the ticket anyway, so no harm done. I like the theoretical question, though. You've got an extra ticket to some cool thing that you're going to with a parent. Which of your friends do you offer the ticket to? Almost like one of those boundaries things. Once I know you well enough to offer you that ticket, I know we're tight.
We left early so we could eat Thai food for dinner. It wasn't the greatest, but I like most anything branded as Thai food. Plus, free meals. That means so much to a college student. It was rainy and cold out, which sucks. I remember last year we had such a beautiful fall and this year it's just dreary. Stupid Minnesota getting my hopes up.
The line to get into the performance hall was long even though we were 10 minutes before doors opened. Everyone was dressed up except me in my unicorn-riding-a-motorcycle t-shirt. Also everyone was suspiciously middle aged. Given the price of the tickets I'm not surprised. I'm probably one of the few kids who would've tried to get tickets to this thing at 17, so I don't know what I was expecting. Different age groups are just scary.
They had this slide show on the giant screen going for the 30 minutes before the talk that showed pictures of all the other people the Walker had had come for this lecture series. Elena and I talked about how creepy that one guy looked. You know the guy. This guy:
Holy shit, guys. That guy is freaky looking. John Waters of Pink Flamingos fame. I still haven't seen that, but judging by what I've heard that's a good thing. I recognized maybe a 3rd of the people.
After way too long, someone finally came out on stage and started introducing the men of the hour. Blah blah blah, they're awesome, go see their new movie, this was the room Blood Simple premiered in, etc. Shut up and give me my Coen Brothers, lady. She complied with my request pretty quickly, and voila! There they were! Huzzah! Standing ovation!
This other guy came out with them. Some movie critic who was there to ask them questions so they'd have something to talk about. Problem was, he was all "oooo, film theory" and they were all "yeah, we pretty much just like telling stories. Aren't stories awesome? We like reading, too." Then the critic would go "yeah, what about this thing? What about that film theory thing?" and they'd go "yeah. Um... yeah?"
My favorite exchange pretty well summed up the whole night. The critic plays this clip from Miller's Crossing where an Irish gangster's house gets shot up while Danny Boy plays in the background. It's a great scene, beautifully timed to the music and very important to the movie. This guy gets shot like 100 times by a tommy gun at one point but the movie is stylized like that so it's okay. Anyway, great scene. This gets shown and the critic asks "Why Danny Boy?" to which they reply "Um... because he's Irish?"
Overall, a bit disappointing. I felt like I didn't get a whole lot out of it. It was hilarious just how casual they were - just a couple of guys that make movies doing their thing. Hopeful, in a way, because it means maybe I can be that guy some day. I just gotta go find me a friend to write with. That's what college is for, though. Right?
Quick Time Travel Link
Yahtzee summarizes what I was trying to say in my Index of philosophies in about 1/1000th the words. Start around 50 seconds, then obsoive:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/957-Darkest-of-Days
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/957-Darkest-of-Days
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