What The Hell Happened To...

Movies?

I'm becoming increasingly concerned that we may be almost done with movies. I think about the best movies I've seen lately. The new Star Trek was good, but it's still just Star Trek again. The Dark Knight was awesome, but how many Batman movies can we make? Inglourious Basterds was pretty good, but about a half hour too long and certainly not Tarantino's best work. Then I think about all the bad movies I've seen or heard about lately.

I watched a little bit of the Golden Globe awards a couple of weeks ago. I honestly don't know why, that doesn't really sound like me. But I did. I usually at least pay attention to the comedy category when those award shows are on, because, ya know, I like jokes. The nominees this year were just a mess. It's complicated? I'm not going to see that, but just from the commercials and previews, my guess is I'd be more inclined to file that one under tragedy. Julie and Julia? I'm sure it's a nice movie if you like Julia Child, but I have a hard time imagining it as funny. "oh look, she wants to cook, but it's hard, and maybe she's a little clumsy, HI-larious, but also inspiring". If you're trying to inspire me, or make me feel happy, that's not a comedy, and you won't succeed.

The Hangover won for best comedy. I saw that movie. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I sort of feel like we've already pulled out all the comedy Vegas has to offer. We get it, crazy things happen in Vegas, and there's strippers and hookers and alcohol and stuff. Avatar won for best picture. Maybe it's a great movie, but the contrary son of a bitch in me refuses to ever see it or acknowledge it's existence.

Then, this weekend, I saw two different DVD's. We'll get to the second one later, but the first one was The Invention of Lying. What a disaster. Just a wandering plot with a thin premise and 65 different versions of the same joke. "Ohhh, I get it, people would be really mean and stuff if they couldn't lie". And why do we always assume that people who don't have the ability to lie also can't just shut up? Why does not being able to lie also mean giving voice to every stupid thought that enters your head?

After about 55 minutes of that, out of nowhere, you get 5 or 10 minutes of really good, harsh religious satire. It seems good natured when you're watching the movie, but when you think about it, it's actually a pretty hard ass kicking for the concept of religion. Here's the basic premise. People can't lie and, at the same time, there's no concept of religion or the afterlife. Then, one guy figures out how to lie and, almost immediately, invents religion. After that fun little bit, you get about 30 more minutes of nonsense and there's your movie. So, I enjoyed about five minutes because I'm not religious and I wasn't offended, but if you're a religious person, who might be, ya know, bothered by the suggestion that religion is all a giant lie, it might be the worst movie you could ever see.

Have we just run out of stories to tell? That has to happen eventually, right? I don't know. I don't like this theory because it's sort of untestable. How do you tell the difference between Hollywood being out of new ideas and Hollywood just being lazy? It's impossible.

Maybe we just have too many stupid people around (this, by the way, is one of my theories for quite of few of the problems we have). Stupid people like stupid movies, because smart comedies or well-written dramas make them frightened and angry. Maybe appealing to this lowest common denominator is killing Hollywood.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen some legitimately good movies in the last few years. The previously mentioned Dark Knight and Star Trek, The Lucky Ones, Funny People, The Hurt Locker, Music Within was a really good, little known movie, District 9 was pretty solid. But none of them jumped out at me as a reason to be hopeful. They seemed more like the last remnants of quality being washed downstream in the endless river of crap.

This brings me to the second DVD I saw this weekend. 500 Days of Summer is a romantic comedy that won a lot of film festival awards. Needless to say, it wasn't on the top of my to see list. But I'm a big fan of Zooey Deschanel and it was either that or Pelham 123. Anyway, what a great movie. The romantic part was realistically depressing. The comedy was genuine and never felt forced. The whole thing was spot on from start to finish, I don't think I would have changed anything. And just like that, I feel better about movies.

Hey, you know what. Maybe movies were always mostly crap. Maybe I'm just noticing more now because my mood gets progressively worse as I get older and DVD's make it easier to see the movies I used to get through life without noticing. Yeah, I'm going with that. Hey, could that be the answer to everything? Nothing's getting worse, I just like things less than I used to. No, I don't think so, TV's definitely better (in spite of the Jersey Shore, and if you didn't see a second season of that show coming, you don't know anything about shamelessness), video games are better too. I only play Madden, but still, it's better. Phew! For a minute there I thought it was all my fault.