Movies

Speaking of seeing movies, we've seen a fair amount recently. Two weeks ago we caught Iron Man which is possibly the best comic book movie made to date. Robert Downey, Jr. is perfectly cast as Tony Stark, and it manages to avoid bogging down in exposition—a common theme with the first superhero movies in a series. It still didn't have quite as much superhero action as I'd like, but now that all the setup is done, they can jump right to it for Iron Man 2. That same evening, we saw Baby Momma, a movie for which I had literally no expectations. It was reasonably funny and entertaining.

Speed Racer was more disappointing. Don't get me wrong; I chuckled a few times and enjoyed bits of it, but the movie is really a mess. The plot is riddled with incoherent details which—surprisingly—have little impact on the movie as a whole. One reviewer called the movie "Hot Wheels on acid" which seemed pretty appropriate. Not that I have any idea what an acid trip is like.

The Wachowski Brothers have an annoying tendency to derail their movies with pretentious, ham-handed, self-righteous preachiness, and Speed Racer is no exception. It's simply that it's so absurd here that it feels almost satirical rather than serious (which who knows? Maybe it is.) All in all, it wasn't as tedious as turgid as the Matrix sequels or V for Vendetta but it still rates as a thumbs down—with the caveat that there are some things about it that are interesting.

This looks like a good summer for movies. This weekend Prince Caspian starts, next weekend the new Indiana Jones with still a new Hulk, a new Mummy, a new Batman, a new Pixar flick, Hancock, and more still on the way.