by Jay HOLLEY

I’m at the Bour­geois Pig when Kalen­dar, who’s sit­ting to my left, asks, “you wan­na see the new Ma­trix?” Of course I do. In five min­utes he’s man­aged to in­vite three more.

We show up 45 min­utes ear­ly. I or­der pop­corn and a Dr. Pep­per. I say to the con­ces­sion boy, “Sor­ry to both­er you, but could you — ,” when he in­ter­rupts, “ex­tra but­ter, squirt in the mid­dle too?” I drift, an­tic­i­pat­ing the crunch of ex­plod­ed cel­lu­lose ker­nels be­tween my mo­lars as the trail­ers roll.

I pull a beer from my bag as the pre­view for the new Pixar movie starts. A ba­by starts cry­ing three rows be­hind so I turn, scowl at the par­ents, and cluck my tongue in dis­ap­proval. Twen­ty min­utes in and the kid’s scream­ing again. “con­trol your pet,” I say. The frus­trat­ed fa­ther hauls his spawn away, but at this point I think the movie’s ru­ined. I have a headache and in­stead of be­ing pulled in­to the ac­tion I’m away; cri­tiquing the overuse of dig­i­tal ef­fects, won­der­ing why Neo does­n’t do this or that.

Bur­row­ing through the pop­corn, fin­gers dust­ed in salt, I find each ker­nel more sat­u­rat­ed than the last. Con­tin­u­ing is impossible.

The movie is ex­pen­sive­ly made but dull. Mon­i­ca Bel­luc­ci and her glo­ri­ous pome­gran­ates are worth the price of ad­mis­sion, and there are a few good bits cen­tered around the cast-off col­lec­tion of Char­ac­ter Ob­jects who are new to the fran­chise, but over­all the ac­tion is overblown and the sto­ry underdeveloped.

Filed under Films on July 16th, 2003

—

Care to Share?

—§—

Previous Post

« Short Piece In­volv­ing an Au­to­mo­bile (5 of 5)

—

Next Post

Hap­py Boy Margarine »

Join our Irregular Mailing List