I like mindless movies...It's always fun to go and switch your brain off for a couple of hours and just enjoy some senseless violence and crude jokes. It certainly beats coming out of a movie and having to ask questions like: "Do you know why they did this?" "Can you explain the plot to me again?" "What was the significance of birds to the character development?" (Ok...the last one never gets asked...that would make it the most boring car ride home). Thankfully Benjy also likes mindless movies so we have decided to make a weekly pilgrimage to the movie theater to enjoy some unadulterated mindlessness. I wont get in to the first four movies that we have watched...Benjy has covered them very well. For me, it begins with the movie that we watched last night...Jonah Hex.
To be quite honest I had very low expectations going in. I usually have a quick peek at Rotten Tomatoes to see what the critics think. Not because I actually care what they have to say, but because you can usually get a pretty good indication of how watchable a movie is based on the Tomatometer score. Anything above 70 is considered "fresh" and most of the critics like it (For instance...Toy Story 3 is sitting at a VERY impressive 98%). Essentially they are saying that you should feel confident spending the $15 as you will probably enjoy the movie. I also find that anything between 30-70% is likely watchable. In particular, "mindless movies" that fall into this range are usually pretty entertaining (The A-Team 49%...Prince of Persia 38%) and the lower score comes from some "critics" who feel the movie lacks in unimportant things like "plot" and "character development". They probably needed to be hugged more as children. Jonah Hex at the time of writing was at 13% on the Tomatometer...enough said.
We got to the theater late and had no problems finding seats (a bad omen to be sure). The only other people there were Toy Story 3 castoffs who didn't get there early enough to buy tickets and a couple of guys who clearly were there because they enjoyed the Jonah Hex comic books (I nerd profiled them...nerdfiled???...and I do understand the irony there). At least I had my free popcorn and Coke.
At this point I should say that Jonah Hex did have some aspects that were fun. For those who don't know, Jonah Hex is based on a comic book about a bounty hunter who has a crazy scar on his face and can talk to dead people. At the start of the movie they give you a quick history about how he got his scar and why he hates John Malkovich (Who doesn't???). The talking to corpses was actually really cool and it was great how they used this "super power" in the movie instead of making it a gimmicky thing. The gatling guns mounted on the side of a horse were also a nice mindless touch that was very appreciated. Megan Fox is also a nice touch...until she tries to start acting. I can only imagine what the set looked like on days when she was there:
Director: Ok. Megan...This time lets try and do it with a midwestern accent...ACTION!!!
Megan Fox: (stabs a guy) I ain't much for being owned!
Director: CUT! Sorry Megan...we are looking for a midwestern accent.
Megan Fox: Yeah...that's what I gave you.
Director buries his face in his hands and begins to weep.
The real terrible part of this movie is that it's running time from opening scene to credits is a whopping 73 minutes!!! That's not enough time to do anything in a movie! We don't get to see Jonah tear up enough stuff in that amount of time...We don't get to know how bad ass face tatoo guy is in that amount of time (He must be bad...he has a face tattoo!!!)...We don't get to see any more than 5 lines out of Will Arnett in his first "dramatic" role in that amount time...We don't understand why there was the scene with a crow crawling out of Jonah's mouth (Seriously movie!!! Don't go getting all metaphorical on me...I demand mindless entertainment!!!)
Heck...I didn't even finish my popcorn in that amount of time! I guess I will save it for next week. Hopefully by then I will have some great random rating system in place too. As for this one...wait until it comes out on video...or on TV because then it will at least get stretched to an hour and a half with commercial breaks.
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