Fastly Getting Furious!

Biblical perspectives on contemporary cinema
Friday, April 03, 2009

Fastly Getting Furious!

Earlier this week, my 15-year-old son asked me if I'd take him and a couple of his car-geek friends to a Thursday midnight showing of Fast & Furious. Even though I hadn't seen any of the first three movies in the franchise, I said yes.

So, I'm a little tired and grumpy today, after a late night. But not just because of a lack of sleep. By yesterday afternoon, I had read Russ Breimeier's one-star review and checked in with Rotten Tomatoes (it was at a very rotten 10 percent then, but has since jumped to a slightly less rotten 20 percent), so I wasn't really expecting much going in last night—er, this morning, since the film started about 12:10 a.m.

Since it's not hard to exceed immensely low expectations, I actually enjoyed some of the film—well, the action sequences, anyway. The "story," if you can call it that, was pretty lame, but I'm guessing the audience—about 75 percent high school boys—didn't give a rip about that. Fast cars, dude—that was all that mattered to this crowd.

But it also mattered that the theater gets it right, and unfortunately, there were three major malfunctions—including one of the worst I've ever seen in a theater:

• They messed up one of the trailers badly, showing the right half of it on the screen—and the left half on the wall and corner of the building. Sheesh.
• They turned on the house lights with about 15 minutes left in the film, and never turned them off. Double sheesh.
• Worst of all, the screen went dark and the audio went silent—i.e., the film simply stopped playing—with about 90 seconds left in the movie. No joke: The judge said to one of the characters, "I sentence you to ... " AND THE MOVIE STOPPED! It was like a cruel joke with perfect timing, somebody pulling the plug at the worst possible moment. Two minutes later, the film started again—during the closing credits. We missed the ending entirely.

We were fastly getting furious!

Theater management was apologetic, but said they couldn't rewind the film to show us the end. (Why not? They didn't have a good explanation.) They also said they couldn't refund our money. (Again, no good explanation.) But they did issue free passes to everyone who asked, to be used for one free admission in the future. (If you ask me, they should've issued free concession vouchers too; twelve bucks for a popcorn and two sodas, yikes.)

One would almost prefer a malfunction at the beginning of the film and then having to come back another time, rather than watching 98 minutes of a 99-minute film, and then losing the end to a projector glitch. Aarrgghh!

Oh well, I'm just glad Vin Diesel wasn't there to take out his frustrations on the manager.

Only one other new review this week: The Escapist, a British film starring Brian Cox, a fine actor. Festival buzz had been big for this film, which supposedly took a conventional genre—the "prison-escape" flick—and handled it in new and inventive ways. But our critic, Josh Hurst, says it simply doesn't work as well as the buzz would indicate, giving it just 1½ stars.

Actually, one more film review, but it's not in theaters: Jerusalem: Center of the World, a nicely done documentary about the ancient holy city now airing on PBS. It premiered on Wednesday, but encores will air in the coming days and weeks. Check your local PBS station for listings.

Also, don't forget our blog, where we reported on Wednesday that Mel Gibson is working on a sequel to The Passion of The Christ. The post noted that Mickey Rourke was being considered for the lead role in The Resurrection of The Christ, and that Gibson had a 10-point plan for things he wanted to accomplish in the new film. Several readers quickly caught on that it was an April Fool's hoax, but a few were duped. All in fun.

Our blog also includes plenty of legitimate news (seriously!), as blogmaster Peter Chattaway—in his regular "Newsbites" roundups—reports on Star Trek, demons and monsters, and Greco-Romans (!). And we've also reported that Blue Like Jazz, the film based on Don Miller's popular book of the same name, is moving forward with filming to begin next month.

Finally, check out our DVD giveaways for The Tale of Despereaux and House.

Lotsa good stuff. And here's hoping that the movies you watch this week don't get cut off at the very end.

See you at the movies,

Mark Moring
Editor, CT Movies

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