Three - Count 'Em - Three Movies!
Woke up this morning, fed and cats, and quickly got my act together to meet Subrata at his place so we could go see Inspector Gadget. It turned out - a bit to my surprise - that we were the only people of our little group who were going to see it.
Well, it turns out that apparently they knew something we didn't, since Inspector Gadget - based on the '80s cartoon series, and which certainly looked fun in the previews - is actually a pretty lame film. Matthew Broderick plays Gadget, who is basically a loveable loser and goes through a wacky rite-of-passage reminiscent of Ghostbusters, albeit far less funny. The jokes ranges from the polite chuckle down to the basically lame, and the villain's motivations are rather murky. Okay for a kids' movie I suppose, but remakes of old cartoons are really going to have a lot of adult appeal and should recognize that.
I think Hollywood should declare a moratorium, in superhero and action flicks, of telling the hero's "origin". Partly this is for time constraints: Origin stories are often just not that interesting. But they also seem to make the creators obliged to tie the whole plot of the film into the origin. Inspector Gadget shows us who Gadget was before he was turned into a "machine man", and ties his creation into the villain Claw's loss of his hand. Who cares? A much better film would have been for Gadget to already be a respected (if wacky) member of the police department, and have Claw try to undermine his reputation from there. Especially since Broderick's Gadget is at his least interesting when he's feeling a lack of self-confidence.
(The Michael Keaton Batman films also suffers greatly from tying the origin into the main plot. Although it's basically just not a good film.)
The best part of Inspector Gadget is lead actress Joely Fisher, who is surely the most attractive leading woman I've seen in a film recently. Whoa! (Subrata thought she was Carrie Fisher's daughter, though since Carrie was born in 1956 and Joely in 1968, it seems unlikely.)
You can safely give this one a miss, I think.
Gaming buddy Mark had showed up to join us for this one, and we drove over in his spiffy new sports car. Yes, it did make me think briefly of getting a convertible, but - naw. Not something I need, not practical for what I want in a car, and very expensive when I could be saving that money towards real estate.
The first film was Rebecca (1940), which is actually a romance, in which a young woman (who is never named) marries Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), a rich Englishman whose first wife died a year ago, and who seems haunted by her memory. The film mostly focuses on Mrs. de Winter adjusting from her apparently middle-class background to being the lady of an English mansion. Although the romance between the couple seems a little forced at times (it's not clear what sort of connection they have), the characters are generally quite vivid and well-realized.
The plot takes a big turn 2/3ds of the way through, as you might expect, and comes to a fairly satisfying conclusion. It's a bit more morbid than the typical romance, but it far lighter than the typical Hitchcock film. Worth a look.
The other film was Foreign Correspondent (also 1940), about an American reporter investigating spy activity in England just prior to World War II. It's not nearly as good, with fairly weak acting, an often-trite script, and a confusing plot. It does have a wonderful gag at the very end of the film, but overall I was not terribly impressed with this one. Pity.
Oh, and I was very pleased that the Stanford Theatre has Sno-Caps, a candy which is very nearly my favorite movie food. (They also have above-average popcorn.)
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