Epic Waste of Time

Meaghs and I rented Epic Movie last night.  I generally enjoy spoof movies like Scary Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, as well as the less popular Hot Shots movies.  These types of movies aren’t for everyone, but I think you’d be hard-pushed to find anyone who would laugh at Epic Movie.  From start to finish it was a colossal waste of time, the only redeeming feature being that it eventually ended.  Some movies are stupid and funny, other movies are funny because they’re stupid.  Even further out there movies can be funny because they’re soooo bad.  Epic Movie was just bad.  I felt like I was watching a presentation being given by someone who really doesn’t want to be on stage but is sticking to their lines and act in an attempt to be cool anyway.  The type of performance where you just feel sorry for the people up there because you know at some point they’re going to watch themselves and wonder where it all went wrong.

To stick to the all-important policy of attempting to provide solutions whenever identifying problems, I have come up with a list of things that you could do instead of watching Epic Movie that would be a lot more fun.

Number 1: You could buy a brick from a hardware store and bang yourself in the head with it.  Better still, you could find a pre-assembled collection of bricks and just bang your head against that instead.  A typical usage is to repeat until vision is blurry and ringing in ears modulates to high C, then collapse in an awkward position on the floor until consciousness returns.

Number 2: You could schedule two hours of your night to not-watch Epic Movie.  For this you will need: a two-hour window with no interruptions, a TV that isn’t turned on.  Grab some popcorn, turn out the lights, close the door, and turn off the TV.  Then stare at the blank screen for the next couple of hours and come away having not watched Epic Movie.  Success!

Number 3: For the techies out there, you could visit the Top 10 Free Time-Wasting Sites on the Net.  Although this option might actually present some entertainment so you are advised to embark only at your own risk.  We don’t want to climb too high too quickly after all.

That was about as far as I got in my list before I realized that the movie was claiming more hours of my life while I write gripe about it.  Meaghs and I still had a good night, although we were a little miffed that neither of us had spoken up in the first half an hour or so to ask the other if we could just turn it off.  I was mostly falling asleep anyway and only vaguely recollect watching the last thirty minutes, and it was nice just cuddling with Meaghan, but next time we really ought to just turn off the show and claim back the last 90 minutes of our evening! :)

Jet Li – Fearless

I saw the movie Fearless with Jet Li last week.  It’s apparently his last epic feature, which I can only imagine means something similar to Cher’s first last tour.  The story is adapted from the life of Huo Yuan Jia, a famous fighter from Chinese history, and feels a lot like it was pulled from the Once upon a time in China series.  This is no bad thing as those were fantastic movies and something about that period of China’s history (late 1800’s, early 1900’s) is very compelling to learn about.  The action is easily on par with both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero, never ceasing to top the last double-spinning ultimate death kick of the eagle with an even more awe-inspiring superior shadowless dragon punch of the much kicking your ass.  For those who dislike subtitled movies, you’re going to be disappointed because they did the right thing and kept the original Chinese soundtrack instead of dubbing.  I much prefer to read subtitles and hear the original cast deliver their dialog in their native tongue versus having a cartoon replacement voice comfortlessly destroy a scene.  If you enjoy action movies with much butt-kicking for goodness, plenty of kung-fu posturing, and a ton of style then I highly recommend shelling out the eight bucks for a pew and watching Jet Li in his first last epic.