It’s November, NaNoWriMo has begun, and when it came time to pick a movie for date night I said, “Let’s go have a long fancy dinner somewhere.” I couldn’t find anything I wanted to see that we hadn’t seen already. The movie probably start flying into the theaters fast and furious in a week or two, but for now there are very slim pickens.
Darin said, “I’d kinda like to see The Weather Man. It’s gotten good reviews.” So we went to see that.
Note to self: next time Darin talks about reviews, read them first.
The Weather Man is the story of a TV weatherman in Chicago (no, not a terrorist — that Weatherman movie might have been interesting), Dave Spritz (Nicolas Cage), whose life is falling apart. He’s divorced, and he doesn’t really know his kids: his overweight daughter who’s miserable in ballet class and smokes, and his teenaged son who’s attracted the unseemly attentions of his drug counselor. His father (Michael Caine) is a Pulitzer-prize winning author who makes Dave uncomfortable, because he feels like nothing he does is good enough. Everything makes Dave miserable: being recognized for being a TV weatherman, his relationship with his ex-wife, whether or not pursuing a job on a national morning show is a good idea. Dave’s emotional range goes from “blank affect” to “emotional constipation,” and the only time we seem him animated and happy is when he’s doing the weather map dance in front of a green screen.
The best scene is definitely the final one, and I’m not completely sure that’s not because it was the final damn scene of the movie.
Slowest. Movie. Ever. It’s cram-packed with actory goodness… Long stretches where the actors talk. Long scenes of people walking across snow. Nicolas Cage as his most nasal. I don’t want every movie to be full of slick dialogue or slam-cuts or problems neatly wrapped up in a bow after ninety minutes. But I’d like, I don’t know, something like an interesting character. Every single person had the same energy, the same languid affect. It felt like the director said, “Okay, take your time, take as long as you need to do this scene.”
The movie’s interminable. I went to the bathroom three times and I’m quite sure I didn’t miss anything.
Darin, for his part, liked the movie. I need to ask him why. No matter what his answer is, though, he never gets to pick a movie again. EVER.
Worst.Movie.Ever. Ididn’t like anyone.
We had a wedding to go to this weekend. Service at 2. Reception at 6. So, it was the only movie that vaguguely fit in our 3-hours-with-nothing-to-do time frame. I was so happy to leave that sucky movie early, but now I find out there might possibly have been something remotely entertaining in the darkest movie ever seen? Would you please dish on the final scene, in e-mail if you have to?I had difficulty in getting past what the mother of the girl who played the daughter was possibly thinking allowing her to play that part, knowing she is likely to be called Camel toe the rest of her childhood, although her telling her dad what she thought that word meant made me cry…
Here’s the final scene. You have been warned…
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Dave makes it into the Macy’s New Year’s Parade, only instead of being with his family he’s with the co-anchors of Hello, America. He knows people think his life is great, but his family’s with another man — how great can his life be? He’s behind the 87th Fire Brigade but he’s ahead of Spongebob Squarepants…and that’s pretty much where he belongs.
It’s kind of funny — but so not worth the journey getting there.