Doug’s Sounding Board

Neither romantic nor a comedy, but my third movie of the weekend. I’m not really sure why the critics are trashing this movie, it’s actuaqlly pretty good. Maybe they, are action movied out this summer like the rest of the audience that isn’t paying to see it, or maybe it’s because it went more for the action route rather than spending more time discussing what it brings up. I personally thought it did both fairly well.

Anyway, spoilers and stuff ahead so stop reading if you’re the kind of person who gets spoiled.

There was a pretty good version of the future presented, not good as in idyllic, but good as in believable. That goes for both the sanctuary and the outer world. The outer world had some fantastic looking future transportation and some of the best car destruction I’ve seen on the screen in a long time and this movie also has the most obvious product placement that I’ve seen in a long time. Why would clones care about all these brands? They’ll never have to buy anything and would probably end up asking for Aquafine instead of water. The sanctuary was more like the older 70s version of the future, right down to the costumes and set design.

I found the religious aspect of the movie pretty interesting as well. You have a doctor playing god who creates (grows) all these people. Then some start getting wise and escape or are made to leave the garden of eden (their sanctuary). Finally man returns and kills their god.

Check this out, but be warned it’s about two and a quarter hours.

Continuing with the romantic comedy track we saw “Must Love Dogs” yesterday. I mostly wanted to see it because I like watching John Cusack and Elizabeth Perkins. A lot of movies based on books have an empty feel to them that you can sense even without knowing that it’s an adaptation. This movie manages to avoid that for the most part so I was surprised at the end to find that it is based on a Novel.

The odd family characters are fun and not over the top as in something like Eulogy, just kind of your normal large family crazy. There are references to age throughout which makes me think that age plays a more important role in the book. Definitely not as funny as Hitch but a more even level of good witty dialog throughout. It’s light and fun, check it out.