I really needed a laugh the other day, so I went to see The Men Who Stare at Goats. Seemed like a good choice, but it didn’t really work out. About a secret military unit with hippie underpinnings and a belief in the ability to use psychic power for military purposes–i.e., to avoid the need for guns–it just wasn’t that entertaining. I didn’t really laugh much, and I didn’t really get hooked into the story. And the continual references to “The Force” by characters who had played characters in Star Wars‘ films was dumb.
I’ve long thought that almost anything that Ricky Gervais says is funny. While still largely true, it wasn’t true for enough of the 100 minutes of his latest film The Invention of Lying. It is funny–loser Gervais lives in an alternate universe where no one lies, there isn’t even a word for it, until Gervais tells the first lie to good and bad results. But it wasn’t funny enough for me. So maybe I should have just watched Anchorman again.
I have the feeling that I’m expecting way too much out of movies right now, which is why they’ve largely left me cold as of late. To wit, I ended up watching the last James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace, twice. I thought I had missed the plot the first time since I was hooked up to a machine that didn’t really let me move, somewhat distracting, during my first viewing. Turns out, it’s just a movie where the plot is extremely secondary to the action scenes. I used to love Bond films, but this may be the end for me. It’s like reading a Dan Brown novel.
