Treadmill movie reviews - Love Story, Teen Wolf, Napoleon Dynamite
As my regular readers know, I watch movies while I treamill. Here are my reviews of some of the movies I watched recently:
Love Story: Picked this up at the public library since I had not ever seen it. I enjoyed it, it really had the look and feel of the 70’s about it. Ali mcGraw as Jennifer Cavallieri is probably the best part of the movie - her brassy, obnoxious and frequently profane 70’s feminist shtick is fun to watch. Ryan O’Neal was fine - not great but fine. I enjoyed the way the story was underplayed - it had a much more realistic feel to it than most movie romances, and the whole tear-jerker thing was way less over-the-top than I expected. I give it 7 stars out of 10, getting a half-star bonus because virtually all of the outdoor scenes were actually filmed outdoors in natural light. (I hate movies that film most of their outdoor scenes indoors, it looks so FAKE!) (For a great example of a horrible looking scene of this type, see the iconic “Characters walking over a mountain pass” scene from The Fellowship of the Ring, supposedly taking place outdoors but transparently filmed in-studio.)
Teen Wolf: Wow, a flashback to the 80’s here! Dumb movie, badly done, with paper thin characters and creepy werewolf hair glued all over Michael J. Fox. Watched it because it was a day off and it happened to be on TV while I was treadmilling. Not recommended. 4 stars out of 10. Gets a full extra star for this fine quote, from TeenWolf’s basketball coach: “There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese.” Oh, btw, Fox was 24 when he played a high schooler in this movie, and one of his teamates (Chubby) was 27! at the time. For bonus points, see if you can tell me what part the actor who played Chubby played in one of my favorite baseball movies, A League of their Own.
Napoleon Dynamite: 9.5 stars out of ten. If you love movies, you owe it to yourself to run, not walk, to a video store and rent this classic. Long, awkward pauses, an amazing sense of place, characters you have never met before in a movie but may have met in real life, improbable happiness, Vote for Pedro, some of the most quotable lines in a movie in years, glamour shots, this movie has it all. Did I mention the best use of the word “Gosh!” ever? I am not joking when I say this movie should have at least been nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. No matter how many movies you have seen, trust me, you have not seen a movie quite like this.
