Meo: Perkins, I saw “Transformers” this weekend. Two observations: (1) Critics are pretentious morons. (2) Life would be way more fun if Michael Bay were its director.
Perkins: You got me on this one. My expertise surrounding Transformers and action movies and their directors is non-existent. I pay attention to reviews for the sake of comparison, but I won’t base my ticket purchases on Ebert or that E! favorite Ben Lyons. If life were a Michael Bay action production, I wouldn’t make it past the first hour. I loathe loud, obnoxious, big-budget, small-dialogue action movies.
Meo: “Transformers” was more than 21⁄2 hours. Fully two hours of it was an action-filled blur, and absolute assault on the senses. For about five hours afterward, everything around me crawled at this boring, excruciating pace. I wanted something to explode or turn into a giant robot and start fighting another giant robot. I would have settled for a meteor crashing onto Route 2. C’mon, the De Niro/Pachino diner in scene in “Heat” was cinematic history or whatever, but it’s got nothing on Optimus Prime fighting three Decepticons at the same time. He totally shredded one of their faces.
Perkins: I vote for cinematic history. Reality check: meteors coming out of the sky and giant robots plucking the casino towers off the ground would not be as amusing for us as it was for Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf. Clearly, choreography is key in those kinds of action takes. And there is something so wrong about this million-dollar remake being box office bank during this recession.
Meo: All right, imagine this: You go out to get the Diversity Committee’s lunch. But gasp! Metal slag is raining down all around you, in slow motion! You race to your car, dodging the screaming molten balls of death ... In slow motion!! You dive through the window, smashing the glass, jam the key into the ignition and peel out toward Stop & Shop. That ice cream cake only has minutes left! Burning rubber, screaming pedestrians, rampaging dinosaurs!! You get to the grocery, but it’s on fire AND the Japanese are bombing it. Not even Ben Affleck can stop them. You are lunchtime’s last hope!!! Are you with me so far? Have you noticed the growing number of exclamation points??
Perkins: Me and the ice cream cake would never make it. Is this some kind of weird dream sequence you had the other night after you saw “Transformers”? Sounds like the makings of a crappy summer action movie.
Meo: Crappy? I’m not nearly finished!!!! You come screeching into the Bulletin parking lot, but your driver’s side tires blow out and you’re rolling, rolling ... You come to a squealing, spinning halt in the lot and emerge with the cake ... and the wraps. You’re sprinting toward the door but you’ll never have time to cross the street, punch in your code AND outrun the magma monsters. So you hurl your last handful of pens at the number pad, plinking each digit in rapid succession ... The door swings open, you dive through, cake in one hand, tasty and nutritious wraps in the other. The door swings shut just as the magma giants and their trailing firestorm crash against the building. You, and more importantly, lunch, are safe.
Perkins: Well, really, let’s face it, as long as lunch is intact, that’s all that matters. Life moves fast enough for me without having to dodge fireballs or magma monsters. Though this scenario sounds like a video game or the classic summertime action flick. All that is missing is a hero (preferably a Paul Walker-esque stud), a soundtrack and a time limit.
Meo: I’ll leave the studs to the casting people. I think the big thoughts. But, of course, lunch arrives safely, that’s critical, but it’s the journey that’s important. Now, say you went out to get the wraps and cake but met only with tragedy. You see an injured puppy, but can’t help it and you weep for your lost innocence. A homeless person begs for change, but you can spare nothing, because you’re barely scraping by and your dreams of being the first bilingual, bi-racial nonpartisan, anti-apartheid astronaut are slipping away, because you have fatherless triplets at home. Ugh. Total downer. That’s barely worth an hour and 20. Who could stand more? And you know the final scene of that depressing mess is the cake melting in the rain at a funeral. I’m annoyed just thinking about it.
Perkins: Homeless astronaut puppies with pipe dreams could sell movies, if babies in sunglasses and singing guinea pigs can, anything is possible. I don’t like movies that don’t have plots. The best thing about those kinds of movies are the trailers.
Emily Perkins is news assistant at the Norwich Bulletin. She was just along for the ride this week. John Meo is design editor at the Norwich Bulletin.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment