Movies and musings

After putting the children to bed last night to the usual routine: wailing from Cici, 'Mouck, more mouck!'; time wasting from Johnny; 'You read me a story, and Daddy can turn out the light', 'I need a poo right now!', 'Where's my teddy?' (this teddy is 3 inches tall with a rattle in it), 'No Daddy! Mummy has to shut the door!'; followed by bossing from Leonora: 'Now Johnny, it is time to go to bed. Mummy has said so!', I finally sat down to a hearty bowl of beef stew and some TV. My husband is doing some financial exams at the moment, so he is studying every night and I am left to my own devices regarding choice of TV channel. Bring on the chick flicks!

Sadly last night there was not much choice, so I decided to watch a pre-recorded movie called 'Kick Ass'. Given the highly intellectual title and the movie description, I knew that this would be hardly be Oscar winning stuff, but I assumed at least a funny lighthearted film. Wrong. Call me old fashioned and hyper-sensitive, but it was so shockingly unfunny that I kept watching just a little bit more. The spotty teenage can't-get-the-girl so I'm going to be a superhero is introduced w*nking in the bin whilst thinking about his ageing teacher's breasts. Nul points. Of course, he is a totally hopeless superhero that just gets beaten up, so a child superhero, trained by her mistreated crime-fighting father, saves the day: stabbing, chopping legs off and slitting throats. Just what you like to see 10 year old girls doing. Another Nul Points. This film was rated a 15. And I know it was a spoof, but it was simply not clever, nor that funny. I can't actually believe Nicolas Cage (father of the girl) agreed to doing it. It left me feeling sad that this is the type of film kids today will be watching. This is the type of film children will be influenced by. What happened to Ferris Bueller's Day Off? or Back to the Future?!

On a more positive note, I went to the cinema on Tuesday with my 2 best friends who happen also to be my sisters. After the usual argument about salty or sweet popcorn (definitely a mix, bit of salty, bit of sweet), and a lot of giggling about whether we would be kicked out of our seats that were not the ones we'd been allocated, we sat down to watch 'Midnight in Paris'. I loved it! Owen Wilson (scarily like my husband if his nose were straighter and he had a British accent) plays an engaged want-to-be writer who is on a trip in Paris with his materialistic fiancee and her parents. He adores Paris and all that it stands for and dreams of the heady days of the 1920s. She hates Paris and wants to live in Malibu. One night, after a boozy dinner, she decides to go dancing with some rather pompous friends and he walks back to the hotel. He loses his bearings, and, as the clock strikes midnight, he is picked up by an old 1920s car. This throws him into the world of Hemmingway and Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso and Salvadore Dali. I won't tell you all as I don't want to spoil it, but it was so refreshingly different. Funny, engaging, and cleverly put together. A cracking cast (Owen Wilson, Carla Bruni, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody and Rachel McAdams to name a few) and directed by Woody Allen, this is definitely worth a trip to the cinema. (However, do try and avoid the showing with subtitles - don't ask me how we managed that, but it was a little distracting!)

The irony is that 'Kick Ass' left me nostalgic for my teenage years, where 15 movies were a lot less shocking, whilst the lesson to be learnt from 'Midnight in Paris' was not to yearn for a former age, but to live the current age to the full. Amen to that (provided Nicholas Cage makes better movie choices going forward).

Mx