Oh yes, I know I should be doing my civic duty and watching election coverage on one of 899 channels… I will wait until tomorrow to find out who the new owner of America country will be.  Instead, I caught another film that I missed out on last summer.  I believe that my introduction to the television series Get Smart
came in the 7th grade.  My cousin (whose last name is Maxwell) became a favorite target of our junior high phys ed instructor.  He was known as Maxwell “Get” Smart and I was known as “Get Dumb.”  It was about this time that reruns were playing on Nick at Nite (whatever happened to the “classic tv” that was promised on this channel and its sister channel TVLAND).

The movie, starring the always brilliant Steve Carell as wildly inept CONTROL agent 86 and Anne Hathaway as the capable agent 99 was very fun.  A total update of the series while retaining much of the original.  Clippings in the opening credits of past villains such as “The CLAW” (NOT CRAW… THE CLAW) and Mr. Big (who was not so big after all).  The series of doors that led to the telephone booth that dropped agents to headquarters.  Agent 13 (Bill Murray) hidden in the most ridiculous of places and Fang. Plus a brief cameo by an original series cast member.

I will not dwell too much on the plot because like the series it is just silly, mindless fun.  However as always Max and 99 are hot on the trail of KAOS’ own Ziegfried and (no… not Roy) Shtarker.  Some of the villains had an almost Bondian quality.  There was an 8 foot behemoth whom I almost expected to have a mouthful of steel teeth.  I could have sworn that it was Richard Kiel, the same actor who played Jaws (of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker) as well as Mr. Larson from Happy Gilmore, but alas it was not.  Shtarker also bore a similar appearance to Oddjob (from Goldfinger).

All I can say is that if you enjoyed the original or if you enjoy Steve Carell’s work, go out and rent Get Smart.  There are enough in-jokes from the series to keep the fans pleased and enough fun and excitement to keep the new entertained.

While my mom has had the kids this week, we managed to fit in 2 movies of opposite genres: the suspense / horror flick,  Prom Night (2008 remake of the 1980 film), vs. the silly comedy, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Adam Sandler’s new movie.  Suspense / Horror wins this time, hands down.

Prom Night  – an easy, old fashioned slasher movie.  I really liked that the villian and his motivations were unveiled in the first scenes of the movie.  I didn’t have to waste the rest of the movie worrying about what was trying to get the victims, why, and how many of them the victims needed to eliminate.  Predictable yet startling – don’t expect too much and you’ll have fun.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan – ok, I really wasn’t expecting much from this movie.  The previews had basically said it all.  A former Israeli terrorist fighter is looking for a fresh start and decides to become a hairdresser in the US.  The movie is what it is – a really dumb comedy.  As crude as Adam Sandler promises to be, you have to have a certain type of sense of humor to enjoy this movie.  I didn’t have a bad time at the movie, but many of the jokes got old before they were done using them and the humor became even raunchier than expected.  While Adam Sandler does have a few worthwhile movies to his credit (Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer are my favorites), this is not one of them.  Oh, well, it was bargain night at the movie theater, so $8 for two of us to see a movie, get 2 pops and some popcorn was well worth it!

There are two sports that I really cannot stand to watch. I realize that this may put me in the minority especially in this area where it seems that both sports seem to have legion of fans (particularly in my own family).

The first is NASCAR racing. How anyone can sit for 3-4 or sometimes 5 hours at a time watching cars go around and around a track is beyond me. My mother regales us with stories of her youth and spending weekends at the area race track watching local drivers compete. I can sit through maybe an hour of televised auto racing before I excuse myself and do something more constructive. I do enjoy cheering for my favorite drivers. These are not the more popular stars including Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jeff Gordon, etc. I chose to chose the most colorful name I can think of, usually one who is nowhere near competing. Names like Dick Trickle (Tricky Dicky or Trick Dickle as I used to call him), Hideo Fukuyama ( I wonder if he is related to Chicago Cubs acquisition Kosuke Fukudome sorry if I insulted the new Cubs outfielder), or my new favorite… AJ Allmendinger.

My second favorite sport to fall asleep to is professional golf. Honestly, whenever I hear that someone hit a birdie I say… what kind? At a recent extended family gathering where everyone was gathered around the television quietly waiting for Tiger Woods or some other player to take a shot, I shouted “THREE AND A HALF!!!!” They were not amused. When I want to watch golf on television I stick with the classics: Caddyshack and Happy Gilmore. And if I want to play a good round, I much prefer going eighteen holes at the area miniature golf course.

Sometimes I really think I would prefer watching paint dry or worse yet….. The multi-colored bar code test pattern on the television screen HAHAHA.

Last night’s movie was called Awake, and it starred Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen.  When I first saw Jessica Alba, I was not looking forward to seeing the movie, and I don’t know why.  It’s not like I’ve seen anything else with her in it, but for some reason, I was under the impression that I didn’t like her as an actress.  I think it might be an interview I saw with her on the Tyra Banks show – she came across as self-absorbed and dumb, and then the whole pregnant-out-of-wedlock thing doesn’t score her many points either…  Anyway, surprisingly, she was not the weak link in the movie.  It was the script.  The movie had tons of accuracy flaws, and I really don’t want to spoil it for you in case you’d like to waste your time on it, but let’s just say the movie was kind of pointless.  It’s about a young man who has a heart condition and must undergo a heart transplant.  When they put him under anesthesia, he does not fall asleep but instead overhears the doctors plotting his murder.  There actually is more to the plot, at least they pretend there is, and there are some so-called twists and turns that anyone with any movie watching experience can see coming from a mile away.  Aside from the unbelievability of the plot – and I’m not talking about staying awake during surgery; according to the movie’s tagline, it’s actually more common than you’d like to think – I’m talking about when this guy is getting his surgery, his “spirit” is walking around the hospital experiencing flashbacks.  It’s just dumb and ridiculous.  Anyway, aside from the unbelievability of the plot,  I have to share what the dumbest part about the whole movie is.  And I’m going to risk spoiling the movie for you, so if you might see this movie, stop reading now.  But I just have to say what the dumbest thing about the whole movie is:  there is no point to the main character’s overhearing his murder plot!  His mother, while waiting for his surgery to be completed, overhears everything anyway, the cops are called, yada, yada!  I still don’t consider watching this movie a waste of time – it’s really difficult for me to say that about a movie.  It was only 84 minutes long, and one of the rewards of watching the movie was seeing Christopher McDonald (aka Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore) as an alcoholic doctor who is too oblivious to stop the murder plot.  But I would much rather see him for the 100th time as Shooter any day – I would suggest you don’t waste your time with Awake, and go for something with more substance instead – like Happy Gilmore!  That sounds like a joke, but this movie was so bad, it’s really not that funny – Happy Gilmore is a much better movie in my opinion!

I was having a brain freeze today and could not come up with a suitable movie to review… until I read a blog form a friend.  Happy Gilmore is one of the funniest movies involving one of the most boring sports imaginable: GOLF…. UGH!!!!.  Adam Sandler is one of the funniest guys around.  I abhor watching golf…. it is so quiet that that you are just dying to yell out “FIRE” or some other attention grabber.  But this movie makes it hilarious.  My favorite part of the whole movie has got to be when Happy is in a celebrity pro/am tournament.  He was lucky enough to be paired with America’s favorite game show host: Bob Barker former star of The Price is Right.  Happy’s day on the course does not go well.  Bob makes the comment that Happy’s hockey playing could not be worse than his golf game.  Then, the hilarity begins.  Bob Barker gets into a knock-down, drag-out fight.  When it seems that Happy is victorious, he exclaims: “The price is WRONG, B*%#H.”  To which Bob goes into a fit of rage and gives his golf partner a good beating.  After finishing Happy off, Bob returns the favor by saying: “now, you’ve had enough… b*$@h.”  All those days Bob spent boxing in the service must have payed off because the fight actually resembled a choreographed boxing match.  It was one of the highlights of the movie to watch the normally composed game show host lose his cool.  Speaking of boxing matches, Happy’s golf mentor, Chubbs, was played by Carl Weathers who played Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies.