I never realized the humour of that juxtaposition until now, but as strange as it sounds, these are the two movies I saw last Friday.
I found I was in the mood to go see a movie, which is not a very common occurrence for me. A long while ago, I saw a commercial for "Vantage Point" and thought it looked interesting, but I'm guessing it's probably out of theatres by now. Fortunately, I also saw a commercial more recently for another potentially likable movie: "Horton Hears A Who". I think the commercial actually made me smile.
And as much as an emo who and a MySpace who will looked incredibly dated a few years from now (…hopefully…), it was still funny. So, hey, what the hell, why not give it a try?
As with many movies, the funniest parts were in the commercial. Other than that… not much to see.
If you don't know the story, basically, there's an elephant named Horton who hears a person who supposedly lives on a speck on a flower, but no one believes him because no one else can hear it (since he's an elephant and he has big ears, y'know). In the end, Horton calls upon the miniature town of Whoville to make as much noise as they can, and [spoiler alert!] they do and they are saved from the other evil animals in Horton's world who want to get rid of the flower.
A short while into the movie, we are introduced to the antagonist, a bitchy purple kangaroo who is convinced that Horton is crazy and is committed to making his life miserable until he finally gets rid of that darn speck. Well, Miss Kangaroo argues with Horton and gives him a lecture about if you can't see something, hear something, or feel something, it doesn't exist.
Gasp! "This isn't religious propaganda… is it?" I ask my mom, who has been aware of my problem with this kind of film ever since we saw "Miracle on 34th Street" (which I now find I wrote about when I was secretly blogging elsewhere, so I can't link you to my post explaining this phenomenon).
What is with children's movies having an agenda?! Dis-gustin'!
But I know I've probably complained enough about that subject, so we'll move on to the lighthearted "Massacre at Central High".
Great setup. In one of the first scenes, we see a student drawing a swastika on a locker. The tough guy jocks approach him and try to intimidate him and get him to leave. "What do you want?" asks swastika boy. The head tough guy pushes him up against a locker and says menacingly, "we want clean lockers!".
Boy oh boy! I'd love to hear that line from one of the gangster kids at my school. Or heck, even anybody from my school… you mean, there are kids who actually care about the well-being and cleanliness of their learning environment?!
But after that, it got pretty lame. The new kid in town, David, used to be friends with Mark, one of the tough guys, so Mark can therefore get him into the group and he won't be hassled by them. But no, David's a good kid, and he just can't do that. So instead, he murders the tough guy group one by one. He sabotages the one guy's hang-gliding equipment, so he crashes into some power lines and dies. The next guy is a swimmer who has come to the school pool at night. The lights are off, but just as after he's dives in, the lights turn on to reveal… there's no water in the pool! And splat, he's dead, just like that.
There was one scene where Mark's girlfriend admits to Mark that she and David were skinny-dipping together which is kind of funny because she puts it so plainly and it sounds unlike anything a real girl would say. And not only that, Mark doesn't even seem to care. Kinda amusing, but you'd have to be there.
In the end, David wants to blow up the school, because once he got rid of the tough guys, some other kids thought "hey, now we can push people around!", but Mark and his girlfriend stop him, and he ends up blowing himself up instead.
Interesting thing though — David looked so familiar. Wait… is that…? Mario from "Joanie Loves Chachi"! Yes, yes it is! How amusing.
And that's all I have to say about that.