Cool Cherry Cream

It's been awhile since I've done a real movie review, but I suppose it's been awhile since I've seen a real movie. No, no, I take that back. I've been seeing a lot of movies lately. I saw "Tropic Thunder" and "Billy Madison" and "Red Eye" not that long ago. "Tropic Thunder" was surprisingly good, the other two, not so much. "Billy Madison" had it moments, but "Happy Gilmore" is much better. "Red Eye" was sort of ridiculous, but at least it was short.

It's kind of disgusting how many times "Ghost" has been redone, especially lately. And how people are now accusing the movies that are redoing it as being ripoffs of the original ripoffs. This movie was alright as a comedy, but the story itself was silly.

I apologize that my feminism is showing, but I've just become so aware of how sexist things are. As soon as I saw the clumsy girl trying to get into the elevator while carrying this big obnoxious box, I knew she would of course be the love interest. We're all just stupid Susan Meyers, aren't we?

I hate how relationships develop in so many movies. It's always the same. The one that really bothered me was "Big", but I saw it in this movie and "Billy Madison" too. They make the male lead seem incredibly repulsive and unattractive, and yet, the girl always ends up falling for him. Which, well, does happen in real life. Okay, okay, I guess I'm overreacting. Most girls are stupid Susan Meyers who fall for the stupid guys. It's just unfortunate that movies always portray as so, when there are some women who aren't so stupid.

That aside, they do always attempt to make the male seem more desirable and humane. In "Billy Madison", the turning point was when he pretended to pee his pants so the other kid wouldn't look bad. And after that, she liked him, he was suddenly sweet and lovable. In "Big", I guess she fell for him because of his fun child-like nature, which was really more immature than anything else. And in this movie, it was because he showed an interest in what she was doing. While respectable, I don't think it made up for how much of a jerk he was previously. I understand the time restraints thing, but it's just so unrealistic. Well, unencouraging, at least.

And the fact that apparently these people working with mummies didn't know anything about dental stuff? Totally bogus.

And the fact that they used Papyrus for the banners at the big gala? Totally realistic, but totally disgusting. I seriously let out a groan and put my head in my hands at that part.

And what's with people who can hear ghosts not wanting to help them? If I could hear ghosts, I would totally help them. I'd be like, okay, everybody gets a day, and I'll do whatever you need me to do. Then you can leave me alone. I don't get why people don't agree to that sooner.

Overall, the movie wasn't that bad. It was just a regular, forgettable story. Some pretty funny stuff, but nothing that memorable.

At home I watched "Time at the Top", a 1999 movie I'd taped off the "bad movie" network. And yes, it was bad. I read the book sometime in grade school, and vaguely remembered some of it. It was about a girl who took the elevator in her apartment back in time to the 1800s and met some kids there. I don't know how much the movie followed the book, but it's been a long time since I read it. I'm fairly certain the book took place in the 60s and not the 90s, so I'm sure a lot of it was changed.

The characters were pretty ridiculous. There was a man who lived in the apartment, a writer, who didn't have much to do with the story, but I'm pretty sure he was the narrator of the book, which was I thought was rather unique at the time. There was also this big maintenance guy who was incredibly annoying but was named Bodoni which was rather amusing.

All in all, it was pretty ridiculous and bad and not in a good way. It wasn't laughably bad, it was just annoyingly and unrealistically bad. In the end, the 90s girl (Elisha Cutherbert, actually) and her widowed father go back to live in the 1880s with her two new friends and their widowed mother, and they're all a big happy family.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say about those movies. I decided to follow up their disappointingness with another episode of "North and South: Book III" to complete the lunacy. We saw good old Brett finally but no Billy and no fake Billy, which I suppose is a good thing. Ashton had a nice new dress. Bent got a haircut and looks much less crazy, but of course had to go and kidnap fake Charlie's kid for no good reason. Fake Charlie continues to be considerably wimpier than the real Charles was. New characters continue to be unnecessary and uninteresting. Madeline continues to be shown out-of-focus and continues to be her stupid self. George no longer has his grey hair and wrinkles. Funny how quickly those come and go.