123 - The Happy House

    A young couple goes away for the weekend to a bed & breakfast in the middle of nowhere.  The owner is a peculiar woman.
    Oy, this movie is a mess.  I’m not saying it’s bad, because I can imagine this playing really well.  But it’s almost as if the story and script are being played in the wrong medium.
    There are loads of problems.  The cast is mostly unremarkable.  No one does a notable job with their material.  The pacing is terrible.  The script is making an effort to be a bit campy and tongue-in-cheek.  But it never works.  The biggest problem is the ending.  There’s a lack of one.  It doesn’t feel cathartic, which I suppose is intentional.  It’s an effort to subvert the normal tropes of a horror movie, but instead, it just feels like there was no reason to watch it.
    However… I could imagine this working as a stage play.  With a strong cast, and some extra polish on the script, it could be a whole lot of fun in that context.
    I can’t say that I would ever bother to watch this again, or even suggest it to anyone to watch, but it’s an interesting curiosity.

120 - Welcome to Me

    A woman with some personality disorder issues wins the lottery, and uses those winnings to produce a live talk show starring herself.
    I heard a review of this movie on the Movie Date podcast, and it was mildly interesting.  Netflix picked the movie up, and I decided to give it a try.
    It’s great.  It’s strange, and it’s not entirely predictable.  But it’s sort of beautiful.  The main character describes herself as being diagnosed as borderline personality disorder.  After reading about that, I don’t think she quite fits into that.  She has a variety of compulsive traits, but she doesn’t seem especially angry, except about things that seem reasonable to be angry about.  She’s impulsive in her relationships.
    What is much more compelling is the strange way that she manages to have short episodes of her life re-enacted on her show.  As hokey as the acting is, her reaction to these events shows a level of emotion that is hard to ignore.  It gets easier and easier to feel like she’s a really good person, she just doesn’t have it all together.
    There are comedic elements, but I don’t think I ever felt like it was intended to be a straight comedy.
     (According to some discussion on IMDB, this is actually a pretty good portrayal of borderline personality disorder.)

117 - Mr. Mom

    After being laid off, a man stays at home while his wife gets a high-paying, demanding job, and he struggles to take care of their kids.
    This was released in 1983, too early for me to remember it if I saw it back then.  But I always remember the poster for it, since it was a pretty big hit, and it stayed at the video store for a long time.  I never wanted to see it.  It seemed like a comedy focusing on “look at this guy struggling to be a homemaker!”  It didn’t seem like that clever a premise.
    So now that I’ve seen it, I have no idea why it was a hit.  There are a few amusing bits, but most of it is pretty bland and predictable.  Michael Keaton doesn’t get much of an opportunity to shine.  The story is a little unbalanced.  It starts off like it will have a stronger focus on the wife’s time at work, then it abandons that for watching Keaton doing a bunch of chores.
    It was written by John Hughes, and his sense of humor shines through.  In particular, the sequence at the supermarket.  There was an unusual scene, which I liked for the creative elements.  The movie seamlessly moves into a fantasy sequence.  It reminded me of The Seven Year Itch.
    There was one joke I actually laughed at.  Keaton is on the phone talking about a soap opera to someone else, and there’s a line about “he had a vasectomy, but it didn’t take.”
    The real weakness of the movie is that it feels very dated, even for the 80s.  If this were a movie from the 50s or 60s, it would probably be pretty brilliantly handled.  It seems antiquated for the 80s.  The fun of flipping gender roles doesn’t seem all that remarkable for that time period.

116 - Ant-Man

    Recently-released convict Scott Lang is recruited by Dr. Henry Pym to help prevent the release of the doctor’s technology, a suit that allows the user to shrink down.
    Like most people, I’ve been a bit skeptical of the viability of Ant-Man as a hero capable of carrying a movie.  After seeing how well Marvel handled Guardians, I think I relaxed a bit.  If anything, I think I like the idea more than seeing another well-known property get a big-budget treatment.
    There’s something nice about this movie, and it’s that I didn’t feel like it needs a sequel.  I’d rather that it didn’t.  It’s fun, it adds more to the Marvel Cinematic mythos, and it’s an enjoyable movie.  It doesn’t have anything special to say, but it did tell an enjoyable story well.
    There is a strange aspect, something that will slip past most viewers, but it might be clear to anyone who has heard of the troubled history this movie had.  There’s a strange imbalance to the movie.  You can tell which aspects were added in at Marvel’s request.  You can tell what elements are Edgar Wrights’.  These tonal shifts are strange, but they actually help keep the movie interesting.  Instead of simply hitting all the beats you expect, it hits those beats in an accent pattern you didn’t expect.
    Despite being a mostly self-contained plot, I found the ties into the larger universe simultaneously a little awkward, but also very rewarding.  The Avengers mansion gets to be used, which makes the ending of Age of Ultron feel more meaningful.  It’s nice to see the Falcon get a little more attention.  Even the wedged-in reference to Spider-Man was pleasing.
    It’s good.  It hit the right spot, it was new enough, but it also did everything I expected it to do well enough.  Personally, I probably liked it a bit better than Guardians.  Probably better than Iron Man 3 and Thor 2.  Given the character, this is a really impressive job.
    On an unrelated note, there was the trailer for Fantastic Four.  It’s hard to express how little enthusiasm I have for that project.

110 - Bulworth

    A senator up for re-election suffers a peculiar breakdown, leading to him hiring a hitman to kill him, along with speaking his mind in public.
    I saw this back about ten years ago.  I liked it then, although not as much as some other political comedies of the period.  Now, this one doesn’t hold up nearly as well.
    The novelty of the story comes from seeing Warren Beatty playing an awkward white senator, deciding to rap things, as well as speak his mind in a blunt way about political issues.  There’s a humor to that.  But the movie has a serious problem with indulging in stereotypes.  Just about every black person in the movie is a stereotype.  There are a few rare moments where they break those molds, but they usually reinforce them.
    There is a strong core to the message, mostly about the negative role that money plays in politics.  This is fine, but it gets muddied by the focus on his behavior.
    This belongs in a family of other political movies - Bob Roberts, Wag the Dog, Primary Colors, all of which use some pretty bleak messages to make a point.  I’ve grown out of these movies, in a strange way.  I still enjoy them, but I don’t think they’re achieving much.  They draw attention to problems, but they don’t actually offer any solutions.  If anything, they reinforce how hopeless real political change is.

98 - The 'Burbs

    In a suburban neighborhood, a creepy family moves in, leading to other neighbors getting suspicious.
    Yes, this is the first time I’ve seen it.  I just don’t care for Tom Hanks, so it’s hard for me to take his presence as a selling point.  But I hadn’t noticed that this was directed by Joe Dante, and that really made it worthwhile.
    I think what makes this movie important is that there’s nothing quite like it.  There are a few movies that seem spiritually similar - like Rear Window.  But there’s a beauty to all of the action taking place in one neighborhood.  It creates a nice, tidy world, and there’s no larger perspective.  The ethical questions of spying on your neighbors aren’t addressed until very late in the movie, and even then, it seems more like a wink at the audience, acknowledging that they thought about that.  Dante knows how to strike a wonderful, unique balance between comedic tones and mild horror.
    What also makes this movie interesting is how nicely the script works.  We learn only as much as the main characters, leaving the mystery family just as mysterious as possible.  Our impression of them varies as we learn more and reasons are established for their behavior.
    It’s a much more likable movie than I expected, even though Tom Hanks seems pretty disposable in his role.

94 - Sex Ed

    A young teacher gets a job handling a detention class, and uses the opportunity to teach them sex ed.
    I don’t know what I expected when I got into this one.  It’s a real pain for me to try to evaluate it, since the general message of the movie is one I’m passionate about.  I’m very much in favor of sex ed.  I have a lot of contempt for groups that try to stifle sexual information, or those that try to turn it into a religious education process.  The problem is that this movie just isn’t that good.  It’s not terrible, but there are so many problems with it that it’s hard to ignore them to get to the positive core.
    First, the movie stars Haley Joel Osment.  He does fine with the material he has, but he projects a decent, but entirely milquetoast personality.  It doesn’t help that the story has him taking constant missteps for most of the movie, and being completely delusional about them.
    There’s a supporting cast of wacky characters.  Most of these scenes are written to have casual talk between them with comic material.  This sort of thing reminds me of Clerks, where there’s no real content, but it’s about entertaining the audience with something vaguely crude.
    Man, I sound like some sort of codger.
    I didn’t find this offensive or distasteful.  It just seemed like it would have helped if these bits contributed to the plot in some way.  When they exist to give a colorful supporting character some comic moments, even that’s acceptable.  But it happens with all of the supporting cast.  It feels like more than half of the movie is taken up with conversations that don’t move the plot forward, and just seem like a spotlight for “look at these wacky characters!”

85 - Soapdish

    The cast of a soap opera is thrown into a soap opera of their own as an effort is underway to eliminate a main character.
    I used to see the box for this at the video store, and it never called to me.  But it seemed so ridiculous looking that I’ve always had this mild curiosity about it.  It has a terrible title.  I don’t know what a better title would be, but this seems like one of the least interesting choices.
    This is… a work of genius.  But it is seriously flawed.  It’s a fantastic idea.  The story comes together really well.  The cast is exceptional.  But there’s something wrong.  I can’t tell what it is.  It’s almost like the direction was aiming to straddle a line between straight drama and straight comedy.  I can’t point to anything specific.
    What’s remarkable about this story is how gradually it weaves everything together.  You don’t see the big twist coming until it lands, and then you realize that the players are living in their own unintentional soap opera.
    It’s a hard movie to recommend, because it requires a particular sense of humor.  A lot of the jokes are just going to slip past most viewers.  But once you get it, there’s a very classic-comedy feeling it creates.

83 - Kingsman: The Secret Service

    A clandestine British spy organization recruits the son of a deceased agent.  The agency deals with a villain intent on destroying mankind.
    I had heard some conflicted thoughts about this, but it sounded like it was fun.  The trailer was a little hit-and-miss.  I’m glad that I watched it though.  This is some really serious fun.
    First, the story simultaneously embraces and avoids cliche story beats.  We know that the main character is going to get into the service.  But it doesn’t come together the way you expect it to, and the movie does a great job of adjusting expectations as things develop.
    Second, there’s a very tricky thing to explain about the balance that the movie has.  It has a campy, almost Spy Kids-like atmosphere to things, which is occasionally obliterated by some very extreme violence.  That violence treads a line between laughable and shocking.  And it switches back and forth.  This can be confusing to some people, making people feel uncomfortable about how the movie makes them feel.  This is a signature of Mark Millar’s work.  Some people love it, some people hate it.  Personally, I lean toward liking it, but I always feel like Millar tends to shy away from making  concrete decisions about morality or messages.
    About halfway through the movie, I was sold on it.  I’m adding it to my wish list.  I looked up to see if a sequel is being made.
    The one choice that I didn’t care for was the lisp that Samuel L. Jackson used.  I understand why it was used, but somehow it just didn’t work for me.

81 - Ghoulies Go to College (Ghoulies III)

    Two frats are in a prank war, and a professor winds up summoning a trio of strange demons that are under his control.
    I haven’t seen any of the other Ghoulies movies.  I’ve seen the covers for the first two, but I just never cared to see them.  I don’t think I’m missing anything I need to see to appreciate this.
    The first thing I noticed is that it’s weird.  The tone is mostly cartoonish, with only the slightest amount of horror mixed in.  There’s a sitcom-like feel to a lot of the jokes - particularly the stuff with the campus security guard.  The music is cheap and dated.  I think there was an effort to sound like Danny Elfman, but instead, it sounds more like a cartoon.
    The plot is the biggest problem.  Kevin McCarthy is a real pleasure to watch, but I always felt kind of confused about his motivation.  The fight between the frats isn’t that interesting.  The ghoulies are dumb.  It’s a collection of dumb punchlines, and crass behavior.  Where Gremlins did a good job of making their evil creatures compelling and dangerous, in this… they’re annoying and not especially dangerous.  This is made more obvious by the few deaths they’re involved in.  None of them have any blood.  They involve cartoonish - literally cartoonish - methods of death.  Pulling a tongue out like a rubber band.
    The one area that I didn’t feel like I understood was the role that the toilet plays in this mythos.  Do these creatures come from the sewer?  Or are they supposed to be somehow summoned from hell?  The inclusion of the toilet as a source of horror seems especially childish.  I don’t mind this, but I wonder if that’s the target audience.  Maybe this is supposed to be like a beginner horror movie.
     I wonder if this started out as a straight college comedy, and the ghoulies were inserted later.

78 - Teen Spirit

    After a popular girl is electrocuted at prom, she’s left in purgatory, where, as a ghost, she has to help the least popular girl in school become prom queen at the makeup prom.
    I can’t explain why I put this in my queue.  It’s an ABC Family movie, so it’s especially clean, it’s aimed at pre-teen girls, and the odds of it having any redeeming characteristics are pretty slim.
    Somehow, this movie pulled off being non-offensive.  There wasn’t anything painfully dumb, and it managed to use an ending that I didn’t see coming.  Even more remarkable was that I thought the script was unaware of what it was doing until it corrected things close to the end.  The good girl takes too much influence from the popular girl, and she starts being a jerk.  I thought that the script was more accepting of this, and was treating it just as harmless fun, and it was nice to see it addressed by the ending.
    I’d like to talk a little about the music in these movies.  Not this one in particular, but also things like Camp Rock.  Stuff that’s supposed to appeal to pre-teen girls.  There’s a rock edge to these songs, but the singing is annoying.  It’s a style, but it’s a very strange one, since it doesn’t seem to be represented in popular music.  The music seems to function as a gateway between typical Disney fare and pop charts music.

77 - A Fantastic Fear of Everything

    A writer develops agoraphobia and some paranoid behavior while researching a project.  He has to fight his fears in order to meet a prospective buyer.
    It’s so sad, the idea of this movie seemed like it could be really interesting.  I like Simon Pegg, even when he isn’t doing his own script.  But this wasn’t the right movie.  It has three distinct acts, but they feel like they’re different movies.  The first act is dedicated to setting up the main character and his problems.  There’s a bit of wackiness that sets up a development in the second act.
    But this is where the movie drags the most.  I realized that it was spending way too much time establishing his paranoid behavior.  I realized that I thought of What About Bob?, in which Bob’s character is established within probably a half a minute.  The rest of his behavior in the movie is a logical extension of this idea.  Here, the main character’s behavior is established over a much longer time, but it also just evaporates when it needs to.
    The comedy is weird.  When I think about the way this was written, there are strong odds that it was a really funny read.  But when I see it, something went wrong.  The direction doesn’t play up the comedic angle.
    The direction is pretty solid, but it seems like it was an effort to make a different movie than it wound up being.

75 - Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

    Martian children are fascinated with Santa Claus.  Martians come to Earth and kidnap Santa and two children, hoping to change martian society.
    One of these weird movies that I’ve had on my queue for more than a year.  It’s a strange movie, and not just because of the weird plot.  The acting is strange.  The script is really weird.  There are a lot of comic moments, but it never feels clear if they intend them to be legitimately funny, or if they’re supposed to be unfunny.
    The most interesting thing about this is that it comes across like a “let’s put on a show” kind of production.  Cheap costumes, ridiculous dialogue, weird, poorly decorated sets.  There’s something charming about it, as if a bunch of people got together to put this movie together, and weren’t looking to be successful, just to have a good time.

71 - Leap of Faith

    A faith healer and his road show are stranded in a small rural town, along with a sheriff that doesn’t appreciate their efforts to fundraise off the community.
    I’ve seen this a few times, and I’ve always enjoyed it.  But there’s something missing.  I forget about the movie pretty quickly, and I have a hard time remembering many of the plot points.  I enjoy Steve Martin’s performance.  I noticed a number of notable people in the cast.  Everyone does a good job, and the structure is actually pretty good.
    I think where the movie fails is that the message seems a little unclear.  Martin doesn’t have a strong arc, and it’s hard to feel like learns anything.  The event that really twists things around is when a miracle occurs that Martin knows he didn’t perform.  This is the catalyst that would have made for a much more effective story.  Instead, it’s the event that ends things.
    Another problem is that Martin isn’t exactly villainous enough.  He’s a sleazy guy, but he makes a reasonable justification for his actions.  He’s an entertainer.  The fact that people seem to regard “faith healers” as something other than entertainment is a problem, but I wouldn’t expect the argument for restriction of religious freedom to have much weight.
    As it is, the movie seems more like a backstory to a more interesting story that takes place afterward.

70 - The Blues Brothers

    Jake and Elwood get their band back together, hoping to raise enough money to keep an orphanage open.  They run afoul of the police, Nazis, and a disgruntled ex.
    I saw this for the first time during high school.  It was amusing, but it didn’t feel right.  There were some good jokes, but there was also a lot of time spent that just seemed to pad things out.  I’ve known a few people that really love this movie, so I decided I should give it another try.
    I had a greater appreciation for it, but it still isn’t right.
    What it reminded me of was It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but without the fantastic performances to hold it together.  There’s a similar level of madcap destruction, but something about the direction slows the pace down, making most of the jokes fall flat.  There are still some great lines sprinkled throughout, and plenty of good ideas.  But the one gag that felt timed just right was really close to the end, when their car falls apart.
    A skilled editor could probably trim this movie down and turn it into a really solid comedy, but as it is, it doesn’t feel like a comedy to me.  Even the stuff I should be loving, like the cars piling up and crashing into one another, leaves me wondering if it was intended to be funny.
    I appreciated the music more than I did before.  But the performances seem a little too polished.  The mix is very clear, and the bass playing really felt like it cut right through.  I did find myself enjoying Aretha Franklin’s performance much more than I expected.  Stevie Wonder does well.  I didn’t care for James Brown.
    I wonder if this is just a time period thing, or if I’m actually right about this.

69 - High School U.S.A.

    A unpopular student gets interested in a girl who is dating the most popular guy in school, leading to a car race between the two of them.
    This movie is notable for one reason - at least to me.  It stars Michael J. Fox and Nancy McKeon.  Those were also the leads in my favorite camp movie, Poison Ivy.  Some kind person has uploaded the whole movie on youtube.
    Aside from the two leads, there are plenty of familiar faces in the movie, in particular, Anthony Edwards, who starred in Revenge of the Nerds as Gilbert, as well as a young Crispin Glover.  Glover delivers a remarkably strange performance.  It’s hard to explain it, but even the least interesting lines come out in the least expected way.
    The main story isn’t that interesting.  The fun of it is in the weird subplots - like a robot that the local genius (interestingly, played by a black guy) has built.  There is a pair of girls looking to take a picture of the popular guy’s butt.
    The best thing about this movie is how ridiculously far the dialogue goes.  While Anthony Edwards starts off cocky and unlikable, he gets worse and worse as the movie progresses.  His last couple stretches of dialogue are really out there.
    There’s something I like about this movie, but it’s hard for me to put my finger on it.  I wouldn’t be interested in owning this one, but I might like it as a double-disc with Poison Ivy.  Of course, that would require Poison Ivy getting a release outside of VHS.

66 - Frozen

    New queen Elsa has Iceman-like powers.  She’s ashamed of them, and after losing control, sends the kingdom into a surprise winter.  She flees.  Her sister travels to find her and try to bring the kingdom back to the right season.
    Man, I hate Disney movies.  That isn’t entirely accurate.  What I don’t like is the level of polish that accompanies computer-animated features from Disney and Pixar.  Pixar manages to retain a certain level of character, but Disney tends to suck the character out of most of the proceedings.  While I understood the character arcs in this movie, the two main characters - Anna and Elsa - don’t have any unique performance elements.  There are plenty of calculated humor beats.
    The strangest thing about this movie is how it was received.  Elsa was the one that everyone was into.  But she’s not the main character.  She has the strongest arc, but she also doesn’t have the strongest character.  It’s easy to get caught up in her super powers, I guess.
    The songs are passable.  Some of them are well-written, particularly In Summer, and to a lesser extent, Love is an Open Door and Fixer Upper.  Let It Go has one of the strongest hooks, but… I find the vocal especially annoying.  Her approach to singing it is grating, and the animation during that segment lends a degree of sexuality to her character that seems strange.  She does a hip-wiggle as she walks toward the camera.  Very weird.
    In general, it seemed kind of boring.
    The one bright spot was the comic relief of Olaf, played by Josh Gad.  This was one of the rare spots where I felt like he was able to bring his own nuance to the character.  There were gags that were mostly unfinished, and this really helped to liven the movie up.  I didn’t care much about the comic animation for him, but the voice performance was really solid.
    Why do kids like this?  Cause it came out at the right time.  Sadly, I personally believe this is just as forgettable as most Disney movies.

63 - That Thing You Do!

    A garage band records a hit record and enjoys fast success.
    I’m counting this as a first viewing, because this is the first time I’ve seen this cut of the movie.  The original cut of the movie was 108 minutes.  The director’s cut is 149 minutes.  This feels like a completely different movie.
    If I had been more familiar with the original edit, I probably could have pointed out exactly which material was new.  Somehow, the whole thing felt new.  There were still a handful of scenes that I remembered being exactly the same, but there was so much more development of minor plots, little additional lines that fleshed out characters.
    I like the movie much more in this form.  I felt more firmly invested in the characters.  Their fandom for music seemed more completely developed.  I especially liked the addition of the relationship between the bass player and the girl in the girl group.
    I still have two problems with this movie, and they aren’t as serious as they might sound.  First, I don’t feel like there was enough of a development of the relationship between the drummer and Faye.  I don’t know what I expect, because I still pick up on the need for that relationship to happen, but they both seem completely willing to let it pass by.
    The second problem is that Jimmy, the cocky singer, has a happy ending.  He loses the girl, and he loses out on his record deal.  But neither of these things bother him.  Again, I’m not sure what I wanted, but it was something else.

60 - M*A*S*H*

    A group of military surgeons and nurses have fun goofing off and pulling pranks at their base, in between the time they spend patching up the wounded.
    As a child, while my parents would fall asleep, I would hear some of the shows they would watch.  There would be Cheers, sometimes Taxi, and usually MASH.  I was too young to appreciate it.  A few months ago, I started to watch the series, and I’ve come to like it.  It’s not spectacular, but it’s very enjoyable, and I don’t think I’ve seen a single show like it.  It’s got such a strange blend of comedy and tragic dramatic themes.  The longer I watch it, I find it more affecting.
    So I’ve been wanting to watch the movie.  It came out two years prior to the TV show.  I knew that only Radar was retained from the movie, so I thought there would be a little bit of a learning curve.
    I hate to say it, but I didn’t care for this.  Most of the characters are poorly drawn.  There’s no actual plot, it’s just a slice of life, and even the heavier themes about the absurdity of war are effectively nonexistent.
    One character seems to have an arc, and it doesn’t seem to be much of one.
    During the first season of the TV show, there’s an episode where the camp is living in fear of a sniper nearby.  None of this tension is present in this movie.
    I know that Altman likes to mimic the normal rhythms of human interaction by making his characters talk over each other.  I liked that when I saw it done in Rope.  But here, it’s nearly constant, and it stops adding to a sense of reality.  It mostly just gets annoying.

57 - Clockstoppers

    A scientist’s son gets ahold of an experimental watch that allows the user (and anyone he touches) to enter hypertime - an equivalent of freezing time.
    It’s a bad sign that there are four people credited as writing the story, and three of them credited with writing the screenplay.  That, and it’s a Nickelodeon production.  It’s directed by Jonathan Frakes, who has done some good work, and his direction here is completely fine.
    I guess I’m just not the right audience for this.
    It’s a story that should be really enjoyable.  The premise is something that everyone thinks of in their youth, and it’s a wildly tempting superpower to fantasize about.  There’s a portion of the movie dedicated to that fantasy, and that works.  But it’s the plot that gets in the way.  Some organization wants to get the technology… I have no idea what’s happening with that plot.  Even when it resolves, it doesn’t seem like it makes sense.
    There are two things that hurt this movie.  The first is the casting of Jesse Bradford as a teenager in this movie.  He was roughly 23 when he shot this movie.  His jaw is too well-formed, and he has a hint of facial hair, making him look like a college kid throughout the movie.  This is remarkable, since the girl that plays his love interest is five years older than him, and she looks younger!
    Anyway, the other problem is that it breaks some of the cardinal rules of sci-fi premises.  Once you establish the rules, you obey them.  The rules are what make a story work.  The idea of hypertime is established, but then there are a bunch of scenes that break the rules they establish.  In particular, there’s a scene where they use their time-freezing power to help a friend of theirs win a DJ competition (which seems to be less about music, and more about scratching records).  They use this power to somehow help him do some funky-fresh dancing to impress the audience.
    We see that the kids are in hypertime, manipulating his body, making him dance.
    This makes no sense.  If they were doing this, he would be moving inhumanly fast.  If they were moving him slowly enough, they would have spent an absurd amount of time on this project (no numbers are available, but I would guess… maybe a few days).

    The biggest problem is that there’s a scene that is supposed to fulfill the promise of the premise.  We see the couple going around, having fun with their newfound powers.  But it’s boring.  It’s a lot of dumb trickery, and nothing that interesting.  This might be able to engage a young kid, like pre-teen.  But the rest of the movie is so dull that it might be hard to keep their attention that long.
    It’s hard for me to judge this too harshly though.  I got a clear feeling that I wasn’t the intended audience.

    One other thing - the soundtrack for this is hilariously a relic of the times.  Blink 182.  The Cranberries.  Nickel back, New Found Glory, Third Eye Blind, Lit, Sugar Ray, Uncle Kracker covering Time After Time, and over the credits… Smash Mouth.