Movie-Hopping, With a Really Long Hop

You all know how I love me some movie-hopping. But recently I haven’t been hopping like I’m accustomed to. Ever since I started writing movie reviews and going to see sneak previews of movies I haven’t really been hopping. Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m reformed or anything. That’s crazy talk. It’s just that there aren’t really that many movies out to begin with, and when I get to see two or three during the week there just aren’t many left to hop to on the weekends. And no, I haven’t thought of hopping after my free sneak previews. Well, obviously I’ve thought about it, or else I wouldn’t have even thought to mention it in this very paragraph. But it seems wrong, even for a morality-vacant person such as myself, to movie-hop after I got into a theater for free. Yet I’m fine with paying for one movie (even at matinee prices) and staying to watch 5. Morality is such a blurry little line. And I think it can be found somewhere around the concession stand.

This week I did my new, slightly altered movie-hopping. I saw two movies in two nights. Kinda like hopping. On like the moon or somewhere with no gravity to bring you down quickly.

I saw ‘Elizabethtown’ and ‘In Her Shoes’. One made me think I was high. The other made me think I would look stunning if only I had Cameron Diaz’s ass.

Let’s start with the high one, shall we? ‘Elizabethtown’ is directed by Cameron Crowe. Cameron Crowe directed ‘Almost Famous’, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. So I'm always hope that he’s gonna dazzle me again. But he’s starting to lose his luster. First he broke my spirit with his pointless movie ‘Vanilla Sky’ (which my friend renamed ‘Vanilla Why’) and now comes another sign that excessive exposure to Tom Cruise will make a person crazy. Cruise was in Crowe’s ‘Jerry Maguire’ and ‘Vanilla Why’ and he even produced ‘Elizabethtown’. And while Cruise is all “anti-happy pills” he is clearly not anti-whatever the hell Cameron Crowe has been smoking the past three years.

I don’t really know where to start with ‘Elizabethtown’ other than to tell you that you shouldn’t bother starting it at all. The movie centers around Orlando Bloom, who is returning to his recently deceased father’s hometown to retrieve his father’s body. Or something. Cause he doesn’t actually end up retrieving it, which confuses me. But confusion was sorta a regular state during this movie. The film wants to be ‘Garden State’, with the whole “my parent died, now I will find my true self and a new girlfriend” thing. But it just wasn’t happening.

I heard that this movie screened at the Toronto Film Fest a few weeks ago and was met with horrible reviews. Crowe said that the movie wasn’t done and he still had some editing to do. Apparently he edited out scenes that explained what the hell was going on with his characters, because none of the remaining scenes explained it for me. I looked over to my friend at one point and said, “Am I high, or is the director high? Because I think we both need to be in order for this movie to work at all.”

And now on to Cameron Diaz’s ass. Which is contractually guaranteed to be shown in every movie she makes. Hell, if my ass looked like that I’d get it some screen time too. Cameron’s ass was featured prominently in ‘In Her Shoes’, a new chick flick coming out this weekend. I really liked this movie, because I am one of the chicks for which the flick was made.

The movie was based on the book of the same name and I wasn’t a huge fan of the book when I read it. It was a bit thin for a book, in that it didn’t pack the details and story depth that great books have. But now that I think about it, that makes it a great book to translate to film. Film is nothing if not the art form for lack of details and story depth. The author of the book, Jennifer Weiner, actually wrote a much better novel called ‘Good in Bed’ but that won’t ever be made into a movie, because it didn’t have any scenes that could possibly involve Cameron Diaz’s ass. And I’m actually serious.

Weiner herself is a big woman and all of her books include at least one overweight character. That character in ‘In Her Shoes’ is played by Toni Collette. Who must be tipping those scales at a hefty 150 pounds. Gotta love Hollywood.

‘In Her Shoes’ is about two polar opposite sisters who have a big ol’ spat and separate long enough for them both to find their true selves. Shirley MacLaine plays the sisters’ grandmother and a key figure in that whole “finding themselves” thing. The movie is sweet and sad and laugh out loud funny. And it has a half-naked Cameron Diaz in it quite a bit (that ought to help the fellas who have been drug to the chick flick.)

Although I read the book and knew exactly what was going to happen, I still enjoyed ‘In Her Shoes’. Why do I think that even if I had read ‘Elizabethfrown: The Novel’ I still would not have had any idea what was going on in that movie? Cameron, back slowly away from Tom Cruise and join us all over here in “Movies That Don’t Suck Land”. It’s fun here. Cameron Diaz will be stopping by any second with no pants on.