Pete Austin’s Blog

I’m definitely behind in posting what I’ve been up to the past few weeks. Two weekends ago was a camping trip to Central Washington with friends. It was as much fun as one can have camping. Leah and I are just city people who enjoy city life. The highlight of the trip though was Leah’s first time on a jet ski. She handled it like a pro.

Last weekend was a kayaking trip around San Juan island. It was a three hour tour along the shorelines of the island which was relaxing and beautiful but I think everyone in our group wanted to see orcas while we were there and you just are not going to see orcas kayaking around the shorelines. Surprisingly three hours was the short tour (the longer one being five hours). By the time we got back to shore asses were numb, legs were stiff, and every muscle was sore. It was fun though and we managed to get up close and personal with harbor seals, giant lion’s mane jellyfish, and even a bald eagle that perched itself on a low branch and let us paddle right up to it.

This weekend Leah and I are traveling to Michigan to visit family. We’ll actually be crossing over to the Canadian side of the Detroit river to stay at the family condo on Boblo Island. This weekend is also the annual Jazz Festival held on Boblo Island which should be a blast. I’ve got lots of content queued up, but it’ll have to wait until I return from Canada as wi-fi is still a foreign concept in Windsor. And yes, there are pictures from all of this if I could just get the damned shadowbox working on the site. Oh well.

Summer blockbusters are the quintessential grab-bag of movies. They’re usually more style than substance, but since the American public and its collective two-second attention span can’t seem to deal with deeper fare year-round it’s become somewhat of an expectation to have an entire season full  of fun put-your-brain-on-cruise-control eye candy. So enter Wanted. Yet another comic book adaptation, about an apathetic guy struggling to discover who he is amidst “panic attack” episodes that keep him cowering from the world around him. When it’s revealed to him just what these episodes really are he suddenly realizes that the world is not the fear factory he once thought but rather a playground for him and others like him. I can usually smell a stupid juvenile shoot-‘em-up movie from a mile away but Wanted seemed to be getting enough good reviews to keep me interested. It took me forever to convince my wife to go see it (and she like Angelina Jolie) but I finally got her to go and figured that at least it would be summer popcorn fun. How wrong I was.

The movie started strong with a crazy opening scene and sharp humor, but everything started to run out of steam about 30 minutes in. And sure there’s the premise of curving, colliding bullets, which could have been really interesting if it weren’t used as a crutch for such a shitty script. I’m not going to get into the storyline but suffice to say that it dumbs down really fast. By the time the climax limps around I found myself watching a movie where the hero takes out the villain’s base with exploding rats – yeeaaah. Even the last line in the film, where the hero challenges the audience with, “What the fuck have you done lately?” got a theater-wide groan and roll of the eyes. Well, let’s see, I wasted the last two hours watching you stumble around like a retarded choirboy trying (hard) to look cool holding a gun. But hey, congrats on becoming the next cliché’ of American stupidity. Did I mention that Angelina Jolie stars in this movie? You get to watch her kick ass and see her bare ass – and I still want my money back. Enough said.

1 out of 5

Not worth renting

Not worth buying

I remember as a kid watching re-runs of the original Get Smart TV show on Nic at Night. I was pretty young and I didn’t really grasp what the show was about or what made it particularly funny. So when this year’s remake staring Steve Carell as Max came out I guess I was in a weird middle-ground of knowing just enough about the show to recognize the nostalgia, yet little enough that some of the humor was bound to be lost in translation.

Let me start out by saying that I’m not really a big fan of Steve Carell’s humor. Yes, 40-Year Old Virgin was hilarious and probably but I really think its success had more to do with Judd Apatow’s filmmaking abilities than Carell’s comedy. I hate The Office (mostly because of Carell’s character) and he’s yet to make a follow-up film that proves that 40-Year Old Virgin wasn’t a fluke. So, sadly most of the blame for why I didn’t enjoy Get Smart more was because of Carell’s character. Carell makes a great Max but the problem is that he’s not even trying. He’s playing exactly the same character he’s played in every other movie he’s starred in and he brings absolutely nothing new to the role here.

The movie itself is predictable summer popcorn comedy. In fact, you could pretty much summarize the entire movie with the word – predictable. It’s your standard Hollywood comedy in a shiny nostalgic wrapper. And yes, Anne Hathaway is in it too but honestly, who cares. She exudes as much sexuality as cactus and the love-story between Carell and her is so forced that they actually go out of their way to explain that she’s actually older than she looks. Why? Because when they share a kiss as the credits roll I’m pretty sure I heard the entire theater cringe. She could easily be his daughter – who’s married – and has a kid.

If there’s one highlight of the film, it’s The Rock’s performance as fellow Control Agent 23. He absolutely steals the movie and owns every scene he’s in. Also stealing the show are Control analysts Bruce and Lloyd. Their turns as a duo of geeky spy gadget engineers is hilarious and apparently so good that a direct to DVD movie starring them was spun off. When a former wrestler and a couple computer nerds in supporting roles steal the movie from a super-popular comedian and his scantily clad co-star, there’s a problem with your movie.

2.5 out of 5

Worth a rental

Not worth buying