That’s my weekend in a nutshell, really. Friday night we went to see Superman Returns, which was a pretty good movie all in all. It wasn’t what I’d consider “amazing” but it wasn’t a snore-fest and I didn’t feel ripped off having spent $8.50 to go see it. Granted, I think $8.50 is a bit ridiculous regardless of what movie it is but given that it’s that price no matter where you go I’ll deal with it.
At any rate, I’d give the movie a 6.5 out of 10 overall. They really could have developed the son’s character a lot farther than they did. Aside from one small scene, the boy never does much of anything more than just sitting around like a bump on a log and sucking on his asthma inhaler. I was pretty disappointed in his overall development in the plot and it almost made me ask “why even bother including him?” Brandon Routh did a decent job as Superman. Ok, so he’s no Christopher Reeve but still he didn’t just completely flop on his face. He did the bumbling dork Clark Kent quite well but I think he carried too much of Clark Kent’s demeanor over into Superman’s character. I mean, Superman never struck me as being that much of a badass in this movie. I mean, hell, they even show him STRAINING to do things that he would have done rather nonchalantly in previous movies (lifting a Boeing 777, half of a yacht and even a very large mass of land). There just seemed to be too much wavering between the “man of steel” Superman and the “almost human” Superman. Again, not quite enough to be a complete turn-off but a mild annoyance nonetheless. Now, as far as Kevin Spacey playing Lex Luthor I thought he did an amazing job of it. Then again, I may be a bit biased since I’m a big fan of most of what Kevin Spacey has done (he was phenominal in Se7en, for example). Overall, he did a great job being the sadistic bastard. The idea of a villain in a movie is to make the viewer say something to the effect of “holy fuck what an asshole!” and in that he succeeded quite nicely. His performance was probably the best of the entire movie, to be honest. On the other hand, I can’t say I was terribly impressed with Lois Lane’s character. I mean, she was decent and all but nothing really special. She didn’t have any real pizazz/spunk/whatever that I could tell. Her interactions with Clark Kent & Superman were for the most part limited to awkward silence and posturing with some terse cliche lines thrown in for good measure. Definitely a weak point of the movie and something they could/should have developed more for sure. Aside from Kevin Spacey’s portrayal of Luthor, the special effects are the movie’s saving grace, really. They really make me wish I’d seen it in IMAX. If you’re a special-effects nerd (like myself) then they alone are *almost* worth the price of admission.
Anyway, enough about that movie. Saturday my girlfriend and I celebrated our 6-month anniversary by basically dicking around at the mall and stuff then going to the Chop House to eat (65 fucking dollars for dinner). Dinner was awesome as usual. Seems that everytime I go there, the food is excellent and the service is at worst “above average”. We also got to check out the new Apple store in West Towne mall and I was quite impressed with the layout. They had most all of Apple’s products available on display and in usable form. Even better was that they had 3 or 4 of everything so despite it being ridiculously crowded I still got to play with one of the new imacs, a macbook and even an ipod nano. If I was in the market for a new computer (namely a laptop) I’d seriously consider a Mac. They’re a bit on the pricey side but they’re sooooo nice. Alas, I don’t have the green to drop on a new computer so that’s out of the question for the time being. Anyway, we finished off Saturday with a trip to Fiction/Tonic along with the almost-mandatory consumption of alcoholic beverages until drunkenness set in. Overall, a good night.
Sunday was spent swimming and then we went to see “The Devil Wears Prada”, which was somewhat funny but undoubtedly a chick flick. I’ll give Meryl Streep credit for playing the lead role insanely well and Anne Hathaway credit for being both incredibly cute (I’d hit it) and playing the supporting role quite well. Overall, the movie wasn’t half bad when taking the acting and cynical, sarcastic nature of the characters into account… However, I found the subject matter (fashion) to be quite uninteresting and would have been just as happy sitting at home asleep. At least there were quite a few cute girls in the movie and some amusing quips to give it at least some redeeming qualities. It could have been a LOT worse, that’s for sure. *sigh* The things I do for my girlfriend.. jeeze!
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