Movies I Have No Intention Of Seeing, #4
The Amityville Horror

starring: Ryan Reynolds, some chick I never heard of called "Melissa George"

directed by: Andrew Douglas. Who? Andrew Douglas. Oh him... wait, who?


The fact that I am choosing to review this particular film is disheartening to say the least. It makes me despair for the long-term viability of this recently-born gimmick. If it fails for lack of subjects over the long haul I'm going to be forced to think of something original to do every Friday and frankly that terrifies me. I am an American and thus I am married to convenience.

When I was a kid, nobody had cell phones, and with good reason. Go out today and rent the original Lethal Weapon. In that, Danny Glover whips out his 1987 version of conversational portability, a "phone" attached to a complicated machine about the size and weight of an old VW Beetle engine. Back then we had pay phones for emergencies, but basically spent all of our outside-the-house time incommunicado.

Bastard sneaky technology has made the phones all small and shiny and playing happy songs and taking pictures and downloading porn so that nobody can ever remember what it was like without one way back, oh, 10 years ago. We are Americans and we will never surrender easier.

So we're both stuck, Bucketeers and I, with this feature even in weeks where the only film on the pop-culture radar is a remake of a horror film that's barely 25 years old.

The requisite time between "make" and "remake" is getting shorter and shorter. There are some situations where this is acceptable, like the five versions of Hamlet that have been done in my lifetime. But that's Shakespeare. This is a film where the biggest star is Ryan Reynolds remaking a film where the biggest star was Margot Kidder. And this was the pre-crazy Margot Kidder, back when she was just Superman's girlfriend with the scratchy smoker's voice.

I'm looking forward to next year when they remake Troy with young up-and-comer Colin Farrel in the Brad Pitt role and Jude Law as Agamemnon. Orlando Bloom will be in it again, this time as an oar. A very very pretty oar.

But this Amityville thing... The Onion AV Club didn't even bother to review it, I haven't gotten my Entertainment Weekly with the review of it inside yet, the big ad for it in the paper has zero choice critic-quotes on it to tell me how fantastic it is and the newspaper reviews are all predictably tepid.

So in true Pops fashion I have taken 500 words to tell you I have nothing at all to say about this movie. It would be difficult for me to imagine a major studio release with less going for it than this. The only thing I can think of is that I suspect this "Melissa George" may possibly be a post-operative transsexual, but that's a long shot. Besides, if she is post-operative, there's no way I'd be able to tell definitively anyway, so there's no joy to be had there either.

For this film I am unveiling the very fancy graphic for my Zero Hot Babysitter rating. It's a place holder until I can think of something more clever, like a picture of me looking really really bored.

I hope you appreciate my graphical prowess. This one took me nearly nine seconds to make. That includes upload time to Photobucket.

The Amityville Horror remake:

ZERO out of 3 on the Hot Babysitter Scale.

No Shue For You!

Beware, filmgoers. Be very very ware.


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:04 AM