Out & About

Abandoning articles in the title altogether and using the more compact ampersand instead of the wordy word “and,” this movie sees the triumphant return of Vin Diesel, who calmly drives his car under a burning, rolling gas tanker in the first scene, and THAT is what I’ve been missing during the last two movies. The FBI apparently had trouble meeting their recruiting quota of blue-eyed blondes as Paul Walker–who has previously proved himself to be an unreliable agent–is now back working for the man. Maya’s back, Lettie’s back, everyone is back, including, in case you missed the bulletin up above, Vin Diesel, which is all you need to know about this movie.

The first thing that this movie asks you to believe is that the main character–who looks old enough to have done a stint in the army and then gotten his bachelor’s degree with the GI Bill*– is in high school. But it’s not like these movies are realistic in any way, anyway. Tokyo looks good, as usual, and it’s fun to watch the cars drift,** but this movie has really nothing to offer except for screen time with Sung Kang, who is fun to watch; overall this is a Fast and the Furious movie you can easily miss.***

*IMDB tells me he was 24 when the movie came out.
**IMDB also tells me that the stunt drivers did all the drifting in real life, it wasn’t created in CGI.
***”I don’t want to watch any of them!” I hear you thinking. I totally get it. I’m just going through a thing, please stand by for return to normal movie viewing habits.

I heard this was a pretty bad movie, and I don’t deny that is does not rank high on any measure of a movie, mostly because there is no Vin Diesel to perk up any scenes. However, it is not the worst movie I’ve seen this year—at least, I don’t think so–and there are some memorable scenes like the great car scramble. Though Tyrese Gibson’s Roman Pearce’s character is not super developed, he has some amusing lines and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges is always entertaining, so there are worse ways to spend two hours of your life.

The fact that I remembered absolutely nothing from the first time I saw this 10 years ago indicates that there isn’t much to this movie. However, that doesn’t make it an enjoyable wad of cotton-candy-viewing the second time around. Paul Walker is less wooden than Keanu Reeves in Point Break (another favorite) and Vin Diesel is Vin Diesel, which means that despite the fact I don’t have any interest in cars in general and illegal street racing in particular, I greatly enjoyed this movie.

Due to the fact that there is that whole time travel thing going on, this movie is also overly long. However, the dementors are suitably scary and they did an excellent job with the hippogriff. It struck me, as I was watching Hermione explain everything to Harry, that this may be one of the few places in the Hollywood cannon when the female character saves the day and makes no excuses for her smarts and also is not punished by the shunning of the male characters, drug use or eating disorder.

I had low expectations for this film, which it easily met and exceeded. There were a few “so funny I’m gasping for air” moments and the chemistry between all the cast was very good. Drew Barrymore’s character Erin was particularly foul-mouthed for a romantic comedy heroine, which I found refreshing, and at one point, one of my movie going companions remarked that the romantic couple were acting like real people, which was also refreshing.

The main problem with this movie, in my opinion, is that Thor looks like he came straight from the 1980s. The hair, the facial hair, the awful costume all point to evidence that Thor was James Hetfield’s younger brother who worked out a lot instead of playing the guitar.* There are nice effects to this movie and good acting (by people other than Thor) but ultimately, I couldn’t get over the fact that the hero of the movie had the look that so many guys I went to high school with were striving to obtain.

*see evidence below:

picture from: http://www.celebrityzine.net/name/james-hetfield#1slideshow-60-field_pictures

magazine cover from: http://www.allposters.com/-st/Metallica-Posters_c451_.htm