Double Flee A

Indian summer has come. It's the last gasp of warmth before the world goes into hibernation, and flesh disappears underneath layers of fleeces from Old Navy and trendy fall jackets. Slightly melancholy, we pack up our memories of the balmy laze and batten the hatches. I find myself thinking it must be a good season to have a family of your own.
My father and his wife were in town this weekend and we did a lot of movie-watching, bookstore browsing, and cutting up.

Movie: Vince McMahon has correctly judged the adolescent tastes of United Statesian moviegoers with his production "the roundup", real reviews here starring "the rock", a professional wrestler whose bountiful charisma allows him to perpetrate the silly slogan (not in the movie, mind you, in wrestling; real life, as it were) "can you smell what the rock is cooking?" It's ninety minutes of buddy-humor, peppered with slapstick ass-kicking and shot with style. The movie is so character-intensive that at one point I had to actually look off-screen. Yes, children, I had become tired of looking at the rock. Other than that moment it was fully enjoyable, but don't think it gets much better than the opening sequence, which may be the best action sequence (minus the gratuitous white-girl-black-guy-nightclub-grinding, which takes less than a second each shot but is conspicuous as hell) ever to introduce a film. The plot is straight out of the rejected Indiana Jones script vault, hokey but bearable. Expect a sequel.

posted by dale @ 6:13 PM