To-day I dreamt I ran into Harrison Ford at Disneyland. He was dressed as Indiana Jones and we had an awkward conversation until he mentioned his dissatisfaction with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Then we sort of bonded as we talked with increasing enthusiasm about all the film's bad points, from the lacklustre climax to the lousy, overused cgi. Then we got to talking about the father and son stuff and Ford listed off reasons it worked in the third movie but not the fourth, and I just smiled and nodded because don't think it really worked in the third movie, but I know a lot of people disagree and I sort of respect the opinion.
While colouring yesterday, I listened to RiffTrax of The Happening. No offence to those of you who maybe enjoyed that movie but . . . I was overtaken by the gale force levels of utter crappiness and immobilised by the unrelenting clueless silliness of this film. And it made for what was easily the best Rifftrax so far. Two comparisons to Monty Python from the Rifftrax crew were so fatally apt one is forced to conclude (surely against some evidence to the contrary) that "M. Night Shyamalan" takes himself so seriously as to have absolutely no reliable perspective on what he's pumping out to his audience. To be fair, this is the first movie of his I've seen since The Sixth Sense.
I've been trying to remember what Monty Python sketch it was where people started throwing themselves out windows but I could clearly see it and nothing else when the mannequins bodies started falling off the building in Happening. What's the buzz, tell me what's . . . THE HAPPENING. Mother of Zeus, what a fucking name. I envision Shyamalan walking onstage naked but for a green tutu and shouting, "I am the Spirit of the Forest come to exact irrevocable vengeance! The Time is now!" and not understanding why everyone in the audience starts laughing. The Rifftrax people didn't even comment on John Leguizamo's and Mark Wahlberg's oddly breathy line deliveries. Like Shyamalan was constantly telling them, "Not so loud, you're scaring me!" I wanted Wahlberg's character from The Departed to come in and start pistol whipping shrubs.
I was a little disappointed there were no "Don't bring your evil here" jokes.
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