For weeks now, Anthony’s been anticipating the release of “Jennifer’s Body” in the cinemas, as he is a huge fan of Megan Fox. Although he appreciates the subtlety of her acting skills, he can’t, from time to time, help being distracted by the nubile young actress’ shapely figure. Unfortunately, I end up being the one to give him the sad news: “Jennifer’s Body,” due to its unconventional contents involving teenage cannibalism, will not be released in theaters in Australia. Luckily “Avatar 3-D” is, which temporarily quelch the inevitable whining. Anthony and I plan on arriving at the theater early to purchase our tickets, only to find out from Tony upstairs that the film is already generating enough buzz to garantee really bad seats for people who didn’t have the foresight to order tickets online. Our plans change immediately and we procure our spots on the internet and selecting the best possible seats (there aren’t many left). The V-max theater does not have a sit-where-ever-you-like policy and the teenage ushers are pretty on top of things in there.
Armed with a large and mostly empty bag, Anthony and I head into the supermarket to select our contraband candies and chips before trotting over to the theater to claim our tickets. We have saved our free 3-D glasses from a previous movie session…and a good thing we did too since now they’re charging money for it. The movie theater franchise certainly has a way of ensuring your viewing pleasure is marred by incidentals. Unfortunately the glasses have been carelessly tossed on the kitchen counter and has accumulated more grease than an Irish fry up. Anthony spends most of the pre-movie time cleaning the lenses, using the patented huffing on the lenses and wiping it vigorously with concession napkins.
I did not enjoy “Titanic” at all even though I appreciated all the efforts put into recreating one of the world’s worst human tragedy of all time. This is largely because I have seen the more historically accurate Broadway version of “Titanic: The Musical” prior where all the characters were based on real people. Although the musical was excellent, the actual crash into the iceberg was depicted by a 5-inch long and 1 foot high model of the boat and so the disaster itself didn’t really resonate, which was why I gave “Titanic” the movie a pass because of the incredible filming of the crash itself. With this said, I was feeling a bit iffy about “Avatar,” especially after finding out that Cameron has written the screenplay all by himself. But you can slap a pair of 3-D glasses on me and I’ll sit through the third installment of “Spy Kids” without making snide remarks—that’s how much I enjoy a showing of a movie in three dimension. When someone shells out $100 million bucks to make a movie, bad dialogues be damned.
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, especially knowing nothing about it (that’s the trouble with not getting my dose of Entertainment Weekly). The special effects does reflect the millions of dollars put into the film and the storyline, although reminiscent of “Pocahontas,” and “The Wild Thornberries the Movie,” does not disappoint. I am also not going to complain about the Roger Dean-esque sets (oh, you Yes fans out there knows exactly what I’m talking about) because it’s simply a treat for the eye. The film is so thrilling, in fact, that it received applause from the oftentimes highly critical teenaged audience at the end.
“It’s not ‘Jennifer’s Body,’” I tell Anthony when it is over. “But it does the job.”
“Blood oath,” he concurs.
We then wander bleary-eyed out of the theater as the movie is so exciting from beginning to end that we have not blinked once through the nearly three hour feature. We pass a bin asking the moviegoers to trash the 3-D glasses and ignore it. Although I am too cheap to pay for yet another pair (albeit grease-less) glasses, I have originally saved it in the first place as an act to add one less thing to the landfill. After all, it’s movies like “Avatar” that has taught me to respect Mother Earth, no matter what planet you’re on.













