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Okay, I guess you only got one blog yesterday instead of two, but here’s today’s right on schedule.
NATIONAL TREASURE: Book of Secrets, was a hit with all of us. It was as fun as the first movie, and all the returning characters had good parts, and were not marginalized. I was worried about Diane Kruger’s character at first, but the script rallied. It’s always hard to be the girlfriend in a movie. Justin Bartha, who played Riley, made the movie for all of us. Nicolas Cage did another good job in the role. You believe him when he talks about honor, and duty, and truth. Not every actor can pull that off, these days. The improbabilities are there both in history, security, and plot, but you don’t care. The movie is that fun. The Ed Harris character is a little uneven, the only bump in the road character-wise, but it’s Ed Harris, so it’s hard to complain. He does his usual wonderful job with the part he’s given. We get to see Cage’s character’s mother, and I won’t spoil it by telling you who it is, but the casting was perfect. Don’t peek at the names, let it be a surprise, it’s worth that moment of, Oh, My, God.
I’ll say nothing about the puzzle or the mystery because that really would spoil things, but it was just as fun as the first movie. Which I guess is why the movie theatre was packed. If you want seats together get there early.
You know how everyone is talking about the demise of the movies as a theatre experience? Jon and I, and several friends, had been sitting around discussing this sad fact. Why go to the theatre and spend all that money when you can just wait and in two months, or less, you can own the movie, and get special features to boot? We came up with the idea that we needed special features for the movie in the theatre. Once upon a time, you got news (which admittedly we don’t need now with Internet and telly), cartoons, documentary shorts, all sorts of things at the front end of a movie to give extra value to the money we paid. Well, apparently, Disney was thinking the same thing that we’d come up with. There was a brand new Goofy cartoon before NATIONAL TREASURE.
Goofy got his own home entertainment system. I’d forgotten why the Goofy cartoons work, now I remember. There is that moment when Goofy is staring at his coffee table which is suddenly a mile long and covered in remote controls, and he can’t figure out which one he needs for what. I know that feeling. We all know that feeling. Goofy is that every man, and it’s been too long since we’ve seen him. The audience had been a little testy, when people came in late and saw the crowd and couldn’t find seats together. It was getting a little, like it always is lately, vaguely grumpy. Then the cartoon came on, and you could simply feel the audience’s tension drop. People actually applauded. It just put us all in a better mood. Not just because it was Goofy, but because, it was an extra. DVDs have spoiled us, the consumer, to feeling damn cheated without extras. Well, extras to lure us in the to the theatre is not a bad way to go.