Monday, July 18, 2005
MODERN LOVE
Vivian and I went to dinner in Evanston on Friday night. Evanston is a strange place. You know you're in a big city, or at least in a city next to a big city, but it has a quasi-suburban feel to it. It's really neither here nor there, neither city nor suburb. You feel this in its restaurants in particular. Many of them try to be interesting or off-beat, but they're tentative about it. They don't seem to want to offend anyone. It makes for dissappointing eating.
To combat high expectations, Vivian and I went Chili's. I felt very in touch with my inner, suburban-American child there. You know, its' the kind of place with a lot of crap on the walls and waitstaff in matching polo shirts. I ordered the fajitas, which had a weird processed-food taste, as if they had a frozen bag of fajita mix in the kitchen and just tossed it in a microwave after I ordered. Actually, that's probably what happened. Thankfully, I had a very large beer to go with the ersatz fajitas, which seemed to improved their taste, and my mood.
After buying a large, metallic frog candle-holder for my mother for her birthday, Viv and I went to see Wedding Crashers.
I don't have a lot to say about Wedding Crashers except that it was one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. I hadn't even thought about seeing it until Friday, when I noticed that it received almost uniformly positive reviews. This piqued my interest, but I still wasn't sold until I found out that Christopher Walken plays the Secretary of the Treasury. I figured that any movie that has Christopher Walken as the Secretary of the Treasury must have something to offer.
Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play lovable sleaze-bags who have devoted their lives to picking up attractive, vulnerable women at weddings. The opening section sets up their M.O., with an extended montage of receptions of various religious faiths. Wilson does his laid back smooth-talker thing and Vaughn does his manic, fast-talker thing. Their styles complement each other perfectly. (By the way, has anyone noticed Vince's head these days? It looks like it weighs about fifty pounds. Is he using Barry Bonds's personal trainer? People need to start talking about this.)
The plot kicks in when our heroes decide to crash the wedding of Walken's daughter, the social event of the season. Both men then become involved with the Secretary's other daughters: Vaughn because he's looking for an easy lay, Wilson because he falls in love. As Wilson is smitten, he convinces Vaughn to tag along with him to Walken's summer home. Mayhem ensues, including: a violent game of touch football, a foul-mouthed drunken grandmother, a gay, artist son who paints a portrait of Vaughn, and a hunting accident.
Wedding Crashers isn't a great film; it gets more formulaic and cliched as it goes on. But it was frequently very funny and in W's God-besotted America, it had a nice bite to it. Indeed it had nudity, casual sex, and cussing. All of which was pretty damn refreshing in today's moral climate. ¶ 9:01 AM
To combat high expectations, Vivian and I went Chili's. I felt very in touch with my inner, suburban-American child there. You know, its' the kind of place with a lot of crap on the walls and waitstaff in matching polo shirts. I ordered the fajitas, which had a weird processed-food taste, as if they had a frozen bag of fajita mix in the kitchen and just tossed it in a microwave after I ordered. Actually, that's probably what happened. Thankfully, I had a very large beer to go with the ersatz fajitas, which seemed to improved their taste, and my mood.
After buying a large, metallic frog candle-holder for my mother for her birthday, Viv and I went to see Wedding Crashers.
I don't have a lot to say about Wedding Crashers except that it was one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. I hadn't even thought about seeing it until Friday, when I noticed that it received almost uniformly positive reviews. This piqued my interest, but I still wasn't sold until I found out that Christopher Walken plays the Secretary of the Treasury. I figured that any movie that has Christopher Walken as the Secretary of the Treasury must have something to offer.
Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play lovable sleaze-bags who have devoted their lives to picking up attractive, vulnerable women at weddings. The opening section sets up their M.O., with an extended montage of receptions of various religious faiths. Wilson does his laid back smooth-talker thing and Vaughn does his manic, fast-talker thing. Their styles complement each other perfectly. (By the way, has anyone noticed Vince's head these days? It looks like it weighs about fifty pounds. Is he using Barry Bonds's personal trainer? People need to start talking about this.)
The plot kicks in when our heroes decide to crash the wedding of Walken's daughter, the social event of the season. Both men then become involved with the Secretary's other daughters: Vaughn because he's looking for an easy lay, Wilson because he falls in love. As Wilson is smitten, he convinces Vaughn to tag along with him to Walken's summer home. Mayhem ensues, including: a violent game of touch football, a foul-mouthed drunken grandmother, a gay, artist son who paints a portrait of Vaughn, and a hunting accident.
Wedding Crashers isn't a great film; it gets more formulaic and cliched as it goes on. But it was frequently very funny and in W's God-besotted America, it had a nice bite to it. Indeed it had nudity, casual sex, and cussing. All of which was pretty damn refreshing in today's moral climate. ¶ 9:01 AM
