Somusing

Several people said this was good, and I was surprised to find that they were right. For one thing, there's not much dialog, so when I watched it with the kids, their extra noise hardly bothered me at all. Otherwise, it's silly and over the top and very funny. I laughed out loud a lot.

One favorite thing: Willem Dafoe is hilarious as a self-important film director, and the screening of his new film at the Cannes Film Festival at the end of the movie is wonderful. I also enjoyed Mr. Bean saying "Gracias" to everyone while he's traveling in France.

This was just okay. I fell asleep a few times.

I really liked this movie as Jon and I were watching it (in a real theater!): the main characters were sweet but also funny and sarcastic; the music was good; it took place in a realistic, less glamorous New York that was refreshing; the romance was uplifting and believable; and it was just plain funny. But I liked it less after it was over, mostly because I'm a little old-fashioned, I guess. And maybe sheltered, too. Maybe in comparison to those raunchy rated-R movies that target teen audiences (which I've never seen), Nick and Norah is no big deal.

In any case, I got on my parental high horse after it was over and I thought of all the teens who will certainly see this movie. There are some good things about it--some straight-edge kids, who are clearly smarter and cooler than the friend who gets so drunk and lost and is truly ridiculous (but funny); the good kids trump the bad kids in the end; etc.

But why can't they just make out at the end? No, they don't have sex (or anything else that includes the word "sex"), but what they do is kind of weird and seems out of place. I applaud the sentiment for married couples, it was just weird for two kids who'd just met hours before.

I enjoyed this delightful modern fairy tale very much. It has a great message about learning to like yourself the way you are. Christina Ricci's character is sweet and pretty, even with her pig nose, and while James McAvoy is not immediately pleasing, he grew on me. I'd like to let the kids watch this, but there's some innuendo that was funny but not for kids. I guess there's a reason it's called innuendo, though; mine probably wouldn't get it. Anyway, I loved it.

And then, after Mean Girls, while we were still in teen flick mode, we also watched 10 Things I Hate About You, which is one of my all-time favorite teen movies. I love the paranoid OB/GYN dad, who makes his daughter wear "the belly" before she goes out.

After watching Tina Fey in Baby Mama, I thought Jon needed to finally see Mean Girls, which she wrote. (I guess we are kind of fans of Tina Fey. We like 30 Rock, too, and I think her Sarah Palin impersonations are hilarious but not vicious, which is good. We liked her when she did Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, too.) Mean Girls is one of the good teen flicks, with classic lines and believable characters. I like it.

I thought this was really funny. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are hilarious, as usual. Steve Martin's relatively small part is also great. Well, I liked all of it, really. It made me laugh.

I missed the beginning of this but still enjoyed it for the most part. As Jon pointed out, the ending is a too rosy, considering the many serious topics visited (drug use, the Vietnam War, sometimes violent war protests, etc.), but the remade Beatles songs sound great and are visually stunning and beautiful.

I was 14 and 16 when these two movies came out, so I was totally part of the target audience.

Sixteen Candles (1984)

The only thing I could have remembered off the top of my head from this movie was the foreign exchange student named Long Duk Dong, but it was all familiar when I watched it again on TV at my in-laws' house. Unfortunately, someone let me have the remote, and this is what I settled on. I forgot that it was so stupid, although Jake is still dreamy as the seemingly unreachable object of the girl's desire. My mother-in-law's brother (is that my uncle-in-law?) got a kick out of the stumbling bride high on muscle relaxers at the end.

Pretty in Pink (1986)

This movie aged pretty well, I thought. Duckie still looks goofy but edgy, the dialog is still funny but not retarded, and the romance is classic. (Although I am a jaded adult who wonders just how long the teen romance is going to last, I still like a good teen flick. Like Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You.) The music's still good, too. I don't think Molly Ringwald looks very good in pink, though, I'm sorry to say.

I kind of wish Andie had ended up with Duckie, though. He's so funny and cool and cuter than the rich guy. Oh! Since I assume that their teenage romance was doomed, I'll just imagine the sequel where Andie and Duckie get together in college! That makes me happy.

Named for the car in which the three main characters take an unexpected road trip after one of them is widowed, Bonneville is a not-too-sappy feel-good movie about learning to let go, and a little about learning to experience life adventurously. Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, and Joan Allen are wonderful actors, and it's good to see a movie about older beautiful women instead of the typical young Hollywood beauty it's impossible to relate to.

I was surprised that two of the main characters are obviously Mormon (and according to the "Behind the Scenes" stuff on the DVD, the other is, too). Also surprisingly, it's a pretty good representation of Mormons, though one character seems overly prim and the other overly casual. There's some humor here that will appeal only to the LDS crowd and those who've run into us a fair amount, like when the prim Mormon offers a Book of Mormon to a hitchhiker they're dropping off. I won't spoil the joke, but it's funny and realistic. I only noticed one very small error with regard to LDS practices, and there's a good chance that some LDS people don't know enough to spot it.

The road trip starts in Pocatello, Idaho, and ends in Santa Barbara, California, but most of the movie was filmed in some of Utah's most beautiful places, which also makes it worth watching.