Another discount theater movie marathon

Yesterday Brian and I took in three movies at our local discount theater. The Corpse Bride, Sky High, and Just Like Heaven. They were all pretty decent movies, but they were all very different.

The Corpse Bride I wouldn't exactly call suitable for young children unless your young child is already capable of coping with the idea of death. The basic plot is that Victor is extremely nervous to get married. He goes off for a walk in the woods to practice his vows. He puts the ring on what he thinks is a branch sticking out of the ground as he practices, and it turns out to be the corpse bride's hand. Confusion ensues with this groom-to-be suddenly finding himself married to a dead woman. He finds out that a few years ago she had been murdered on her wedding day and since then had been "waiting for her one true love to come and marry her." I thought the musical numbers were really good. Generally I'm a fan of Tim Burton's directing though I think he can go over the top with the whole "I'm a goth and I direct gothic movies" thing sometimes. I really do like the animation style. I've never seen Nightmare Before Christmas, but I think I might have to now. I'm sure we own it. (Head over to my husband's blog. I think he's got a link to a fairly good but not quite up to date list of all the movies we own.) With all three movies I saw yesterday I'd classify them as worth seeing, but definitely not among the best movies I've ever seen.

Sky High was the most fun movie we saw yesterday. It sort of takes the whole high school experience of trying to fit in and figure out who you are and translates that into superhero powers. Will Stronghold is a third-generation superhero and the product of two superhero parents. Not only that, but his parents are the greatest super heros in the world, so he's got a lot to live up to. Everyone expects him to have his father's super strength or his mother's ability to fly. As we find out, the people who fall into a vat of toxic waste or are bitten by a radioactive bug usually have their powers show up the next day, but kids who are born with either one or both parents with superhero powers sometimes don't develop their powers for several years. From the way it sounds in the movie superhero powers usually happen in puberty and Will is a "late bloomer."

The freshman are separated into the categories of "hero" and "sidekick" (or as they refer to theselves, "hero support.") Seeing as Will doesn't have his powers he is put in to the "hero support" classes. It's kind of like when teachers remember going to school with your parents or teaching your older siblings and remember how smart they were. There's a lot of pressure to live up to the standard that they set, even if you're not in the honors classes and you know you're not as good at math or science as they were. And to make matters worse Will's hero support teacher was once his father's sidekick.

There's an upper classman in the class named Warren Peace whose mother is a superhero and his father is a super villain. Will's father put Warren's father in jail, so Will finds that even though he has no powers yet he already has an arch enemy. During a confrontation in the cafeteria one day between Will and Warren, Will discovers that he has his father's super strength. He is then transferred up to "hero" class and as with all high school movies when the main character becomes popular they alienate their less popular (or in this case "hero support") friends. It all comes to climax at the homecoming dance where the villain attacks, Will admits he was a jerk, and his sidekick friends become heros themselves by saving the school from destruction while Will battles it out with the villain. (I hope that was vague enough that it didn't give away the details of the ending, like who the villain is and what exactly happens.) As I said, it was the most fun movie we saw yesterday. It was also the most cliched, but I think adding the element of super hero powers to the basic high school movie was enough to make it more watchable, and more fun.

I wouldn't suggest watching Just Like Heaven unless you love your chick flicks. It's a romantic comedy to it's core. Imagine Bill Cosby's Ghost Dad, but about a romantic relationship instead of a family relationship. There's a woman named Elizabeth, played by Reese Witherspoon, who is a doctor and spends so much time immersed in her job that she has no time to date. She gets set up on a blind date and is on her way there when she gets into an accident and falls into a coma. The family decides to sublet her apartment until she wakes up. Enter David, played by Mark Ruffalo, who sublets the apartment because he likes the couch. Elizabeth appears, doesn't realize at first that she's a spirit and tries to kick David out of her apartment. One she realizes what she is the two go on a journey for the rest of the movie trying to figure out who she is and how to get her back to her body. Over the course of the movie, being a romantic comedy, the two fall in love.

One thing I appreciated about this movie is that because she's not a physical being for a majority of the movie and thus can't solidly touch anything, there's no sex. I don't mind sex in a movie as long serves a purpose in the story and is either tastefully done or is done within the paramaters of the characters involved. Sex for no other reason than to show an actress' breasts on screen in a movie that could have stood on it's own very well without it really bothers me. It's very easy to imply sex or to not show anything and still have it serve the same purpose. Anyway, that's my tangent for the day.

After watching Just Like Heaven I was actually up for a fourth movie. But of course that fouth movie would have been Doom. I've heard it's great as a mindless action flick but don't expect anything more out of it. Maybe that will be one that we watch on "50 cent Tuesday." If it's really not good, at least I only spent 50 cents on it. :-)