It was a quiet day, spent mostly hanging around the house. I went food shopping in the morning, then over lunch somehow wandered into the genuinely terrible movie Larry Crowne on cable. It’s actually a remarkable movie in a way; despite being genuinely bad on most every level, there’s still something pleasant and watchable about it. A friend over Twitter described it, quite rightly, as a sort of “banal coma,” and Keith Phipps of the AV Club writes:
Above all, the film offers a neat lesson in the pros and cons of movie stars, whose presence can elevate even the slimmest material with sheer charisma, then drag it back down when that charisma gets overtaxed. Hanks and co-star Julia Roberts are born stars—or at least extremely practiced ones—which serves them well here until it becomes apparent that the film has little going for it beyond their personal appeal.
Later in the day, though, I watched the considerably better — the surprisingly better, actually — Fright Night remake. It’s not brilliant or anything, but then again, neither was the original. This one’s probably scarier, all around, and definitely less campy. Like I said, it’s surprisingly not at all bad.
Then again, I’m a guy who willingly watched more than half of Larry Crowne, so what do I know?
Larry Crowne was playing on the flight from Calgary to Toronto when I was on my way to Atlanta last year. I saw a number of people turn it on and promptly fall asleep to it. I was intent on reading Sherlock Holmes; I’m glad to find out, much after the fact, that I wasn’t missing anything.