June 21, 2003

HULK

The first 30 minutes of this movie are punishingly boring. Finally the Hulk appears 44 minutes into the film. The Hulk-out sequences are fantastic, but those scenes are buried in a overly brainy and symbolic lost-father nature-versus-nurture Oedipal mess. The movie was so deep I felt like seeing Armageddon afterwards to let my brain rest.
Theater Notes: My brother and I saw this, appropriately, on the Green Monster screen at AMC Fenway. A woman had brought her infant with her, and she sat three-quarters of the way back, in the middle of her row. How do I know this? Because when the baby started crying, she had to stand up, excuse herself down her entire row, walk all the way down to the front of the theater, and then U-turn and walk out the exit tunnel to the lobby. This crying-baby adventure took maybe 30 seconds. When the baby was calmed down, she returned, but then later on, she repeated the whole trip again when the baby cried again. We have a social covenant 21st century society: if you have infant children, you cannot take them to the movies. Period. Either rent a DVD or pay for a sitter. Period. The rest of us in the theater paid $10 to watch a 2 hour movie with adults in complete silence. I occasionally will see an animated movie or a Harry Potter film where parents bring their young children, children who haven't quite got the "no talking" rule down yet. This drives me nuts too, but at least the children are there for the movie, not crying in the arms of a parent who thinks parenting rules don't apply to them.