Our friend Sherri came back to Provo on Thursday night, but she couldn’t move into her new apartment until Monday (today), so she stayed with us. Friday night, the three of us thought we might like to go see a movie, so we pulled up our friendly neighborhood Cinemark website. This is what we found:
- Raising Helen: Beth and Sherri both wanted to see it, but I didn’t.
- Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story: I wanted to see it, but they didn’t (and my claustrophobic self hates to see movies on opening night).
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Sherri hadn’t seen it yet, and Beth and I were both more than willing to see it again, but we weren’t really in the mood for it that night.
- The Terminal: We all wanted to see it, but again, the opening night/claustrophobia thing.
- Shrek 2: We all wanted to see it, but I had only seen the first Shrek once, and that was in the theater in 2001.
Quite the dilemma, as you can see. The solution I came up with was this: watch Shrek on DVD Friday night (yes, we own it, I just hadn’t watched it), then go see the new one on Saturday. So we watched our DVD, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The one time I saw it, I was a 24-year-old on a date with a girl who (as I discovered during dinner right before the movie) was only 17. Whether this was a good or bad thing is not the point: the point is, I had always thought of it as a little kids’ movie since, well, I was with a little kid when I saw it. But this time around, I thought the movie was very funny, and I was happy to own the DVD.
Saturday night, we went to see Shrek 2, and all of a sudden I had high hopes for it. Previously, I had two thoughts on it:
- The first one was okay, so this one will probably be okay too.
- The obnoxious guy at work loved Shrek 2, so I will probably hate it as a matter of principle. (Note to self: write about this guy more often; or kill him.)
By Saturday evening, though, I was really excited to see it, and it certainly didn’t disappoint me. I thought it was about twice as good as the first one, which is impressive. (It made me think of 24, the world’s greatest TV show: the first season of 24 was awesome, got me hooked, made me a fan, etc; but season two was so much better that it made me very glad they went in the order they did, because season one would have been a let-down after season two.) I thought the comedy was dead-on, and it was a good example of how to use inside jokes/satire.
Of course, whenever I see effective use of satire, I can’t help thinking of The Singles Ward, which utilized what I like to call “not funny satire.” Shrek 2 had dozens — maybe even hundreds — of references to pop culture, other movies, and anything else you can imagine. But to me, it never seemed like too much, because it didn’t slap you in the face and say, “Hey, did you catch that? It was funny!” The Singles Ward, on the other hand, did much face-slapping. I know it’s been a couple years since that movie came out, but it is still fresh in my mind when I see a movie that is actually funny.
So anyway, the point is, I thought Shrek 2 was a great movie, and I am glad I saw it, and the seat in front of me was empty, so I could put my feet up. And best of all: all the quotes that ObnoxiousWorkGuy has been spouting over and over and over the last couple weeks? Well, it turns out they were misquotes!