Jul
24
I went to see “The Dark Knight” a third time last night at the AMC Burbank 16. On Wednesdays, the theater chain offers free popcorn with your ticket purchase; fun fact: due to some technical glitch at the kiosk where I bought my ticket, I didn’t get a coupon for free popcorn — buggeration! Then I got in the wrong line for the auditorium I’d bought a ticket for. Here’s some sample dialogue from that cherished memory:
Me: “Is this the line for ‘The Dark Knight?’”
People in Front of Me: “Uh, I dunno. We hope so.”
I stayed in that line for a good 10 minutes before finding out there was another line that was the one true path to “The Dark Knight.” But I’d gotten there plenty early, and even after I had to pay for my small popcorn, I found a good seat in the auditorium — the one for the 7:45 showing. The worst, I thought, was behind me.
Then I saw a trailer for “High School Musical 3.”
I sat there — mouth agape — like Beavis and/or Butt-Head do while watching a music video that offends their sensibilities for the trailer’s interminable duration. “High School Musical 3?!” Not only is the title generic to the point of meaninglessness — Is it about a high school musical, or is it a musical about high school, or is it BOTH? –but the content is so vanilla, so flavorless, it seems to barely qualify as a movie.
I’m vaguely aware of the fact that the first to installments in the HSM saga were highly-rated TV movies produced by Disney. It strikes me as a bit odd that movie three in the franchise is the first theatrical release. Film adaptations of popular TV shows were all the rage in the ’90s. One of them — “The Fugitive” — even wound up being good. But a film adaptation of a TV movie? Something feels off about that. And it’s not even a Lifetime Original woman-in-jeopardy type of picture. It’s a movie that perpetuates the myth that high school is actually fun.
At least when this crapola was on TV, I could easily avoid it. Now when I go to the flicks for the next couple of months, I run the risk of having to sit through the trailer again — gah! This thing was attached to “The Dark Knight!” All bets are off on what else it might be in front of in the coming weeks. It’s bad enough that I had to endure that rotten and incomprehensible trailer for “Terminator Salvation” again, but coupled with the preview “High School Musical 3,” it’s like a one-two punch of soulless franchises assaulting my eyes and ears. Worst of all, there wasn’t a trailer for “Watchmen” to restore my faith in film projectionists.
These kids today. They simply have no taste whatsoever in musicals about high school. When I was a younger, my peers were into “Grease.” It may have been PG, but try watching it with your folks and not feeling a little uncomfortable in spots. “High School Musical 3″ looks like a witless, watered-down, family-friendly mutant cousin of “Grease.” Why do kids eat this stuff up? If I ever have childen — that’s a pretty big “if” I’m beginning to realize — and they get into this piffle, I’m selling them. I can always use that money to buy another ticket to see “The Dark Knight.”
-Brad Lohan
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