Dreadful. The script is so bad that after yet another disaffected, psychotic right winger (Secret Service chief James Woods) tells liberal prez, cool kat Jamie Foxx that the pen is not mightier than the sword, Prez Foxx jabs a pen in his neck (a total rip-off of a Bob Dole move), and then, just to make sure we got it, actually says, “I choose the pen.” Foxx plays the role like he has a plane to catch, and Channing Tatum, as the Secret Service presidential detail wannabe who saves the day, appears to be stifling laughter on more than one occasion. The CGI is atrocious (attack helicopters maneuver around the offices of downtown DC like Mini Coopers in The Italian Job and grenade explosions that do not knock over lecterns and desks in the rooms where they occur produce fireballs visible 10 blocks away). Finally, the double-double at the end is as implausibly stupid in construction as in resolution – both villains are the only two powerful men in Washington who still use pagers. Busted!

300, but with less homoerotic tension, thanks in part to the contributions of Eva Green, a vicious, smoldering twist of an invader, who turns in one of the more ridiculous yet strangely intoxicating love scenes in the history of cinema. Before and after this scene, it’s just a lot of slo-mo spears and swords, a comic-book Spartacus-meets-Gold’s Gym.

On reflection, Eva Green’s mating style is remarkably similar in Dark Shadows:

Cards on the table, I never read Tolkien, and I associate people who did (and do) with weirdos from high school who played Dungeons and Dragons and/or attend Renaissance festivals. I realize this is a blinkered view, but there you have it. I also watched the first two Lord of the Rings movies in the theater, fell asleep in both, woke up, and then fell asleep again (only two other films have elicited such a reaction – Gandhi and Passage to India – which suggests a weariness brought on by geography rather than production). I turned off the third Lord of the Rings DVD when the good guys enlisted very large trees and un-killable ghosts as their allies.

Since that time, my son has grown up, and he urged me to watch The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. My initial try was on a flight to LA, but after a decent setting of the scene (the dwarf king gets gold fever and a big dragon with a bigger gold fever fucks his kingdom up), the film quickly became wearying, as dispossessed dwarves arrive at the home of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), eat all his food, sing a sad song and head off on what promised to be a very long, tiresome adventure. I tried again with my son on Sunday, and we got perhaps an hour into the film when Bilbo and the dwarves run into three giants (they look like the troll in Harry Potter, but they talk about what they are going to cook and eat in silly voices just south of Jar Jar Binks). A big fight ensues.  Dwarves are tossed about like ragdolls yet never injured, and the trolls are furiously hacked but never bleed. Bilbo is captured and a Mexican standoff ensues – the dwarves have to drop their weapons or Bilbo will be ripped to pieces. The dwarves drop their weapons, and in the next scene, half are being slow-roasted over a spit and the other half are trussed up for later cooking.

That was the deal these idiots made? Spare Bilbo and in return, the giants can slow roast and eat ALL of you?

I had no intention of continuing with this unexpected adventure any further. It didn’t help that my son qualified his recommendation with ”it’s a good movie if you’re in those great lounge chairs at the Courthouse theaters and you have all the Coke and candy you want and you have nothing better to do.” Or that after that very scene, he remarked, “still about 2 hours to go.”