busy girl thoughts

I didn’t have a very high expectation after watching the trailer. I thought it was a rental.  But then the review came out on rottentomatoes.com, and it got a surprisingly high score.

I absolutely loved this movie.  I’d say this is the best movie i saw this year.  The story line sounds simple: a newly promoted, nice-looking blonde had a one-night stand with a chubby stubby underachiever, an aspiring porn site entrepreneur, and she was… knocked up.

It’s the kind of movie that the story line sounds worse than it really is. It has so much more to it! I laughed until i was out of air throughout the movie, but most importantly, the issues the characters struggled with are deeply heart-felt.  The issues raised are commonly seen in movies, such as irresponsible men vs. responsible women, bored husbands vs controlling wives, stable family vs exciting life experience… What’s refreshing is how the characters react to the problems in this movie.  Too often we see movies that offer surprising but unrealistic twists that magically melt the obstacle, or present characters that have high enough EQ to solve the conflicts, or comedians who laugh everything off. In "knocked up" though, the characters pained through the struggles, tried to solve them but didn’t always work out. They tried to ease off the tension with humor which occasionally backfired.

One of my favorite scenes was that at the daughter’s birthday party, the father holding the cake was called by a friend as "..a bad husband", when he was kicked out of the house by his wife and went away to Vegas not too long ago, but just reconciled with his wife.  "I was expecting the story to take a down turn again, but he just paused for a sec, and happily walked out the yard singing "happy birthday" with his head up.  Hard to believe he’s the same guy that told his friend that

"marriage is like a real Everybody Loves Raymond, only that it’s not funny and it doesn’t last 22 minutes. It lasts forever!”

I laughed a lot and had tears in my eyes for a few scenes. Overall it’s witty but not pretentious, some jokes are dirty but not in bad taste.  There are a lot more important characters than shown in the trailer, so the story is richer than it seems.

It’s funnier than 40-year old virgin and it touches your heart. A must see! 

Although I didn’t have very high expectations of "Because I Said So" (Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore) to begin with, this move turned out to be over the top annoying.  I don’t know who wrote the script, but I assume he’s a man.  The women portrayed in the movie are all hysterical, yappy, shrill and stupid.  Not a minute went by without somebody spilling food, arguing with one another, or parading around half naked (Diane Keaton included). Basically, they’re all dislikeable nuts.

Avoid this movie at all cost. 

Is Ewan McGregor hot or what? I liked him alright, but for some reason when I saw that he was in Guys and Dolls in London, I scratched my original itinerary and bought a last minute to see him. I think it’s the combination that Guys’n Dolls is on top of my favorite theater list, and Moulin Rouge is my favorite musical movie.

What I love about this musical is the lyrics of most of the songs, like “Mary the man today” (change him later…). My favorite one would be “Sit down you’re rocking the boat”. It sounds even better on stage than on CD.