6.30.2008

 

An oddly hilarious film

Jack and I sat down to a late dinner in front of the TV last night after we put Kent to bed. It's a rare event for us, not only eating after he goes to bed, but also eating in front of the TV. And the rarest part of all is that we watched an entire movie from start to finish. I can't remember the last time we did that. Maybe it was before Kent was born.

The movie, recorded off TBS, was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, starring Val Kilmer and Robert Downey, Jr. I remember seeing commercials for it in 2005 when it came out and thinking it looked neat, and Downey makes a lot of interesting film choices, so I decided to give it a shot, and Jack agreed that it sounded good. It defies genre: it has all the intrigue of a detective story, but it's written like a comedy, only it doesn't have the comedy-movie soundtrack or other cliches of the comedy genre. It's dark, but it's also surprisingly upbeat. About 20 minutes into it, I said something about how the writing was SO good but that this was a really strange movie, and Jack agreed. We were hooked, and then it just kept getting better. The narration is from the unique perspective of an actor who knows he's narrating a movie, so his asides are all about how elements of his story conform or don't conform to traditional movies. I also couldn't get over how funny the dialogue was from start to finish, especially the grammar and math jokes and the interaction between the two main characters.

FYI, it's coming on TBS again tonight. I'd highly recommend it if you're into slightly quirky films and can stand a little bit of violence. I'm not sure what we missed by seeing the edited version on TV — definitely some swearing and probably a bit more violence — so I can't comment on the original version, but I'd love to see it as well.

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Comments:

That sounds good, we'll have to check it out. Thanks for the heads up! :-)
 
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