Here is our very romantic choice for Valentine’s Evening entertainment that we had along with a heart shaped pizza from Papa John’s. My dream date There is one of these new Blockbuster boxes in our local Duane Reade. Unfortunately it has a very limited number of films available to rent.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I had seen the trailer to this movie which left me cold. When I heard that it received a Golden Globe I was a little more intrigued but little did I know how much I would enjoy watching Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. It is utterly hilarious!

Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) wanted to become an inventor since childhood but his inventions never really worked and he wasn’t well respected, not even by his own dad. But things are changing for him when his newest invention, a machine that turns water into food, takes off. Literally: it accidentally flies into the sky where it turns the clouds humidity into food which then rains onto the earth. Pretty neat! What’s even better is that Flint can type in any food that he would like the machine to produce. Right around that time Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), a young weather broadcast intern, steps into Flint’s life and bewitches him with her nerdy charms. Naturally, disaster is waiting right around the corner. The food machine gets out of control and starts to produce giant food that it now a danger to Flint’s town. He has to stop it!

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs has so many quirky little ideas that make it a lot of fun to watch. I haven’t laughed this much in a long time.

Watchmen

Superhero movies are somewhat blending together in my mind. A lot of them are so much alike. Whatchmen is clearly not one of the better comic book adaptations that I have seen though.

Yes, she is wearing latex suspenders...

I won’t write a synopsis of this movie, mainly because I didn’t really get the story. It felt more like an introduction of the comic book characters then a story-line. And I didn’t care about the characters at all. None of the character managed to touch me in any way, not even really engage my interest. Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter) gave a such a terrible performance that I had to think of my teacher, George Loros, who always says that it’s a pity that we can’t sue actors for bad acting (he is hilarious, I wish I could tape him!). I usually really like Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup and Patrick Wilson but this movie brought out the worst in them.

The special effects, fight scenes and all that were fine but overall I don’t think you are going to miss out on anything if you never see Watchmen.

This is one of the worst chick flicks (or films in general) that I have ever seen.

As a young girl, Jane (Katherine Heigl) discovered that her main purpose in life is to help other women get married. About twenty years later she has been a bridesmaid at 27 weddings. She selflessly helps her friends to plan the events and as a token she gets to keep the ugly bridesmaid dresses, which she keeps locked in a closet in her New York apartment. The poor girl is living for these weddings and on top of everything, she is in love with her boss, George (Edward Burns), who knows nothing about it and doesn’t appear to return her feelings.

When Jane’s beautiful, blond, man-crazy sister Tess (Malin Akerman) comes to town, George immediately falls in love with her. Neither Tess nor George knows of Jane’s affections for him, therefore neither is to blame when they strike up a relationship, which is very quickly followed by a marriage proposal. Poor Jane is maid of honor at their wedding and, of course, in charge of planning the whole thing. Naturally, this leads to a major break-down.

Oh, I haven’t talked yet mentioned the wedding-section writer Kevin (James Marsden), who doesn’t believe in marriage. He accidentally meets Jane while covering a wedding and finds her personal Filofax. He starts stalking her, which leads to his writing a story about the bridesmaid who is never the bride. At the end, Jane and he fall in love and get married. (Sorry if I spoiled it for anyone, but you must have seen it coming anyway).

What didn’t I like about the movie? Well, first off, the acting was extremely bad. I have never seen Katherine Heigl in any film before and hope that I never have to watch her again. She was completely over the top (an episode of Friends comes to mind, where Joey is showing off his acting talent to Chandler… “I’m cold… brrrr” etc), unsympathetic and her character was simply unlikable and pathetic.

The same goes for Malin Akerman. Her character is a cliché of a blonde bimbo who can get any guy into bed but has to lie about her real self in order to get a proposal from a decent man. I usually like James Marsden, so I am going to forgive him for being in this movie. Who is Edward Burns and why should I care?

The story is a sort of mixture of bits and pieces of all sorts of chick flicks blended into an unwatchable mush. At one point, everyone randomly starts singing together at a bar (much like in My Best Friend’s Wedding). The theme of “Always a bridesmaid, never the bride” is taken from so many films, I don’t even know where to start. And the story of the sweet girl who is madly in love and overlooked by her love interest and cheated by her sister (or friend, for variation) only to rise up and find her true love and live happily ever after is as old as storytelling itself.

What did I like about the movie? Well, I liked the ugly bridesmaid dresses. Although they weren’t really ugly enough to be real clichés. I am sure it must be a myth that they are always ugly (I personally haven’t been to many weddings, but the dresses were always nice). And I liked a scene where Jane and her colleagues are in a club. They are all wearing nice, corporate clothes while standing in a goth club surrounded by goths listening to goth music. And they are blissfully unaware of the fact that they look totally out of place. It is hilarious. Who on earth chose this location?

To make a long story short: Don’t watch this film!