WHOOSH! BOOM! KA-POW!

 

I took the family to see the new Starsky and Hutch movie this weekend. Like most of the movies we plunk down thirty bucks to see, plus another thirty for popcorn, cokes, and raisinets—HEY! What? You mean I spent SIXTY dollars to see something that warms my heart about as much as a birthday card from a car dealership?! (sigh) Maybe I should’ve stayed home and watched Overboard on TBS for the seventeenth time. No. I think going to the movies keeps the family from getting too restless on the weekends, even if the movie is crappy.

 

This one wasn’t bad, though. But lest you think this is a review of that movie, take heart. It isn’t. It’s about the going-to-the-movies experience. First, you rush to get there fifteen minutes early only to sit through twenty minutes of coming attractions. I am not exaggerating here! You know, you just don’t see a preview of a human story showing a human talking to another human anymore. Gone are the previews that show an emotional and intelligent exchange between two people, preferably a man and a woman (are there any other genders?!).

 

Nowadays, the previews have lines like, “If this disk gets into the wrong hands, everyone on earth will be doomed!” followed by a WHOOSH and another line how some guy named “Dark Star” played by a handsome mysterious Mediterranean-born actor who must be destroyed if the species is to survive. Cut to the good guy named “Excelsior” played by some young little known Norse god named Sven something. BOOM! KA-POW! The audio is so intense it makes the movie Armageddon sound like something out of the Silent Era. (For you youngsters, this refers to the time, pre 1930s, when no audio was available for films—just a comical ragtime piano accompaniment) If I wanted to hear twenty straight minutes of explosions, I would’ve stayed home and watched Fox News report from Baghdad and listened to the sounds of “liberation.” Come on people, LET’S GET TO THE MOVIE WE PAID THIRTY BUCKS TO SEE!

 

Ok! Finally! Shhh! Here it comes—the movie! Well . . . it seems that we now have to sit through what seems like another ten minutes of stuff like this:

 

BANG BANG PRODUCTIONS, in association with BAM/KABLOOWEE films, presents a ZING BOOM BOOM production of a story by Ima Louden.

 

Each introduction is made with another tiresome and gratuitous whoosh boom bang  through the theater’s surround sound system. The whole thing makes my wife feel so exhausted, she falls asleep and misses the movie. Oh well, I’ll just wait for the DVD. And after she again falls asleep during the opening credits and explosions (I’m not kidding!) She’ll wait for it on HBO. The same thing will happen over and over as the movie goes through its life-cycle: theater, video, HBO, FX, network, and finally, at a ripe old age of four years, cut-out bin at Dollar General. By then, movies with even BIGGER WHOOSHES, BOOMS, and KA-POWS will be out in the theaters. I think its time to learn to play checkers.