Saturday, 19 October 2013

Don't Look!

I'm going to issue a warning to all of you who may be contemplating watching a certain movie. It's not overly recent; 2006, I think.  Last night it was screened on television, when I was so exhausted I couldn't move.  My exhaustion can be attributed to having had to cart my children places, purchase some groceries after my work out at the gym, the decision of my car battery to flatten like a pancake thus necessitating a call to the NRMA, all followed with a trip to a neighbouring town to visit my father in hospital (he was transferred back to the district on Friday, from the John Hunter Hospital).  My children were keen to see their pop.  I filled up my newly-charged-battery-under-the-bonneted car with petrol, and got the kids some chips at the servo.  As you do.  If this makes me a terrible mother, then guilty as charged, m'lud.  Dire warnings were issued to the children to behave themselves, but the warnings were not heeded.  The minute we were in my father's room, it was, 'Mu-um, I'm hungry!'  Through clenched teeth, I snarled, 'You've just bloody eaten!'  Actually, my 12yo, a gluttonous wretch, has dubbed himself 'The Great Gutsby'.  It's apt.  There is a verandah off my father's room, and they sat there poking and prodding at each other, with my 9yo grizzling like a teething infant. 

In a cloud of fury, I marched them back out to the car and drove home, where I had to cook dinner as their dad is still incapacitated.  My dishwasher is giving out the OE code, and I think it needs a new pump, so I referred to the roster and said whoever was on 'stacking' duty would be washing up, with the 'unstacker' doing the drying up.  Easy in theory.  The practice entailed me shouting like a pre-menstrual sub-human monster, as my 9yo pretended to be a matador, flapping the tea-towel and chanting, 'Toro!  Toro!'  And then, oh and then, he said, 'Why do I have to do this?  It's a woman's job.'  Let's just say he has now been disabused of that theory, and was very defensive in his argument that he had just been trying to be funny.  'You. Are. NOT. Funny!' I hissed at him, in that manner that lets the boys know the needle of Mum's thermostat is teetering dangerously at the top end of the red section and there will soon be hissing, hot, scalding steam enveloping the room like the cheesy special effects of a B-grade horror movie.

I was worn out, and just lay on the couch, with my fox terrier pup curled up on my lap.  I looked at the television where a movie was starting.  I looked at the actors in the credits: Jennifer Coolidge, Fred Willard - people I find amusing.  So I decided to watch.  As I watched, I wondered what the hell I was doing.  The sheer badness of this movie had stunned and debilitated me, and I was powerless to move away as it drew me in with its tractor beam.  It was an utter car wreck.  A train wreck.  A plane crash.  I thought the worlds would implode with the sheer force of how hard this movie sucked.  I wondered what satanic force had convinced the actors to take roles in this mountain of dung.  Did they all have electric bills due at the same time, and need the money?  Strewth, it was terrible.  And the name of this celluloid suckery?  'Date Movie'.  I don't mind the occasional spoof it it's done cleverly.  Look at 'Galaxy Quest' which had a decent story line and poked good natured fun at trekkies.  But many spoofs just make me want to go out and stab a kitten with newly-opened eyes.  Put it this way: I cannot stand most Mel Brooks movies.  And as I explained, I had been powerless to move and the remote was not in reach.  When the evil spell broke during the closing credits, my pup looked up at me, with one ear up and the other folded  (awwwww!), and I said, 'Fergus, that was without doubt the worst fucking movie I have ever seen.'  It possibly eclipsed 'I Spit On Your Grave'.  No, maybe not.  I'll save that for the next post.

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