Yesterday evening a group of us were late joining the queue for the law society’s audience with John McGinley (Scrubs‘s Dr Cox) so we missed out on, presumably, being demeaned en masse with girls’ names and comical passive-aggression.
A hasty drafting of plan B took us to the Stillorgan Ormonde cinema. I’m beginning to dislike that place. I’ve been there four times, to see Waterworld, The Specialist, The Scorpion King, and yesterday The Longest Yard. That’s not a terribly entertaining set of films. Terrible, yes. Terribly entertaining, no.
The Longest Yard is the second worst film i’ve seen this year, and only because Alexander was longer. Most damning is that the film doesn’t have any really coherent idea of what it’s trying to do. Is it a comedy? The opening seems to suggest standard Adam Sandler fare in that regard. There are seeming attempts at comedy throughout the rest too, including the mandatory "You can do it!" from Sandler-parasite Rob Schneider. But despite that it doesn’t feel like a comedy. It’s not just that it lacks homour; it also lacks much obvious failed humour. It’s like it was written by a committee who weren’t able to talk to each other, one handful of writers copying the successful Sandler template and another trying to write… what? Who knows, really. The rest of the movie just sort of drifted around. It reminded me of this co-operative writing assignment, only without Advance Sergeant Carl Harris.
I spent much of the latter part of the movie, after it became obvious that it was never going to find its way to becoming entertaining, deciding how best to register my disgust on the Internet. Unfortunately I’ve since forgotten all of my wittiest observations, so you’re unfortunately left with just these half-hearted negative ramblings.
I’ll leave you on a high note though, if only for the sake of my own sanity. Serenity has its Irish opening Friday of next week. I’ll be at it, on my own if necessary. Anyone reading this is welcome to join me.