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Laney and I went to see
Love Hurts yesterday. I left work early to get to the 4:40 showing. We sat through trailers we've seen dozens of times already. We endured 83 minutes of something that felt like an eternity. It was an utter waste of time on all fronts.
Thank God it wasn't a waste of money—we both have monthly AMC A-List subscriptions, so we'd be spending the same amount of money either way. Although I should note, Laney did not
actively hate it; she said so as we headed to the Pacific Place elevators after the movie ended. But I sure did. I was really leaning toward giving it a solid D when we left, and once I wrote my review, I felt generous and gave it a D+.
I told Shobhit it had been at least two years since I had seen a movie that bad. But, I just checked my
Best & Worst list from last year, and somehow I had forgotten about
Red One—which I had also given a D+. I noted in that post that I had not given a movie that bad a grade in seven years. Well, it took only three months for it to happen again this time.
Here is the mistake I made: I made the plan with Laney to see this movie months ago, when all we had to go on was a trailer for a movie that looked like it might not be great, but could still be fun. I didn't even see until yesterday morning that the movie's
MetaCritic score was an abysmal 34. I should have checked that earlier. Movies with a score that low are never something I like in spite of critical panning. Consensus is generally very reliable. But, Laney clearly still wanted to see it, and I had no alternate suggestions, so we went.
It was so, so bad. Worse than
Red One, though? Arguably not. They're kind of neck and neck in my mind. Here at work, Frank knows how much I hated
Red One and so he keeps referencing it just to needle me. He even included a screenshot from it in an email just yesterday. I think I won't say anything to him about
Love Hurts. That movie hurts.
I have seen some other reviews that take the point of view of "Just have fun." That's impossible with a movie that has such abysmal dialogue. How can I have fun with a movie that is witless and brainless? The couple of well choreographed martial arts fight sequences are truly all it has going for it. Well, maybe Ke Huy Quan, who is making the most of a pile of garbage.
I did have fun writing the review, at least. That's the one consolation to seeing terrible movies.
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Shobhit went to an election night party shortly after I got home. I might have joined him but I needed to write my review. This was for the special election, the key part of it being
taxing wealthy companies to fund social housing, a confusingly worded measure that voters still went the right way on. There were two other school levies on the ballot, both of which I voted yes on but Shobhit voted no because he hates higher property taxes. But I always vote for funding perrennially underfunded school systems.
He was back not that long after I finished writing the review, so we barely had time to watch one episode of the UK version of
Being Human—the first episode of season 3.
He did tell me of a part-time job prospect he has, which makes things for his job situation look much better than they had been. I won't say now what it was; the offer is not yet official. I just know that he is likely to get paid so much more an hour for 12 hours a week that he'll make nearly as much with that job alone as he did working for minimum wage at Total Wine. And this is far more in his actual wheelhouse and skillset. He may still look into another part time gig to supplement. I have high hopes for this working out, which if it does, will help him develop over time into a direction far more suited to him than retail ever was. Joining local boards has really been a smart move for him.
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[posted 12:31pm]
