movie “family with teenager” style

jj got up early on a saturday! why? to study, to practice, to work, to do her chores? of course not. she had a shopping opportunity, so she was motivated to get up. her friends discovered a “forever 21” shop (american very stylish and very inexpensive clothes) on the outskirts of paris, and one of the moms was going to drive them there. she was out the door by 9. then she went to lunch at a korean restaurant with one of her friends. i tell you. the life of a euroteen...

back home, she’s supposed to practice and vacuum. she of course, has loads of school work. but then a friend called and said she was going to a movie, the new “sherlock holmes” and jj needed to go with her. the friend was going with a guy and he was bringing his friends and she didn’t want to be the only girl, so it was necessary for jj to go. we wanted to see the movie too. we knew enough to ask her permission. can we go to the movie in the same theatre? of course, we won’t sit with you, or even show that we know you. the answer was “no”. so p and i had to go to a different theatre, on opposite side of paris from her. that’s what it’s like with a teen.

we really liked the film. very well done. of course, one should never be too critical of the less-than-believable events in any hollywood action fiction. nevertheless, i was slightly disappointed that the prime motivation of the villain, in the end, was money. it just didn’t seem evil enough. too banal. power would have seemed much more appropriate. however, p’s main complaints concerned the landmarks of paris. “unbelievable that the heros seemed to get from notre dame to the opera in 5 minutes! and that was BEFORE the metro was installed. and then the deduction of holmes that the villain was going to the gare du nord train station because it was the closest to the tuileries where he sat, whereas in fact, at that time, there was the gare d’orleans which was much closer!” spoken like a true geography geek!

of course, those facts would be of little concern to a story person. artistic license. though, there were definitely some other weaknesses in the story. they spoke at the end about “the twins”. what twins? there had been no discussion about twins that i had caught. the twins ended up being somewhat key to a holmes deduction. nevermind. i remember that at my last game job one of my colleagues, a 20 something woman, referred to robert downey jr as “the old, sexy guy”. i personally considered him neither old nor sexy. oh well, different perspectives to remind me of my advancing age.

my phone started ringing towards the end of the film. i knew it was jj since she had started her film 45 mins before we had. if i tried to turn off the loud ringer, it would’ve been 10 seconds of irritating noise during the climax of the film, so i figured out a new strategy. i sat on it and that silenced it very well! p had wondered how i had turned it off so quickly. Print this post