Wednesday, September 28

Serenity Review

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

See previous blog comment about this movie.

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. The_Rose did as well. From my feeds to day, I also see that Daniel Drezner, Mary Katharine, Jacob T. Levy, Matthew Yglesias and The New York Magazine (I could have sworn somebody said that was a NY Times link!) all find the movie a thumbs up.

You got your yucks in, you got your heart touching moments in, you got your kick ass space battles in, you got your psychological moments in. I'm very impressed with the cast of this movie. I'm impressed by everyone involved with this movie. Hollywood, this is the kind of movie I enjoy! And while I got in free this time, I'm going to try and sneak out and see it again before it leaves the theaters.

The_Rose, which knew less than I knew (and that's not really saying I know much more than a total of an hour of watching bits and pieces of episodes) about the series also enjoyed it very much. This movies doesn't depend on you knowing the series first, it stands on its own. So if you didn't watch the series, don't let that stop you from seeing the movie.

I would like to thank Grace Hill Media for letting me in to see this movie.

I have some nits that don't exactly go with the movie however.

My invitation said 8:00PM. The theater actually showed it at 7:30PM. Now, I was told to get there 45 minutes ahead of time, and I actually beat that by another half hour, so it was cool. And the theater wasn't filled to capacity, so it isn't a real big deal. I just notice things like that.

Now, I went to see this at the AMC Regency in Jacksonville. It was still in the 80's outside when we left the theater to go home. But somebody in the middle of the movie turned the AC off. AMC, I've been going to your theaters for years (I still have and use my white AMC Moviewatcher's card, which is got to be going on 20+ years now!) and I really expect a better experience than that. Maybe there was a malfunction. Just waiting for The_Rose to get out of the restroom, I got a blast of hot air in the lobby. But this is Florida, and we still need our AC!

Other than those two nits, which are in the scheme of things pretty small, I encourage everyone to go see this movie. 4 stars out of 4 from me.