Three to Pass On

If you are at the movie rental store and trying to avoid wasting two precious hours of your life stay away from these three flicks which I had the misfortune of choosing for an evening's distraction:

'The Princess & The Warrior'- A German film from the director who did the fast paced and damned entertaining 'Run Lola Run'. This time his tale of chance and fate falls on its face with boring characters and a dull storyline.

'Va Savoir'- A French made film described as a "farce dealing with romance and relationships". Problem was it wasn't funny. Not in any way shape or form. And I don't believe the film had an editor. Oh, there was an editor listed in the credits but I can't imagine he cut much. Certainly not enough. There were several scenes that either A. had absolutely nothing to do with the story as far as I could tell or B. went anywhere from thirty seconds to a minute past the point where they should have ended. Now most movies have a couple of scenes like this but this one had multitudes. Added up they stretched the movie to well over two hours in length. By the way the title of the film means "Who Knows?" in French which seemed appropriate after sitting through this piece of merde.

'Novocain'- A Steve Martin film that came out last year, played in theaters for a short time, and had some good reviews. At least that's what I thought I remembered about it. This one was labeled a "dark comedy" but it wasn't all that amusing and it required you to suspend your disbelief way too much for my liking. The more I thought about the more I realized that it was also filled with some of Hollywood's laziest clichés. Steve Martin plays a dentist engaged to a beautiful hygienist who embodies the all American girl. He cheats on her with a sleazy drug addict who seduces Martin to steal narcotics from his practice. Of course it turns out that the all American fiancée was actually insane and plotting to frame him while the addict has a heart of gold who ends up helping him clear his name. The movie ends with his fiancée in jail and Martin and the drug addict now pregnant(perhaps she became his wife?) living peacefully in the French countryside. And all the cops are all stupid fat guys who eat donuts. Wow, how original.