Reviews of the Ignorant: ??????

Continuing our perfect record here at the Frog Blog of 0 posts having any interest to anyone, my wife suggested that, possibly, if I were to write a positive review of a film, people would react positively. Well, I find this argument offensive, primarily because it comes from my wife, but secondarily because it implies that people dislike negativity. And that's just wrong. When I look around us in the world today at all the positive things taking place, all the optimism in bloom, it just makes me want to puke blood. And yet, who is happy? Where are these happy people? I mean, you'd think if positive beliefs and experiences were the key to success, we'd all be bouncing around our days with rigor mortis like grins stretched from ear to ear and back again, what with all the joyous things we come in contact with every day. For example, look at your local news. There's a murder, a rape, two robberies, a stabbing, your favorite team lost, and it's gonna rain tomorrow. Ok, bad example. How about national news? Gas prices up, Iraq going down, another country has added us to the hate list, global warming really is real, bees are becoming extinct, the 2008 presidential campaigns have been going on for a year now, and some additional member of congress has been caught either sleeping with an underage staff member or stealing or stealing from an underage staff member while sleeping with him/her/them. Ugh. Of course, you could always take a vacation, assuming that you can afford to drive or fly and the place you are headed isn't a) underwater, b) on fire, c) owned by Disney, d) quarantined, or e) involved in a takeover, coup, civil war, invasion, or random bombing. But there is, at least, always my dog, who loves me unconditionally and...just...got...the bird flu from eating contaminated sparrows in the back yard.

Never mind. Let's try a positive review of a film I've never seen and see in unison if we can at least forget the gas prices.

National Lampoon's Vacation

Here, now, is a film to be positive about. Funny, true, with just a little bit of an edge, it stars Chevy Chase on a trip to Wally World with his ever-changing family. This film brings back memories of actual family vacations-

Wait. I've seen this movie.

Ok, never mind. Let me think of something else. "National Lampoon's European Vacation"? Not if I want to stay positive. Besides, I've seen that, too. Start over.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Now here, here is a film I can get behind! Technically amazing, this flick is a funny homage slash parody of 30's and 40's era animation as well as the detective noir (or, as they say in France, "black"). Bob Hoskins stars as Eddie-

Man! Wait! I've seen this, too! I am so sorry. This positive thing is harder than it looks on "The Cosby Show". I'll try one more time.

The Departed

No one puts together a better flick than Martin Scorsese. Exciting and interesting despite both it's running time and Leonardo DiCaprio, "The Departed" is Scorsese's best pic since "Goodfellas". Here, convention is turned upside down as the criminal is the good guy and the cop is the bad-

Who am I kidding. I've seen this, too. I just can't hack it. I am a failure. I can't give a positive review of a film I haven't seen, because, well, IF IT LOOKED LIKE I'D LIKE IT, I'VE PROBABLY SEEN IT!!!!!!!! I guess if it takes positive reviews to drive traffic to this blog, I'd be wise to hang it up. I don't know now to write positive. I've cheated myself through life only to end up here, bitter and hostile, blogging myself raw! I might as well hang the ol' URL up and cry like a little girl in the middle of a demolition derby ring, or Paris Hilton as she's hauled off to jail. I've failed! Everything my kindergarten teacher said about me is true; I really AM a washed-up, sarcastic, foul-tempered, unpleasant old nag! And I thought I'd grow out of it!

(sound of sobbing so blubbery that it sets off the smoke alarm)

But wait! What have we here? (Or, as the French would say, "Je ne sais pas?") A gift from the movie gods? A vision from the IMDB? Dare I clutch hope to my expansive breast. or is it just a mirage? Take my hand, good reader, for I washed it just yesterday, and let us go forward, for I may, just may, allow myself to dream with anticipation that I really have found a film that I have never seen about which I can write a positive review. It's like the old saying: At the end of his life, the man looked back at his pathway of footprints through the sands of time and said, "God, you always promised to walk with me. Yet, at the times when I faced the most troubles and needed your support, I only see one set of footprints in the sand. Why are these steps alone when we should have been together, especially in my times of greatest despair and hardship?" God smiled down upon him and said in a voice most basso, "My son, my child. Of course during the hardest times there is only one set of footprints, for it is during those times that I pushed you over and ran ahead so that I could get them over with sooner."

Ok, following that brief philosophical interlude, I bring you this positive review:

Waking the Dead

Ok, I have no idea what this film is about, but I have to admit that it is an absolute, top-of-the-charts-with-a-bullet instant classic, and I can tell you why in two sets of two words: "Jennifer Connelly" and "Sexual Situations". I mean, I see the poster for it, and she's laying there, smiling that radiant Jennifer Connelly smile, and I can just imagine that, if the poster went over another four feet, she would be wearing a white T-shirt. In fact, I bet for this whole movie she's wearing a white T-shirt. This film is amazing, a wonderful expression of Jennifer Connelly's acting in a film starring Jennifer Connelly and including a poster featuring Jennifer Connelly. Inspiring. Granted, the film is not without it's flaws. First, it does star some other people, but I am sure that you, like myself, can overlook these other people in the glorious presence of Jennifer Connelly. B, it is 105 minutes long, which violates my absolute rule that no film can be that good if it is over 90 minutes. But I will assume those extra fifteen minutes were in there because the director had too much great footage of Jennifer Connelly's acting that he or she just couldn't bear to leave it on the cutting-room floor. Besides, like we all learned from our politicians, rules are made to be broken.

Lastly, the film is called "Waking the Dead", which, if it doesn't involve zombie Princess Dianas (Diani? Diananas?), or at least some gratuitous brain-eating, is a horrendous title. I have a feeling that this flick is a whole lotta talking and very little if any gratuitous brain-eating. But I'm gonna assume that the studio had some over-budget pre-ordained blockbuster coming out at the same time, and the studio heads feared that, if they called this something like "Jennifer Connelly's Sexual Situations", all the money that they needed to make to recoup (or, as the French say, re'coup) their astronomical waste of spending on their blockbuster would instead be sucked up as people lined up again and again to see this. In fact, the President may have heard via the CIA (Cinema Information Association) that a film was coming out called "Jennifer Connelly's Sexual Situations" and insisted under threat of unlawful jailing without access to counsel in Cuba that the studio heads immediately change the title or else risk destroying the entire U.S. of A.' s economy by sucking up ALL free currency in a matter of a few days and wiping out the Dow Jones Industrial or the Federal Reserve or some such nonsense. So, the studio heads, despite their love of illegal Cuban cigars, immediately changed the title to "Waking the Dead" so that people would fall asleep just thinking about it. But they didn't count on the fact that the most powerful force in the Universe is the pull of Jennifer Connelly's beauty, and, hence, this film would one day be reviewed on a blog read by no one by a guy who had never seen the film. Take that, you pinko studio heads!

But this film is so great, so profound in it's hiring of Jennifer Connelly, that I feel they should make a sequel, albeit with a little difference in focus. In the sequel, "Waking the Dead II: Blood Harvest", Jennifer Connelly is a zombie-killing scientist in a tight, white tank-top who must wade through swamps, fighting a brain-eating zombie plague caused by Tony Blair, so that she can take her rightful place as President of the United States and provide the cure for zombie as well as the cure for cancer and a viable alternative fuel source that she discovered in her biophysics lab, wearing a skin-tight white spandex lab coat. And, after much kung fu fighting, then curing the zombies, Jennifer Connelly would just stand there for an extra bonus fifteen minutes (making the film, again, a total of 105 minutes), looking beautiful and winning every film award known to man, and a few known only to fishes.

My Rating: A Quadrillion, Billion, Million, Quintillion, Bazillion and a half Stars. (While remaining positive, I did feel the need to take 1/2 stars off the rating of this film due to the fact that a) it stars some other schmucks besides Jennifer Connelly and 2) It is dramatically inferior to the proposed sequel, which I hope, by tomorrow, some studio exec will have enough sense to contact me to option. I'd add that 1/2 star back if I thought that sort of unrealistic optimism would actually make a difference in the world, but I took a blood oath to remain true to the negative viewpoint of the critic. A hard life, to be sure, but pfffffft! to you! And I seriously doubt that that half a star will make any difference in your vacation plans or gas prices. So back atcha!)