Reviews of the Ignorant: The Queen

What is this garbage (or, as the French would say, garbage)? Yet again, I am going to attempt at great personal risk to amaze the Internets by reviewing a film I have never seen and know nothing about, this time some British crapiola called "The Queen". Now, before I begin, in the interest of journalistic integrity, I must allow for some disclosure. First, while I have not seen this movie, my wife did put it in the DVD player and I did catch a glimpse of some British people yelling at each other when I went to turn it off after finding her asleep five minutes later. B, my wife did comment the next day that the movie was so boring that the synapses in her brain closed up and she spent the 55 seconds watching the movie just wishing that giant foot from Monty Python would crash through the ceiling and crush the whole crowd. Now, I am never one to pay any attention to my wife or respect her opinion, being the independent reviewer that I am. However, I cannot entirely dismiss that her lackluster comments on the quality of the film may have had some influence on my decision to throw the DVD across the room.

The Queen

So what is "The Queen"? To me, it sounded like some homosexual flick. When my wife explained it was British people, I figured maybe Boy George or George Michael. Then she said, no, it was the British royal family, and I knew it had to be Prince Charles. Well, that was close. It is something about Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth and how Queen Elizabeth may have killed her or something. But then my wife said that the first 45 seconds she watched before she fell into a deep sleep was all about Tony Blair. Now why anyone would want to watch a film about Tony Blair is beyond me. I can't watch the man on CNN in real life without falling into a deep sleep, let alone watch an actor playing him in a movie that is over two hours long! (emphasis mine). So, unless Tony Blair is going to be revealed as the title Queen, plotting to kill Princess Diana with his bare hands while in a sordid love triangle with Boy George and George Michael, count me out. In reality, I expect, if my wife wasn't dreaming the whole thing about Tony Blair (which, given that she had eaten a pound of salami before sitting down to watch this mess, she very well may have), then this movie must be two hours of the man agreeing with anything George W. Bush has said until he has to resign, at which point maybe the ghost of Princess Diana will rip his head off and slate her thirst with his blood. Now that, that might make it worthwhile to fast-forward to the end.

But no, I only, vainly hope that this was the end. Who makes this junk and who do they think will watch it? Considering that it won a bunch of awards, I guess maybe it's made for the people who vote for awards. There are enough people in this country, apparently from some ingrained guilt from kicking the British's (Britisheses? Briti?) collective ass in the Revolutionary War, that think anything with a British accent is far and away superior to whatever America produces. Well, maybe not Benny Hill, but anything else. It's these people who cried on the news when Princess Diana died. Kids in America have to go to school with no pencils, no breakfast, and wearing the same clothes a week at a time, and Princess Diana dying is something to cry about. People in our country die horrible deaths because they can't afford the medication that allows them to fight off the simplest infection, and some fifty year old housewife is blubbering on the news because an anorexic, blond British woman was riding in a car going too fast without her seat belt. Please.

Besides, didn't we fight the Revolutionary War so we didn't have to do stuff like watch movies about kings and queens? In America, the only queen I would worship is the Queen of all Filmdom, Jennifer Connelly. THERE is a woman. If she played the Queen of England in this hot mess, I might actually not have to pay for the rented DVD I smashed trying to fling the thing as far away from my DVD player as possible. That would be a great film: Jennifer Connelly, in a tiara and a tight, white T-shirt, must fight Tony Blair and Boy George to prevent them from raising the corpse of Princess Diana and creating a flesh eating zombie. It could end with them all sped up, running around the park to that kazoo music they always played on "Benny Hill". Instead, though, we get "The Queen", which even my wife can't watch, and she can watch "Steel Magnolias". At least, if you still choose to befoul your DVD player with this, you should know to turn on the subtitles. How can a group of people be known as "English" and not even speak it? Whatever. All I need to know about this film can be summed up in three words: Awards, British, Over Two Hours. Wait, that was five words. Ok, how about this: Awards, British, Over-Two-Hours. Ye have been warned. Avoid this like the bubonic plague.

My Rating: A big, fat royal 0 Stars (or, as they say in Britain, "Zed").

Reviews of the Ignorant: The DaVinci Code

I am now going to review a film that I have never seen. I feel I am qualified to review this film since I had it sitting, rented from Blockbuster, from October 2006 to May 2007 on the cabinet by my television, and I never once attempted to remove it from its envelope and watch it. In full disclosure, I must admit that I have seen the commercials for this film, and I read the summary printed on the DVD sleeve. Using this valuable information, I will now provide a review so that others may form an opinion without first-hand knowledge of their subject, based on the opinions of someone who has no knowledge of the subject, thereby creating a vacuum of negative knowledge that could threaten the very stability of the Internets. But my motto in life is, if it is good enough for a sixth grade book report, it is good enough for a blog. So here goes:

The DaVinci Code

The DaVinci Code is a terrible movie. It is boring and way too long, over a hundred something minutes. Who would ever watch a film this long? A film should be no longer than 90 minutes, and that is pushing it. It is directed by Ron Howard, who hasn't directed anything good since his days as director of "The Andy Griffith Show". His friend Potsie has also directed some films, but I can't say I really want to bother finding out what they are. I expect they are probably not much better than The DaVinci Code. Ron Howard also directed that film with Russell Crowe and the amazingly hot and incredibly wonderful Jennifer Connelly. If Jennifer Connelly is in a movie, it is worth watching, almost to the point of making Russell Crowe tolerable. I may (and I put that in italics to indicate how slanted my feelings are towards this) have watched The DaVinci Code if the spectacular Jennifer Connelly was in it instead of some chick who looks like an elf.

Anyhow, this is one of the worst movies ever. Tom Hanks is running around with long hair in France, trying to find the code that DaVinci left showing who Jesus's (Jesus'? Jes-i?) real wife was. This, of course, is terribly offensive, because Tom Hank's hair is way too thin to be that long. There's some shooting and stuff to try and keep people awake, and there's some big guy with red eyes, and some people get killed and someone paints on top of the Mona Lisa. All of this is pointless and, without the benefit of Jennifer Connelly, there is no way anyone could stay awake through this nonsense. Of course, it did give something for the news channels to debate, priests vs. atheists and the secret life of Jesus and blah blah blah whatever. And there were ten million documentaries on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel at the time the movie came out, which I expect has something more to do with corporate synergy than anyone actually being interested in any of this. Please. The acting, the directing, the score, the costuming, even the set decorating all led to a movie so pretentious and horrendous that even homeless people looking for someplace to get out of the sun wouldn't want to sit through its two plus hours. This flick is so dull I couldn't even pick it up to mail it back and free up something else I actually would want to see from my queue. I fully recommend this film to no one. Instead, check out the classic "Career Opportunities", staring the angelic Jennifer Connelly locked in a Target with nothing to wear but a tight, white T-shirt. Classic and classy!

My Rating: 0 Stars (I would give it negative stars, but I can't bring my self to type even one more word about this tragically wretched celluloid abortion)

And, there you have it. Please check back frequently, because I don't really know a lot, and I have opinions on all of it, and I plan on sharing them frequently.