But the third one—the third one! I knew it would be glorious. In my mind, nothing beats a terrible historical fiction flick starring Keanu Reeves as a Japanese dude.
I schemed. Brendan had to work, but I knew we could make an evening of it—I'd round up some other equally fantastic troops, visit him at his delicious noodle-making job, and then we'd all go.
FAIL.
Nicole had work to do. Brendan was a loyal hubby and stayed home with Nicole. I have no idea what the hell Andy was doing.
But me and Andi? We were troopers. We ventured out to Town Square on a Saturday night, braving the crowds of drunk thirty-somethings and teeny-boppers. We went to some sushi place, where I had a terrible cocktail and we caught up over tuna, and then we wandered over to the AMC for some quality Keanu time.
As we got in line, we were engaged in a very important discussion about moms, weed, and useless people. The two [petite] guys in front of us clearly did not understand the weight of our conversation and interrupted to ask us what movie we were seeing.
Andi, of course, politely and good-naturedly answered, "47 Ronin!"
"US TOO!" the tiny gentlemen exclaimed.
"Yes," I said dryly. "I cannot wait to see Keanu Reeves be a fake Asian."
"No, man," one of the guys said. "It's all about that sick samurai shit."
I tried to not glare and went back to my diatribe about useless people.
Once we got into the theater, my terrible cocktail started to set in. I decided, foolishly, that it would be a brilliant idea to make friends with the tiny gentlemen. Andi, ever the agreeable friend, was ready and willing. So I invited the dudes over for some Jim Beam and Coke on us.
"We gotta drink some of this movie theater Coke so I can fit this booze in hurr," I said to Andi, pulling the handle of Jim out of my Coach purse that my mother gave me.
"I thought you were bringing your flask," she said, unsure of why I had that entire bottle and also a milkshake and a can of Pringles in my bag.
I shrugged. "Couldn't find it."
We slugged Coke. I poured. We drank. The tiny men sat down next to us and ate Andi's popcorn.
Previews. Some X-Men thing is evidently happening again, and we talked to the tiny men about how Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are totes my boyfriends. Then there was an anxiety-provoking airplane movie starring Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore, and we talked to the tiny men about how Julianne is totes my wife.
"So you swing both ways?" asked the little man sitting next to me.
"I SWING FOR TALENT," I declared defiantly, and sipped on my purse milkshake.
The lights dimmed. Our anticipation grew. Some bald white guy who might've been Keanu Reeves ran through the woods and face-planted in a puddle.
Here's where I say a couple things. One, spoiler alert like whoa. Two, I'm not REALLY sure what this movie was about, and I don't think it was because of the Jim Beam.
My motivation to see this movie was three-fold: I love historical fiction; I love supernatural things; and I was totally obsessed with Japan as a pre-teen. I saw the preview for it when I went to see Hunger Games. There was a witch and a dragon and some ghosts and some samurai in that shit and I KNEW it was going to be brilliant.
The first hour of the movie was backstory. Then there was some awful CGI with a crappy fox. There was this creature with six eyes, and that was pretty much the last we saw of anything supernatural for awhile.
Then the dad/king of all the samurai of the land had to commit seppuku, and that was kind of upsetting. And they banished Keanu Reeves for being "half-white," and they dumped the head coach of the samurai team in a pit. Head Coach was played by Hiroyuki Sanada, that Asian dude who is in everything who isn't Chow Yun Fat (by "everything" I mean "Lost," which is everything).
Then the dad/king of all the samurai of the land had to commit seppuku, and that was kind of upsetting. And they banished Keanu Reeves for being "half-white," and they dumped the head coach of the samurai team in a pit. Head Coach was played by Hiroyuki Sanada, that Asian dude who is in everything who isn't Chow Yun Fat (by "everything" I mean "Lost," which is everything).
And then we got some caption about it being one year later.
Maybe I missed something, but you can't just be usin' captions all willy nilly an hour into the movie. And you can't then use it once more and forget about it. ESTABLISH A DEVICE AND BE CONSISTENT, OR DON'T USE IT AT ALL.
So then we met the whole unruly gang of samurai, and that's when I started to notice that this was basically Lord of the Rings for 18th century Japan. Epic scenery, giant statues for no reason, creepy forests and caves with dead guys, the whole shebang. The merry men were led by Hiroyuki Sanada, who eventually got out of some pit that he got thrown into. Most notable in the gang: overweight dude who was supposed to be the comic relief and really was just kind of Hurley from Lost and was for some reason naked at one point; Hiroyuki's useless-ass son who had shampoo-commercial hair but couldn't do anything else except look pretty and accidentally hit Hiroyuki with an arrow every now and then; the token racist dude who was always causing trouble and hated Keanu Reeves (and with good reason! He's not Japanese! According to the Wikipedia, his grandmother was Chinese. DOES NOT COUNT.); a silent dude with epically long hair who pinned his bangs back like some Jersey Shore ho; a guy who did nothing except have a spectacular mustache; and this one dude who, while all the other clean-shaven samurai had long flowing locks, had a crew cut, sideburns, and a goatee. Hurley, Crappy Son, Racist Bro, Jersey Shore, Mustache Guy, and Crew Cut saved Japan.
There were also only three women in the entire movie who weren't concubines, one of whom, Lady Asano (who I kept calling Carne Asada), was mistaken for a concubine, and one of whom was kind of a whore anyway.
So Carne Asada got kidnapped for an arranged marriage by some gross dude who only wore pimp-suit-style kimono, and the merry men had to go rescue her, because she and Keanu were kind of in love and she was the heir to the samurai village throne anyway. Hiroyuki went and saved Keanu, who had by this point been sold into slavery and was fighting all these random white dudes with Cockney accents and whores in corsets. Then the two of them held up a band of actors going to entertain Pimp Suit at his gross wedding with Carne Asada, and then Keanu and Hiroyuki DRESSED UP AS CLOWNS AND PRETENDED TO DO THE SHOW while the other merry men slaughtered Pimp Suit's entourage. Hiroyuki killed Pimp Suit, cut off his head and shoved it in what looked suspiciously like a Glad trash bag, and the merry men enjoyed a victory with magical swords, and then they all committed seppuku, except for Crappy Son, who somehow was granted permission to live, mostly because he never accomplished anything to begin with and maybe had two lines the entire time.
Also, everyone either had a generic Asian accent or a generic British accent. Except for the white people. They were definitely Cockney/pirates.
Also, I'm not really sure why Keanu Reeves was even in this. This movie was clearly about Hiroyuki needing to be Viggo Mortensen.
I'm no expert, but I think there may have been a lot of problems here.
Two redeeming qualities. The music was pretty cool, even though they kept quoting "My Funny Valentine" with someone's stereotypically sad Japanese cello and hoping no one would notice. And there was this witch who kind of orchestrated this entire disaster, and all of her animation was pretty cool (she was the crappy CGI fox in the beginning, but she pulled herself together).
By the end of this very sobering experience, I'd realized that Andi and I really had to get rid of the tiny men. We hid in the bathroom for a while, but they were still there when we came out. We walked outside as I bitched about Keanu's nasty-looking facial hair, and then the littlest man asked me for my number and I GAVE IT TO HIM because evidently my brain fell out of my face. And he's been pocket-dialing me and leaving messages of nothing for the past hour.
This was nothing if not a banner evening. America, it's good to be back.
