Day 156: Into the Night

Ed (Jeff Goldblum) can’t sleep and after he catches his wife cheating on him, he can’t be in the house either. He heads off to the airport in the middle of the night and his dreary life is changed forever. Diane (Michelle Pfieffer) comes crashing onto the hood of his car and the two try to escape the men chasing her.

According to the BBC, we spend half our waking hours daydreaming. I thought it was more than that but perhaps the rest of you have interesting jobs and whatnot so you don’t have to be daydreaming quite so much. Anyway, a very common feature of my daydreams is a spontaneous adventure. Along the same lines of the film, I’d love for a stranger to come into my life and for us to have to do something exciting and perhaps even a bit dangerous. Maybe this opportunity has shown itself before but I missed it. I want an adventure.

The film was alright but nothing special. I wouldn’t watch it again but that’s not to say I didn’t like it. I did laugh a couple of times and some scenes were good. On the whole I'd say you're not missing anything if you never watch this film.

6/10

Day 40: Hairspray

Tracy (Nikki Blonsky) wants to be a dancer on The Corny Collins Show more than anything but has a little difficulty as she is discriminated against because of her size. However, after realising that’s not the most important thing and that there is a serious race divide, she decides to take on the lack of integration within the show.

I really don’t like Tracy. First of all, she is a morning person. I don’t get you people, how can you just wake up and be all bouncy and ready to face the day? Ugh. That’s as good as you’re gonna feel all day, you can’t start off like that or it’ll all just go downhill. Another thing, the focus seems to be on her far too much. I know she’s trying to help and all but surely the focus should be on Maybelle (Queen Latifah) or Seaweed (Elijah Kelley)? And she completely ruins their march by hitting a police officer and then running away, leaving everybody else to get arrested. It just seems that there were a whole host of characters who could’ve had more focus.

The main one being Maybelle, obviously. Queen Latifah is such a babe in everything, I love her so much. My notes for whenever she was on screen are all very similar (“QUEEN LATIFAAAH. BE IN MORE THINGS.”) I think I’d much prefer the film to just be The Queen Latifah Show. It doesn’t even have to be about anything, she can just sing and be brilliant. Anyway, I’ve got sidetracked. Her song ‘Big, Blonde and Beautiful’ is my favourite. She seems like the only normal character while all the rest of them are overacting like crazy. Babe.

Link (Zac Efron) bothers me in this film and I’m never sure why. He’s so useless though, so that could be it. In one scene he went from telling Tracy that knowing her would be an adventure to telling her that the adventure would be too big for him. Quickest cop out ever, well done, Sir. And he’s usually so attractive but in this film he looks the strangest. It must be the ridiculous hair he’s got going on. And the fact he keeps winking all the time. Nobody should wink seriously, it is only to be done for laughs. Only men with hairy chests and gold medallions get to wink like that.

Despite all my problems with the film, I still like it. The songs are catchy and Queen Latifah is in it, what’s not to like?

7/10