As a few million of you might know, Inception opened this past weekend to the delight of many and the derision of a few who expected a summer movie to be a masterpiece. Please note: there is no “second coming” in the summer. If you’re privy to the recent heat wave that has blanketed the Northeast, summer movies are prime excuses to pay someone else to run their air conditioner for a few hours. Thus, my unfortunate viewing of Ang Lee’s Hulk in 2003.
I believe it was a Thursday in the month of June – one in Jaimaca Estates where the faux-mercury of thermometers broached the ninety-five degree strata, fermenting the airborne smell of curry so that I might never eat samosa again without tasting bile in the back of my throat, and boiling the sidewalks of Highland Avenue to such an extent that the crack-dealing ice-cream-truck drivers began stealing Icee Pops from the local bodega to sell them to children and sweltering junkies looking for a raspberry fix.
Clearly, I digress, and more on the awesome entertainment value of Inception will be tackled in a later post, but for the time being, here’s a brief look at the theatrical experience leading up to the feature presentation.
After arriving forty five minutes before the showing, I realized I should have arrived an hour prior once I saw the four-line queue that occupied the area in front of Union Square’s Theater 4 and the adjacent theaters. Deciding that sitting in the front row of a movie theater might be one of the biggest wastes of thirteen dollars I could come up with – aside from last week’s decision to sit in the center of the theater and watch the incomprehensibly lame and unoriginal Predators – I trekked to Theater 4’s balcony and found a much shorter line.
6:45 arrives and my line crawls forward; burgundy clad, flash-light toting ushers make sure the queue remains one and no one decides to bum rush the theater door. Stragglers who sent shills to hold their places emerge from the auction house of a concession counter, fully equipped with hydrogenated popcorn swimming in yellowish-dyed oleo byproduct that tastes faintly like butter with an intriguing petrol bouquet.
Content with rather solid seats, those in the balcony occasionally approach the railing to the main house of Theater 4 and wait for carnage to ensue. Nothing really happens, though when the doors below open, viewers flood in like pigeons spotting an old woman with a bag of Wonder Bread in tow, bodies bumping into each other, respective heads bobbing forward and back, looking left, right, ahead and behind as not to overlook any seats they pass that will accommodate their six companions who are using the bathrooms or finishing a final pint at the corner bar. As soon as one person sits, he or she immediately begins pulling items from bags, strewing clothing, water bottles, baseball caps, and shoes, to save seats and create a perfect illustration of a Buzby Berkley bacchanal.
The echoing “are these seats taken?” wanes, the lights dim, and the previews begin. Two film trailers with Zack Galifianakas are shown – Dinner With Schmucks and Due Date – both of which could be pretty funny. The first includes Paul Rudd and Steve Carell while the other co-stars Robert Downey Jr. The only downside to these two films is that Galifianakas may soon fall prey to the overuse of an actor and become a caricature of himself. The Hangover 2 is also coming out, and he may be forever enshrined as Alan.
These two previews generated a fair amount of laughter from the audience, but fascinatingly enough, the biggest laugh came during the next trailer – one for a horror-flick set in an elevator, Devil. Admittedly, I was drawn into the original premise – though it seems the filmmakers have shown their hand already inasmuch as they establish two certain red herrings in the first fifteen seconds of the trailer, one being a bearded, hoodie-under-a-corduroy jacket-wearing guy who thrusts his arm through the closing doors of the elevator so that he might not miss it and have to wait another thirty seconds for the next one. Anyone who is clearly portrayed as being the least professional of the characters shouldn’t be so frantic about catching a lift, unless of course he is the demon incarnate. That said, the filmmakers also show a sweet red-haired older woman, but making her the Devil just seems a bit too derivative, and truthfully – if that’s the way they are going – they should have gotten Betty White. She’s so hot right now.
At the same time, the movie looks pretty suspenseful and creepy – kind of like Quarantine – and if the filmmakers didn’t cross the eighty-five-minute mark, they should be able to keep the audience enthralled for the better part of the “which one of these people is the Devil?” deduction.
However, despite its promising start, this movie was doomed by the end of the trailer. Crimson text on a background denotes “One of these five people is not who they appear to be” … “From Universal Pictures” … “Comes a new nightmare,” but then… Well, then all suspense is obviated and the air is sucked from the theater and into the lungs of each and every viewer so that they might in unison release a rogue wave of laughter that overtakes the suddenly heavy laden score replete with metal clanging that portends to mimic the vibration of steel elevator cables that threaten to snap at any moment, providing white-knuckle entertainment.
But this potential is neglected. The suspense will never happen because the audience has read the no-longer ominous crimson text, but the vapid Crayola-red of “From the Mind of M. Night. Shyamalan,” words that augur horror shtick and the misremembered nostalgia of The Sixth Sense, a movie only watchable once for the – admittedly – surprising twist, but what many people seem to forget is that the pacing of the 1999 film is so viscous that the twist simply jars you from your slumber and makes you wonder what you missed.
Perhaps it was the scene in which Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is present in the same room as Lynn Sear (Toni Collette) so you believe they had to have had a conversation, or perhaps it was … well, that was it.
I can admire Mr. Shyamalan’s tenacity here, and quite frankly, it takes a lot of guts to keep making movies that people apparently dislike five eighths of – which perhaps makes him a true artist – but crediting a story’s conception in the “mind” of a man who has consistently provided predictable and rather mediocre story lines shouldn’t be a selling point. Honestly, I’m almost betting on the old woman to be the Devil. Or, it could be the young woman who is attacked first because … well, just seems like something that would be too farcical and misdirecting to really be considered.
