Movie Night: Monsters

02 September 2014
I haven't been updating my IMDb account.  Which is stupid because now I'm spending more time browsing movies because I can't remember the things I did see.  I found notes here and there about some things I've seen, and I found this.

Monsters (2010, Drama, Sci-fi, Thriller)

An incident occurs near the coast of Mexico and soon after gigantic alien life forms appear wreaking havoc across the country.  Andrew is a photojournalist, banking on shots of the alien to save his job, and Samantha is his boss' daughter, alone and far from home.  Andrew reluctantly agrees to find, and then escort, Samantha back home to the United States.

In its IMDb page, Monsters is categorized as a drama, sci-fi, and thriller.

To me, it's a weak romance set against a backdrop of giant octopuses.  Or was it squids?  The monsters do somewhat play a role to prompt action from the characters but them being monsters doesn't really affect the story.  If you took out the monsters and replaced them with 'war', or 'radioactive bananas', you can still have the same story.

You'd think the tentacled monstrosity would ensure a fast-paced, thrilling experience.  That didn't happen. Sure, there were some moments where something starts to happen, but no sooner than it started it's over.  So this was pretty uneventful.  What kept me through this was the hope that the protagonists would die.  (If somebody ever reads this and thinks that's awful, comfort yourself in knowing that at least I didn't say hentai. Oops, I just did. Lololol.)

I've never seen two characters more apathetic to the dawn of the end of the world.   Their circumstances seemed no more than an inconvenience and their relationship to this reality and to everyone else was shallow.   While Samantha and Andrew drone on about the futility and monotony of their well-off lives, their characters are brought closer together.  I can see it, I hear, it's happening on screen, yet I still couldn't believe it.  I looked at them and I thought, 'Yeah, you're gonna break up and break up fast' and they're not even together yet.

So after writing I looked at the comments, which I usually do after watching a movie I have a mental comment on.  Supposedly, this was an intelligent film, with symbolism and shit.  Nah.  Maybe I get it, maybe I don't.  Either way, this was clunky, symbolism or no symbolism.  And if they want a metaphor, well, this movie is a metaphor for how I feel about it.  Lol.

I like reading comments on articles and on boards.  Usually when I see a movie that I have a mental comment on, I'd look it up just to see what others said.  Sometimes you realize something, sometimes somebody points out something you have totally missed, sometimes somebody says something that changes your mind completely.

I like that.  I like learning from that.

I read some of the threads on IMDb for Monsters, and honestly I was bothered.  We all have our opinions and I know my opinion of the movie seems to be in the minority, but while that disappoints me I accept that and I'm okay with it.  What bothers me is reading somebody say that,
I was absolutely engaged by the love story in this film.
What.  Scratch that, I'm not bothered, I'm deeply disturbed.  Think about it, this guy could go out there and date someone and carry this strange idea of a romance and I'm thinking, 'No, no, no. I want to help steer you in the right direction!'  Hardly any woman with a sound mind is going to think that there's a great love story in there.  Hell, even Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had a better love story told in a few minutes than this film for it's entire duration!  There are a gazillion movies and tv shows that have better love stories, and a lot of them aren't specifically classified as romance, so why? Why?

I didn't ask why.  I just sit here wondering if I missed something.

Because - Spoiler Alert- the Protagonist Guy in the movie Monsters clearly was bad news: his biggest job was simply to get his boss's daughter's ass on a ship back to the United States.  What does he do?  He drinks the night before, sleeps with a prostitute, and gets robbed.  The boss's daughter misses the last ship, which was mentioned to them the day before, was the last and only ship to sail out of that area.  When ticket man tells him that the only other way to the US was through the dangerous restricted area and would cost him a ton more money, he throws a hissy fit at the notion of paying more because he's now broke due to being robbed.  Seriously?  And the girl clearly has issues to not see that as freaking neon sign to stay the hell away.

Sometimes I don't really get people.


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