Please George, Say It Isn't So

Last night, Andrew and I finally went to see Star Wars III. For anyone who hasn’t yet seen it and plans to, (I think we are probably the last people on earth to see it anyway) I will be giving away the oh, so incredible plot twists. But before I get to the heart of this incredible piece of cinematic genius … let me tell you about our theatre experience.

This was the first time Drew and I went to a movie theatre in Amsterdam together. The only other time I had gone, was with Marie-anne, last year at The Movies. This time, we took the tram down to the Pathé Tuschinski theatre. This is an Art Deco theatre in the heart of A’dam. It is elaborately decorated inside and out. You can also rent love seats and there is a VIP area as well. We sat in the peasant seats which were still very comfy and you had a feeling of stepping back in time. There was also a bit of a difference as to what was on sale at the concession stand. There was the traditional popcorn (although it wasn’t soaked with fake butter flavored corn syrup as it is at home), nachos, pop and candy. However, there was also beer, coolers, wine, champagne, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream tubs. Lekker! The tickets are sold as assigned seats so no hassles about who sits where. The theatre was pretty empty anyway. After the requisite 20 mins of previews, the movie began.

Let me start by saying I had VERY low expectations of this movie. The second one was more or less dreadful because of the dialogue. I had heard that no lessons were learned from this. George, do us a favor and hire writers. I speculated that maybe it was a better experience for the Dutch because in reading the subtitles maybe you avoided some of the terrible dialogue … but no, they came out of the theatre shaking their heads as well. I suppose, even in reading the text, you could still feel the terrible over acting that was going on. I’m sure Samuel L. begged to be killed off in this movie sooner and lost the fight, because his deliveries were so bad. Of course the sets and graphics were spectacular but it really wasn’t anything that wasn’t done in the previous movies. We had already seen Yoda kicking butt, so even that wasn’t a surprise. The only thing I did enjoy were the Wookies, cheesy as that part was.

When Darth/Anakin finally gets burnt to a crisp and left for dead I thought ‘at least now it’s over…’ but no. I guess they assumed that movie goers are sooo stupid, they had to spell everything out for us so we didn’t have to use an iota of brain power to figure out how it all fell into place. When Darth realizes that he killed Padme and screamed Noooooooooo! I honestly said out loud … “You have GOT to be kidding me!” I could almost hear George saying ‘No, make it CHEESIER! Overact it MORE!’ I think from now on whenever someone asks me a question that requires a negative response, I am going to respond this way. For example … “Alison, do you like broccoli?” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” (Falls to knees and throws fists in the air) Andrew and I think it would make a GREAT musical … I hope, in the future, I can watch it and laugh at the cheese, but right now the pain is just too raw.