I hate airplane travel. The long hours with nothing to do, expensive wifi and warm pink slime they call chicken; everything about it is truly unpleasant. Unfortunately, it’s an unavoidable aspect of my life and I spent upwards of 15 hours in the air on my way to and from London to watch the Clash Royale Championship World Finals. To distract myself from the arm rest that had somehow disappeared into the mass of the woman sitting next to me, I watched as many movies as I could. On a cocktail of free wine, beer and never-ending boredom, I wrote down my feelings for each. With some heavy editing and some major removal of gratuitous swearing and black heart emojis, I present my not-so scientific findings.
Baywatch: I really expected to hate this, like, a lot. I remember watching trailers for the 80s’ revival and lumping it alongside failed revivals of television shows from CEOs’ childhoods, like Starsky and Hutch. What I got was actually quite enjoyable, a kitschy little crime comedy where the Rock isn’t that overtly annoying. If you go into the experience not expecting a masterpiece or a visionary piece of cinema, you can actually enjoy yourself. Also, it’s pretty impressive what modern CGI can do to Pamela Anderson’s boobs.
Captain Underpants: As a kid, I loved the series of books where the world’s angriest principal gets turned into a semi-nude vigilante. Seeing as it was Dreamworks, who in my opinion, hasn’t made a solid banger of a movie since Shrek 3, I expected a train wreck. Instead, I got a solid throwback with tons of solid writing, acting and toilet humor. My sense of humor hasn’t matured much since I was seven, so I had a great time with Captain Underpants and it’s titular villain, Professor Poopypants. Anything that includes a sock puppet dream sequence deserves a view.
Despicable Me 3- I loved Balthazar Bratt, Despicable villain, though I’m not sure how much of it had to with Chardonnay at 30,000 feet. He shoots bubble gum, has an army of flying toys and a sassy robot sidekick made to sell toys. If the whole movie featured this character instead of Steve Carell attempting to do his best impression of Groo’s brother, this movie could have been a classic. Instead, we get all these weird subplots that try to give all the main characters something to do, for no reason other than to sell toys. I also really, really fucking hate minions. The banana turds with just enough personality to appease a focus group were annoying in their own solo movie, and I still hate them here.
Batman And Harley Quinn- At Comic Con this year, I got the chance to meet this movie’s writer, Bruce Timm, at a press roundtable. He seemed cranky and like he didn’t want to be there, unamused by nerds around him asking about his past achievements. In a moment of pure stupidity that I have played over and over in my head dozens of times since, I accidentally called him his much more successful protege, Paul Dini, causing Timm to leave the table and stand in the corner making angry faces at his phone. After watching this movie, I no longer feel bad for this transgression, because it’s a steaming pile of Killer Croc dung. The jokes are hacky, the animation is stilted and Nightwing fucks Harley Quinn in an incredibly uncomfortable scene on par with Batgirl and Batman in The Killing Joke.
The Emoji Movie- I watched the whole thing, because I passed out. I did dream about watching an ad for Twitter, though.
