A Bad Dream

Last night, my girlfriend Ioana and I saw 'Dreamgirls' in Newport Mall right here in Jersey City. If you're having trouble with that name, it's pronounced Joana. Really, it's Romanian and it's pronounced 'you-wanna'. OK, not exactly but I can't pronounce it right in Romanian so I just say Joana. Sometimes I call her Iona just to get a rise out of her. I digress.
Anyway, so I bought the tickets, met up with my better half (scoring a point or two if she's reading) and went to the movie.
Now, we walk into the theater and it's about 60% full. The theater, though, is small. The screen felt like a big plasma screen TV. We pick a seat and sit.
Not long after the movie starts, this girl to our left calls her friend on her phone and proceeds to have a long conversation on speaker phone. Not to be undone, her boyfriend whips out his blackberry and starts waving it around, checking emails and making his own calls. During one of 'Effie's' (played by Jennifer Hudson, the new media darling) songs, the guy behind decided he wanted to get in on all the fun. He started to add his own loud whistels (the two hand in the mouth kind) punctuated with some 'UH!!!!!'s, 'YEAH!!!!'s and 'YOU GO GIRL!!!!!!'s. A baby started crying soon after, followed by more phone calls from the power couple to the left, to the left. It was completely ridiculous, I think I saw a twister game break out in the corner. A-mazing. At one point, I turned to Ioana and said, loud enough to be heard, 'are we in the movie or the zoo? These people are acting like animals.' She got upset and said something about me making the situation worse. She then turned to the sixteen year old girl and said, 'Excuse me can you stop talking on the phone?' The girl looked at her with a like she had been told that no one is allowed to wear shoes in theater effective immediately. She sort of quieted down for a while but then started up again. I was reaching the explosion point. I'm pretty relaxed, but when I get to the point where I'm pissed I get like beyond reason, beyond good taste and beyond all reasonable levels of vengeance pissed. I was almost there. I was making plans, I had just the right insults for the gangster-blackberry guy and just the right trajectory worked out for his girlfriend's phone - I think I could have caught the whistler's head and still hit the wall hard enough to have broken it. Anyway, I'm sitting there steaming, Big Pun is on his blackberry, the guy behind me is yelling and whistling, babies are crying and I turn to Ioana and say 'OK, time to leave.' She refused and again goes to would-be JLo and Marc Antony and says 'We're in a movie, why are you talking?' The girl replies, indignant, 'because I wanted to talk to my friend'. You got the sense that it didn't even occur to her that it was inappropriate. My girlfriend said, 'OK but I paid money to be here and I just want to watch this movie and hear what they say'. Again, the logic was lost on them. Ioana may have well been speaking Romanian by the look on their faces. This was followed by a 'YEA!!!!, UHHH!!!! ALRIGHT!!!' from behind us. I just started laughing, having reached the 'acceptance' point of the situation. The movie pretty much went on like this, as if everyone was in their own 'Choose Your Own Adventure' experience. It ended, we left, my girlfriend complained to the manager and we got our money back, which was nice.
Anyway, I bring this up because maybe it colored my experience but this movie has been getting a LOT of press. Everyone is indignant that it didn't get best picture. Jennifer Hudson is getting talk for 'best actress' or was it supporting actress? Awards awards awards!
I'm here to tell that it just wasn't that good. Here's why:

• It was too long. At the end I just wanted to fucking thing to be over. Keep in mind the aforementioned Carnival in which it was viewed, maybe that is why but I don't think it was the only reason.
• They couldn't decide if it was a musical or a movie about music. Here's what I mean: you've seen musicals before, right? OK. You have to suspend disbelief. It's ok that the guy at the restaurant is singing 3 verses about wanting, say, bacon and eggs. You just accept it. The dialogue is overdone. Whatever. In a regular movie, usually the scenes are realistic, you feel like the conversations sounds like conversations. This movie bounced back and forth. For the most part it was a movie about music but like two or three times they'd just break out in song. It just didn't feel like it worked.
• I feel like I should have more bullet points now that I've started them but it was OK. Pretty good. That's it. Eddie Murphy was very good and could sing pretty well. He was in the movie for maybe 20 minutes. Effie - Hudson, has a great voice. I mean really great. Beyonce is hot and she was good, Jamie Fox was good. Everyone was good. The plot was very cliche and it mostly worked itself from song to song and that was pretty much it. It was definitely not an injustice that this didn't get nominated for an Oscar.

So what's my point? I'm not sure but I guess: Newport Theater is a shitty place to see a movie and the movie gets a solid 'B'. Fairly entertaining, nothing that special. Yawn.