A heinous thing happened on the way to the movies

Sharmaine Arnaiz is an actress mother who likes watching movies and is the first one who comes to mind when we set out to watch one. We like picking her brains and sharing observations, as we eavesdrop on others sitting close by. The best thing about the Filipino moviegoer, that foreigners hate, is that they talk loud, laugh loud and share opinions loudly.

We were out to watch a couple of films that appeared to be what kids would love. One was Jack the Giant Slayer, and the other Movie 43. The first was inspired by the children’s folktale Jack and the Beanstalk of a boy who traded the family cow for a bag of beans and was scolded by his mother who threw the beans out of the window. As Jack sleeps, the beans grow into a gigantic beanstalk which Jack climbs to arrive at a land of giants.

Jack the Giant Slayer sticks to the basic plot when a young farmhand opens a gateway that unleashes a fearsome race of giants out to reclaim the land that was once theirs. Jack (Nicholas Hoult) gets into a battle to stop them, save the Earth people and the Princess he loves. But the battles in 3D don’t give us anything new really but horrid close-ups of the ugliest and smellingest two- to three-headed giants you can imagine.

The Common Sense Media warned: Dark, dangerous and modern take on Jack and the Beanstalk. Parents need to know that Jack the Giant Slayer could be scary for younger kids, with danger around every corner, life-like digitized giants and intense battle scenes.

For Sharmaine, she’s glad to have watched it before bringing her kids. Definitely, not for children. When the lights in the theater were turned on, we saw more bored adults than children.

The other movie was one of a dream picture gone bad. Movie 43 is a 2013 American comedy co-directed and produced by Peter Farrelly, which stars one of the biggest ensemble casts ever in film, including Halle Berry, Gerard Butler, Anna Faris, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Johnny Knoxville, Emma Stone and Richard Gere. Upon release last Jan. 25, it was universally panned by critics, with the Chicago Sun-Times calling it “the Citizen Kane of awful” and others tagging it as one of the worst films ever made.

Of course, we didn’t know that when we watched. After the horrid experience with Jack the Giant Slayer, we decided to look for a feel-good, happy movie and Sharmaine picked Movie 43 which appeared harmless and at worst could only be boring. We admit to having been drawn by the presence of Hugh and Kate, and figured that the pair in a comedy could only be hilarious.

Entertaining and hilarious it was not. The only reactions we had were one of shock and utter disbelief. 

The film of 14 disparate stories had 13 directors, 18 writers, each with no idea what the others were doing. It took over four years to finish. Hugh was the first actor approached, given a script and agreed. He said, “Yeah I wanna do this, which I think is, quite frankly, incredibly ballsy. Because you could be made a fool of, or you could look silly, and there will be people who’d say, ‘That’s crazy. He should never have done it.’” But he did, and after him came Kate, and with both on the list, other stars quickly followed.

Kate plays a woman on a blind date with the city’s most eligible bachelor (Hugh). When they arrive at the restaurant, Kate is shocked when he removes his scarf, revealing a pair of testicles dangling from his neck. Over dinner, no one in the restaurant is surprised by this aberration.

Then we understood. This was a black comedy where vulgarity is often the medium for exposing such issues as homophobia, insanity, corruption, domestic violence, etc. Another sketch has an animated cartoon cat Beezel masturbating to photos of his owner Josh Duhamel and watching from a closet while Josh and girlfriend Elizabeth Banks make love.

What went wrong? Clearly, direction went wrong. Why did this great cast agree to this rubbish masquerading as art? Perhaps, they were bored with even larger Hollywood rubbish and wanted something new.

Whatever it was, Movie 43 is not for children and we allowed ourselves to be had!

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