This is pretty much The Brick, part two. Lots of lovely images glued together around an essentially boring story.

After Matchpoint, I was reluctant to see another Woody Allen remake of a Woody Allen film. But I had just had some bad news and needed entertainment to give me a bit of a lift. Scoop worked like a charm. It was funny and sweet with enough action and suspense to make me believe I did not know how it was going to end.

Summarizing State Ideology is so easy.

Yawn! What a boring movie.

It is not so much the boredom that got me. It was Lois Lane. Or lack there of. I’ve grown up with Zagor and Alan Ford rather than Superman. The only memories I have of Superman are films from the 80s. I’ve watched “Superman II” recently (it was on TV while my back was out) and really liked it. I liked Lois Lane. She is cool. She is smart and witty and fun. In fact, if Superman was stuck under a rock for half the movie, she could still carry the action. Lois Lane in “Superman Returns” is such a wretched and pointless creature. Except for some annoying angst, she has no personality. Well, you say, it is the age of femininity, they have replaced her career orientation with motherhood. If at least she was an affectionate mother! There is this scene where she is stuck in a locked box that is slowly sinking into the ocean with her 5 year old son for about half an hour. During this time she is sitting on the opposite side of the box. I don’t know anything about motherhood, but if I were in similar situation I would clutch and hug my child. What were the filmmakers thinking!!!

I think this is just a symptom of a larger trend in mainstream cinema. The female love interests are becoming faceless and boring. This is not necessarily true when the woman is the lead in the story (for example The Devil Wears Prada), but Chris and I could only identify two mainstream films we have seen in last two years where the female love interest had character (40 Year Old Virgin and Casanova). Similar thing is happening with rom-coms, but I’ll let this article from cbc speak for itself on the subject.

So I’ve seen two feel-good films in the row. What shall I see next?

It amuses me when films are set in “NYC” and/or “Paris” the film makers still have the characters stand in the middle of the road to have important and heightened discussions. There were at least three or four such discussions in this movie in both cities. The best part is that one of the characters gets hit by a NYC taxi half way through the film and her friends still stand in the middle of the road for important discussions after that.