[lbo-talk] Sexpresso coffee shops take Seattle by storm

[Sean Andrews]

On 2/4/07, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> However, unlike you, I think it's a good movie, albeit
> with some unfortunate b-movie trappings that make it
> see dumber than it really is.

I can definitely see your point on this and there are many things
about it that are funny as ideas but don't come off well when
realized.  And I really can't get past the chintzy announcer.

> Also on the news tonight: teens and young adults
> filming themselves barreling into fences to knock them
> over has become a kind of recreational sport for kids
> in New York. They videotape themselves ramming bodily
> into wooden fences and toppling them over, and post
> them to YouTube. Pure Idiocracy stuff.
>
> -B.

I definitely see what you're saying.  I guess I just didn't think that
the film put all that much distance between itself and its own sublime
fascination with imagining what the world would look like in the
future if the mediocrity of the present was allowed to continue.
Maybe this is what you mean by b-movie.  Because, in the end, though
it obviously thinks this would be a bad way for US society and culture
to turn out, it also thinks it would be pretty funny if it did.

It also has the added bonus of making a really mediocre guy into a
hero--not because he rises to a challenge or becomes a new person or
any of that bildungsroman stuff--but simply because he gets
transferred to another context where everyone else is so much dumber
than him he couldn't lose.

But I do think it would make a much better film if it was recut (and
the female character--who was a hooker! why choose this as the female
lead? was tweaked) so I guess I agree with you in principle.  In any
case, after you watch it, you definitely want to go read something
(and possibly take some courses in botany--just in case.)

s