Category: Review

I learned only a couple of weeks ago that Tuck Everlasting is a “classic American novel” that I was probably supposed to have read somewhere along the way. I haven’t even bothered to try to locate the book to read it, I just went to see the movie instead. I may go find the book some other time. See if there’s a little more to it than they were able to put into the movie. In this review I’ll probably give away the entire story, but since it’s a “classic”, you probably already know.

As you may or may not be aware, Tuck Everlasting is a story about the Tuck family who have stumbled upon immortality, and the events surrounding their being found out by the world. Figuring at the center of the story is a young woman named Winnifred who stumbles just as haphazardly into the everlasting lives of the Tuck family as they did into immortality. The Tucks can’t let her just run off; they have to learn that they can trust her not to reveal their secret. In the days and weeks that pass where Winnie is hanging out in the forest, falling in love with a forever 17-year-old, having the time of her life, her family and the townspeople assume the worst and do everything they can to try to find her. Eventually someone does find her, and the Tucks, and the Tuck family has to run off into the night to escape, leaving Winnie with her family. That’s it.

The whole story. Girl is frustrated with her home life, runs off into the woods and spends a couple of weeks with some immortals who teach her the importance of living life and the danger of cheating death, girl returns to her family. I guess I was hoping for something more.

There was a little intrigue with a mischievous character who knew the Tucks’ secret & was trying to track them down so he could make a fortune selling immortality, but very little of it, and it ended weakly. There wasn’t much depth of philosophy about the nature and troubles of immortality, and much of the dialogue was poorly written. The exceptional cast did pretty well, considering what they had to work with. Oh, and plenty of good cinematography, but nothing to write home about.

Perhaps if you loved the book you’ll find more here than I did, because you’ll know the rest of the story. It just seemed a little short and a little empty to me.

Rúla Búla

Some time back, this Irish Pub opened up on Mill Avenue, just blocks from my home. I must have passed by it hundreds of times without going in. After a point it was funny that despite my Irish heritage and enjoyment of traditional Irish fare and settings I had never been in such a convenient hot spot, and I kept not going in because it was funnier for me to stay away. Zoe, too, seemed to be staying out of it for the same reason. Zoe, as you may know, has wisely selected Guinness as his beer of choice, a truly Irish experience. I have seen him on more than one occassion down an entire pint of Guinness faster than another person could drink one shot. Today we went to Rula Bula for lunch (Zoe paid for it, considering my recent loss of employment). It was delicious.

You can read more about the history of Rula Bula at their website, but believe it or not, the entire place was built in Ireland then shipped to Tempe and re-constructed. Truly Irish. The atmosphere at a late lunch on a weekday was defined almost entirely by the building, since few customers were there, and it was like stepping into a totally different place. It was very comfortable. Zoe and I began discussing that if/when Beer Club starts meeting again, Rula Bula would be an excellent place for it. You should take the opportunity if you are ever in downtown Tempe to at least step inside and get a feel for the place. More than any theme restaurant, they have a very powerful and appropriate ambiance.

Zoe began predictably with a ‘pint of the dark’ (Guinness, to those not in the know), and ordered the Shepherd’s Pie for lunch. I just had a water (my regular, as those of you in the know already know), but ordered the Irish Lamb Stew for lunch. Zoe said that the Shepherd’s Pie was some of the best he has ever eaten, and perhaps will post about the experience later. Both meals came with one of the best salads I’ve had in a restaurant – no iceberg lettuce to be seen, but romaine lettuce, spinach, and other tastier and more nutritious greens, with a light balsamic vinegarette, walnuts and other light seasonings. The lamb in my stew was unbelievably tender and the heady flavour of the lamb had seeped into the vegetables in the stew, including halved and perfectly cooked potatoes. The texture overall was very pleasing, and the meal was appropriately filling.

Not so filling that we didn’t order desert, though. Zoe and I ordered one each of their Guinness Chocolate Cake and Irish Bread pudding. The large serving size of the desserts was somewhat intimidating after our satisfying meals, but we divided each dessert and enjoyed both. The Guinness Chocolate cake was heavy, rich, and delicious. I prefer a moister cake personally, and am not a Guinness connoisseur, but Zoe indicated that it exceeded his expectations. The Irish Bread pudding was moist and well-spiced, with raisins as big and juicy as your head. Well, maybe not quite as juicy as your head. Still, the desserts were so delicious that we managed to finish them. I would definitely recommend that you try the Irish Bread Pudding; it inspired both of us to try to find/make a comparable bread pudding recipe on our own.

The lunch prices were very reasonable considering the quality of the food; everything on the menu looked delicious and the average price was about $7-8 per entree. I did not see their dinner menu, so cannot report on those prices. Our bartender/waiter indicated that their dinner portions were significantly larger (I doubt I could finish a dinner, if that is true), and that the head chef is actually Irish, a real plus and I’m sure the source of the quality of the dishes. A wonderful experience, a delicious meal, helpful staff; I definitely recommend that you check out Rula Bula.

You probably shouldn’t see this movie. I should have written this a week ago when I saw Trapped, but … I’ve been working and going to school and getting laid off and I hadn’t had the chance until today.

Anyway… Trapped. Starring Charlize Theron, Kevin Bacon, Courtney Love, some other actors, and a cute little girl. The basic story is that Kevin Bacon’s character works with his wife (Courtney Love) and his brother (some guy) to kidnap a series of children, each for 24 hours, and get away with it. Charlize Theron plays the mother of their 5th victim (cute girl). To get away with the kidnapping/extortion, the three kidnappers each kidnap one person; Kevin gets the wife (and usually coerces her into sex), Courtney gets the husband, and the brother gets the kid. They do it while the father is out of town, so that the kidnappers cannot be caught at the exchange of money for child – Courtney accepts the money from the father, the brother leaves the child in a crowded public park, and Kevin drops the mother off near the park when they have the money. A pretty good setup. They threaten that if the police are contacted one of them will come kill the child, so none of the four prior families have fought back or even tried to turn them in. This movie is about the fifth family.

I must say that based on the description so far, you’d think that the kidnappers would be the bad guys you’re supposed to hate, and the family are supposed to be the good guys you cheer for. I really tried. But Charlize’s character and her husband and even the daughter just kept doing stupider and stupider things throughout the course of the 24 hours. The kidnappers, while not entirely making good decisions throughout the movie, had a pretty clever plan and proved that they could followthrough by completing the first four kidnappings without any problems whatsoever. I almost admired them until the end of the movie when they started to get stupid.

Except they still weren’t as stupid as the kidnapees. Charlize understood that if she tried to call the police or fought Kevin or tried to escape that her daughter would be killed. The husband understood that if he didn’t get the money or fought Courtney or tried to contact the authorities that his wife AND daughter would be killed. The cute little girl surely understood that her life was in danger. Yet not one of them could go more than a few minutes without trying to escape, fighting their kidnappers, trying to contact the authorities, or doing other increasingly stupid things. Charlize took a scalpel and tried to cut off Kevin’s genitalia, knowing full well that if he bled to death and didn’t call his brother, or if he got pissed off and called his brother early, or if she did something stupid like threatening him with a very sharp knife, her daughter would die. The husband, knowing that his daughter is in the hands of people who could simply let her die of life-threatening asthma, strangle her, shoot her, rape her, whatever, and more than once he assaulted Courtney and even managed to paralyze her lungs so she nearly suffocated like his daughter could at any moment. The cute little girl pretended to go to the bathroom, stole a cellphone and ran off into the woods in the middle of the night, knowing that things like “running away from a killer”, “being scared for her life” and the like could instigate a lethal asthma attack at any time.

These are just a few examples of the stupidity in Trapped. There are many, many more, including a two-person airplane trying to land on a busy freeway full of speeding traffic and a kidnapee wilfully removing an FBI-placed wire right before vital information is revealed. From very shortly into the movie you will begin to hate the “good guys”, and before the movie is over, you will want to walk out so you don’t have to worry that they’re trying to end up dead or with a dead family member. I recommend that you do not see this movie.

Kevin Bacon does very well for the bulk of the movie, his acting top-notch. Charlize Theron is very convincinly stupid throughout. Courtney Love is just as sleazy as we have all come to expect. Yet it adds up to a very disappointing movie without a single redeeming character. Everyone but the brother does things to endanger the plan or endanger their own lives and the lives of their family, and we can’t like him because at one point when Kevin doesn’t call right on time he actually begins to kill the cute little girl.

Of course, if you want to find characters to hate that are unbelievably stupid coming together in a situation that could have gone a lot smoother than their behaviour allows, go for it. It’s only playing on a few screens though, since it’s such a bad movie.

According to the movie, “Serendipity” means “a happy accident”, but most of the accidents that occurred therein did not seem especially happy to me. Maybe just the first and last accidents seemed happy at all. The first was simple, elegant, and charming. In a crowded department store, hundreds of people consumed with the real spirit of Christmas (trying to figure out what obligatory gift to get for that near-stranger from work because they got YOU something in the first place), and we follow an accidentally mis-filed pair of black cashmere gloves downstairs and through this human chaos to where they get put on the appropriate rack and stay there for nary a second before:

Happy Accident Number One: Boy wants to buy pair of gloves for his girlfriend. Girl wants to buy pair of gloves for herself. The last pair of black cashmere gloves (apparently the last pair, ever) gets grabbed simultaneously by both boy and girl, and they are linked together for the first time by the tiny plastic hook holding one glove to the other.

They immediately find each other charming, and as you should have seen by now in countless trailers and TV spots, they spend a wonderful evening together, doing all sorts of cute romantic things and getting to know each other without going into too many details. Like last names. They end up writing their phone numbers down and not exchanging them, but instead putting them into circulation on money and inside a used book, with the idea that if they were “destined” to be together, the money and book would somehow reach the right hands. Of course, they don’t.

Seven years pass, and their lives go on, and they keep their eyes open for vandalized money and used books with other people’s notes in them, but somehow it never comes together. By this time, you really want them to be together, and you know how movies work, so you know that somehow they must come together. The rest of the movie serves the purpose of slowly convincing you that the overwhelming role of “destiny” is to keep these people apart. Every little thing that (some sad movie producer somewhere thinks) must be “happy accidents” seem only to create hundreds of very-close-but-not-quite connections between them.

Molly Shannon is introduced to drive the “happy” intention of these accidents home, only slipping once or twice out of character and into the sort of character that made her famous (but always just seemed annoying to me). The story is very well choreographed, and the initial romance really helps to draw you into every little reminder of their one night together and every wrong turn they take on each other’s trail. As the possibility of their finding each other before it is too late becomes increasingly hopeless, you are drawn down into hopelessness with them. The emotional impact of their story is very well crafted.

As for “Happy Accident Number Two”, you’ll have to wait to see exactly what that is, but let me just say that annoying cell phones interrupting romantic horse-drawn carriages are not always a bad thing. If you like romantic comedies and the idea of fate having a hand in true love, you’ll really like this movie. I really liked it.