The title of this post is a phrase that Wil Wheaton frequently types when he writes columns about unintentionally getting old and having little patience for…whatever it is he has just discovered he has little patience for.  I know it is a reference to something funny but seeing as how we didn’t get home from the Watchmen midnight release until after three this morning I am too tired to look it up.

So.  The Watchmen.  A seriously highly anticipated movie whose release date was assumed to be so drooled over that the theater down the road from my house had three screens open for the midnight release of the movie.  Which, you know if it were Roseburg and there were only two movie theaters I understand but this is the big city.  I can think of at least seven other theaters within spitting distance from my house that also had midnight releases happening.  This meant that our theater was only about half full but for me? That was a pretty good thing.  Will hates crowds and I have a really hard time not making fun of people out loud when they are unbelievably stupid.  But we’ll get to that in a minute. First, the movie!

I liked this movie a lot.  I haven’t read the comic yet so there were a lot of little nuances that I missed that Will pointed out to me while we were driving home and getting ready for bed that helped me to have an even higher appreciation for the story than I did while I was watching it.  Obviously if you’ve read the book you already know the plot and the major action points, but if you’re like me and haven’t read the book I don’t want to go too much into the details and spoil it for you.  That said:

I liked that there weren’t a lot of huge names playing the various roles in this movie.  Obviously getting to watch Denny be a jackass badass (oh yeah I said it like that on purpose) was awesome¹  and I enjoyed seeing that girl from Spin City and Son in Law (among other things) play the aged superhero who hates her retirement.  I’m fairly certain that this movie will put a lot of those actors’ faces on the cover of US Weekly before too long.

The soundtrack to the movie? Kicks So. Much. Ass.  I want it.  I want it now.

There was entirely too much swinging blue penis in this movie.  Oh my god, put on some pants!  Even Will was like “okay, I know from reading the comic that he walks around naked but wow” to which I replied “that’s just too much Billy Crudup.”  I’m going to guess (read: feverishly hope) that that was CGI’d in because a) I’d feel really bad if Billy Crudup had to walk around all naked with a bunch of special effects computer sensor thingies attached to his…little Billy all day every day on set and b) if they made a special suit for him to wear I hope he didn’t actually have to put…himself…into a specially dangling suity penis because that would probably be incredibly uncomfortable.

So yeah, the movie was fun.  And awesome.  And has a message.  And kept very well to the time in which it was set and written.  But the theater going experience?  Um…

Actually the theater itself was okay.  It wasn’t jam packed full of people like I had thought it would be and our theater was already open for seating when we got there (two hours early) so we didnt’ have to worry about trying to hold a place in line or dealing with being in a crowded (or not so much as it turned out) lobby for two hours and then running for seats.  We picked our two favorite opening-night crowd seats (very back row right at the top of the stairs so that nobody could sit in front of us and we wouldn’t have to worry about people getting up and having to scoot past us every ten minutes until the movie started).  Unfortunately we ended up sharing our row with this group of late teens aged boys (I say that because they talked about having to work so I’m pretty sure they weren’t younger than 16) who were… well let’s just say that even though the book I brought to pass the time was open I wasn’t reading it.  I was eavesdropping.  And having a really hard time not making fun of them to Will, which resorted in me making these quiet snoring ² sounds while Will whispered “be nice, hold it in and put it in your blog in the morning.”  Here are a few of the highlights from my two hours of eavesdropping:

How there was no way that Indiana Jones could survive a nuclear blast in a refrigerator because Home Depot hasn’t ever sold refrigerators that tough and an argument over whether George Lucas or Steven Spielberg should direct the next movie in the series because “you know there’s totally going to be a sequel to that.”

An argument about whether there were going to be any more Bond movies because they were pretty certain that Quantum Solace was only made because people enjoyed the first movie so much that they had to come up with more story for Daniel Craig to act out followed by an argument about whether or not James Bond was actually a series because one of them read on IMDB that Daniel Craig is signed up for more Bond flicks. I know the youngun’s might not understand about the previous Bond movies or even have noticed the books in the libraries or bookstores (especially given today’s teenage male’s propensity for avoiding anything that is not shiny, related to anime or featuring naked girly boobies on the cover) but how do you not notice all of the Bond movie sets on sale at Best Buy?

An argument about who wrote Good Will Hunting: Matt Damon OR Ben Affleck OR that old comedian guy OR Kevin Smith and whether it was the superstar Matt Damon who helped Ben Affleck get cast in Good Will Hunting or the superstar Ben Affleck who did his friend Matt Damon a favor and what was that movie about anyway?

A lengthy discussion of whether or not the literary genius of Dragonball Z would translate to film and how it should be made by the same guys who made the first Batman movie because Batman Begins was totally the best way to put the Batman comics on film and if they could get it right on the first try then they could totally do Dragonball Z justice.

A discussion of how George Lucas should have stopped the Star Wars movies after Episode three because those “straight to video” episodes 4, 5 and 6 just aren’t as well done and their story lines have been done, like, a million times already.

At one point I looked at Will and asked “is my hair on fire? Because I think my brain is boiling!”

I know that I’m a movie/television snob.  I know that having majored in English Lit and worked in a bookstore for six years gives me some knowledge that others might not have.  I know that I am smug and haughty and snarky (hello, it’s totally my Blog’s title for Chrissakes) but oh. my. god.

In conclusion: Yes, go see the Watchmen! Totally worth the price of seeing it in the theater.  Just make sure you don’t sit near any teenage boys or your head might explode.