This American Life: MOVIE EDITION.

When I was living in China, I only went to the movie theater twice. One time was to see "The Founding of a Republic," which was sort of interesting, and the other time was to see "Alice in Wonderland," which was sort of dreadful. Movies are expensive in China and, more importantly, they serve popcorn sweet. Sweet, sugary popcorn. I hope you understand how terrible that is.

So last night was my first foray back into the world of (American) movie-going. I went to see "Inception" by myself, only to be joined ten minutes later by my parents. #TAGALONGS! Just kidding. They're great. Things were going well so far, as demonstrated below:


Then there were a bunch of previews. Even better! I love previews. What I don't love are trailers that explain the entire movie and/or Zac Efron vehicles that use The National as background music. I don't need to be reminded of his weird face every time I listen to "So Far Around the Bend." Also, I really enjoyed the opening to "The Social Network," but even as an avid Facebook user and a big fan of both Andrew Garfield & Jesse Eisenberg, I think it'll be hard to make the life of Mark Zuckerberg even remotely interesting. So I remain skeptical.

Then the movie started. As expected, my mom walked out after twenty-five minutes. Maybe it was the fact that my dad was mocking it the entire time, but I just couldn't take this movie as seriously as it wanted me to. To paraphrase my brilliant friend Jordan, it's like they gave a first-year film student a $160 million dollar movie budget. Tae asked me what I didn't like about it, but since it was on Twitter, I had to respond in 140 characters or less, which was a good challenge.


To expand (just a bit), when you create a science fiction world, you also create a world of made-up logic. You ask the viewer to suspend their disbelief and join you in this world. But if you keep adding new rules to your creation, i.e. "Well, sure, you wake up when you die in the dream, but not if you're in a dream-within-a-dream!" and "Well, I'll give you a really powerful sedation so you don't wake up, but I've fixed the chemicals so it doesn't disrupt your inner ear balance!" and so on, eventually, the experience is cheapened.

I saw this movie because I heard good things about it and because I really enjoyed "The Dark Knight," which was clever and had some wicked humor in it. "Inception," on the other hand, just took itself Way. Too. Seriously. And lastly, while the hallway fighting sequence was really cool, and I would watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt do just about anything in a tailored suit and a snazzy tie, nothing about this movie actually felt like a dream. So far in my life, I've only encountered one film that accurately captures the feeling of a dream. Or, a nightmare.



(I still love going to the movies)