Knocked Up in the Cafe

A pair of free movie tickets have been sitting on our kitchen counter for the past six months; they were a "Secret Santa" gift we ended up with from a friend's Christmas Party we went to back in New Jersey in December. We had long since spent the $15 that accompanied the tickets (for soda and popcorn, presumably) but the tickets just sat there. We've gone to see several films since December, but always at a different theatre company or spur of the moment when we were without the tickets.

Finally, alas, we went and saw Knocked Up on Saturday night and it was, in a word, hysterical. Definitely funnier than 40 Year Old Virgin and far more believable too. The thing I really liked about this movie was that none of the dialogue seemed contrived. I could totally picture real people saying everything that was said in the movie. This should give you some sense as to how vulgar and crass my friends and I can be, but at the same time everything rang true. Which is a rarity. The other thing was that the rare sight gag or blunder wasn't over the top, but hit the spot just right. Definitely a good movie all the way around. Highly recommended.

That wasn't the only movie we saw this weekend. We also popped in the dvd for The Girl In the Cafe, which won an Emmy for "Best Made for TV Movie". It originally appeared on HBO sometime in 2006 and was about a fifties-ish man who works for the British government in finance who is devastatingly lonely and happens to meet a thirties-ish woman in a cafe who, surprisingly, finds hims somewhat appealing. The man, however, has a very intense job as one of the UK's primary negotiators at the G8 Summit and is essentially married to his job. He decides to take her to Iceland for the G8 Summit and, along the way, the two fall in love. This all comes unravelled when the girl begins lecturing the Chancellor about how little the G8 countries are doing to fight poverty and keep the children of Africa from dying. The movie is very well-acted (she won an Emmy), and is very interesting but it's not a comedy by any stretch. If you don't mind your dramas filled with awkward romance and heavy doses of political commentary, then this is a good movie to see. We enjoyed it, but it's definitely not for everyone.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Knocked Up was definitely an awesome movie. I was hysterical during parts of it. Like you said, it was much more 'real world' funny than 40 year old virgin.

~Erica