If you haven't already seen this movie,

DON'T DO IT!

This movie is an incredible dog, and the ONLY reason it got one $ was because of the ADORABLE kitten in the middle, and because I think I was actually forced to laugh once by something someone said.

But this movie was UNBELIEVEABLY bad, worse even than Hellboy or Attack of the Clones or even League of Extraordinarily Annoying Gentlemen, if only because it was SO INCREDIBLY BORING.

This was a big budget action movie, the big Christmas release, with Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johanssen. Frank Miller, the graphic novel wunderkind, whose touch is golden, wrote and directed it. And yes, it was unbelieveably boring.

You know, that morning Maid-of-Awesome and I had been emailing about going to see this movie. I found the times at a local theater, one of four owned by the same chain. It's at the Pruneyard, I emailed her, at 2 or at 3. So she talked to The Boyfriend, and they said they'd meet me at 1:40 for the 2 pm show.

We all got there, and managed to park, and met up. We were amazed there were no lines, two days after it opened. We went to the box office. And found out that I had been wrong, it wasn't at the Pruneyard, it was downtown. The universe was trying to tell me not to see this movie... but I didn't listen.

So we had lunch, and took off in our seperate cars for the downtown theater where it was REALLY playing, for the 3 pm show. On the way, I tried to turn the wrong way down a one-way street. And THAT might have been preferable to seeing this stinker. But no. I arrived safely at the theater, and there was STILL NO LINE. Hm, I thought, this does not bode well.

So the movie started. After twenty minutes of staring at the screen numbly, I turned to Maid-of-Awesome and said, Is it me, or is this just really stupid and boring? Stupid and boring, she said, rolling her eyes.

Yes, there were some good cats, and in fact they were the best part of the movie. Nothing was good in this movie except the cats who were (for no explainable reason) the Spirit's buddies, in that they hung around him, and one ADORABLE fluffy kitten they melted halfway through (to show what a badass Samuel L. Jackson is, since he couldn't convince us of that with his acting).

This kitten was so adorable it had to be played by THREE kittens (true, check the credits). And going on about how adorable this kitten was would be so preferable to continuing the review...well, I just went all over the web trying to find a picture of that adorable kitten to put here to beguile you, but no luck.* Trust me, it was a beautiful fluffy white adorableness with blue eyes named (in the movie) Muffin. No, you don't actually see it melt, they get it to drink something and a lot of fog comes up...and the liquid it drank gets bigger...and then there's almost nothing left...

But I must go back to The Hell That Is My Review. You know any movie where the kitten they melted is infinitely more attractive than any of the humans has big problems. And truthfully, except for the acting, script and camerawork, this one was okay...'nuf sed? Oh, and the STUPID jokes. And all the gross stuff they threw in just to make you go, EEEW. And...

This was so bad that as the credit crawl came up, Maid-of-Awesome raised her mighty middle finger to the screen and as each of the names scrolled by said, **** you. And **** you. And **** you... but you get the picture. It wasn't pretty. Funny, but not pretty.

So there you have it. Skip it, it truly isn't worth seeing.

*Two months later, I hit the jackpot. On a website devoted to Frank Miller there's a posting about the kittens used in the movie, AND A PICTURE. I snagged a copy of the pic, in case the blog posting goes away...and here they are: