Not bad…but not Pixar.

Okay, here’s the weird thing. Even though it stars people I like – Steve Carrell, Russell Brand, and the perfect-husband-height Jason Segel – and even though Gru is cute and the little girls are cute and the little evil details in the movie are awesome and the minions are now on my list of favorite things ever and the hero is a villain who doesn’t learn a lesson about not being a villain and you all know how I feel about that and there were quite a few things I laughed at, I’m going to let this movie throw off the perfect summer blockbuster tally a little.

I don’t know if my expectations for cleverness and wit were too high (because, like I said, it did make me laugh) or if the heavy-handed message bothered more than I’m realizing or if the EXTRAORDINARILY lackluster trailers put me in a bad mood, but for some reason, I left the movie feeling like I’d been let down. I think that’s as close as I’m going to get to putting it into words and I can’t really give you a good reason for it, so…

Summer blockbuster tally: 8-1-0 (See? It’s just a draw, so we’re only a little off the perfect record.)

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. . .

. . . AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

To be honest, I would have been happy if it was just two hours of the BWAAAAA BWAAAAA noise from the trailers, but…IT WAS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE!

Don’t worry, I’m not going to give anything away – I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to – but OMG, you need to see this movie, like, yesterday. SO GOOD! I mean, the plot is good – there’s a LOT going on, but it all works – the special effects are A-MAZ-ING, and who knew Joseph Gordon-Levitt could rock a three-piece suit in zero gravity so well.

If you need someone to go see it with you, CALL ME. I WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN!

SUCH A GOOD MOVIE! THE ENDING, OH, THE ENDING! SUCH A GOOD MOVIE!

Definitely the best movie of the summer so far and I really think it will be hard to beat. WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS! GET TO THE CINEMA!

Summer blockbuster tally = 8-0-0

I’m a Little Monster!

Where was I Thursday night? Oh, that’s right!

IT WAS AWESOME! It is actually impossible for me to verbalize the level of awesome that this was, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

She is an amazing performer and, I am convinced, a lot more talented than people give her credit for. And I know she’s kind of weird, but I think she thinks of herself as more of a performance artist, that Lady GaGa is some sort of very intricate installation piece of modern art. I mean, at one point, she is eaten by a giant Fame Monster and then is reborn wearing a bikini spouting showers of sparks (I’m still not sure how she walked because there were also sparks coming out of the bikini bottoms too, but somehow she managed it.). The only way that would be even more performance art-y is if she was locked in a perspex box suspended from a bridge!

And she talked to the crowd a lot which I really liked because it sort of hinted at a depth to Lady GaGa that you might not know is there just from watching her music videos or seeing pictures of her outrageous fashions. She also played a song from the new album she’s working on and it was very different from her dance/pop songs so far – very sort of down and dirty southern rock – and she played the hell out of the piano while draped, upside down at one point, across the top of it. Very impressive to say the least.

Like at the Kylie concerts, I did find myself a tad underdressed – sparkly makeup and crazy high heels and feather boas and Lady GaGa-inspired fashions abounded (and a lot of the girls were dressed up, too!). So keep that in mind if you go see her – plan to dress to the nines!

I will leave you with a quote from one of her conversations with the audience:

‘Remember that you’re a superstar and YOU WERE BORN THAT WAY, MOTHERFUCKERS!’

So true, Lady GaGa. So true.