Cowboys and Aliens, and Vitamin Water, and Ticket Kiosk Machines Etc.Etc.

The journey to Cowboys and Aliens started early in the day. I needed to drop my car off to our family mechanic to have an oil change done, and to also have my air conditioning looked at. Turns out, the air conditioning problem is some kind of weird electronic one, where the computer tells the mechanics equipment that the A/C is on without it being on. Skynet baby, just you watch. This thing only wants to work when it's mildly warm outside. Where is it when you can feel the sweat pool behind your knees collect and make a small crawl all the way down your socks? Yeah, Skynet.

Skynet. Just watch when it becomes self-aware.
Maybe they'll do Terminator and Shaka Zuku Tribesmen next.
Directed by Jon Favreau, Produced by Steven Spielberg, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
and the dude from Amistad.

Anyways, the day was a fun one. Chris Williams came over complete with a self-made cornhole set, which was very confusing to me when this was discussed over the phone. Turns out it's that game with two wood planks with a hole cut out that each team throws beanbags at; the goal being to throw your beanbag in the hole. Cornhole. 

Oh. That cornhole. You have to get your beanbag
into the hole.

After dinner and a few beers we decided to go see a movie. It was a choice between Captain America and Cowboys and Aliens. Although I remember wanting to see Cowboys and Aliens, I had heard it was a huge stinkbomb. But I had already seen Captain America, which was surprisingly good. I wouldn't have minded seeing Captain America again, honestly. It's a movie made to watch after a day of Mid-West leisure sports, six-packs of beer and charred meats over the grill.

We finally decided on Cowboys and Aliens. First we needed something to drink. So we decided on vitamin waters, because in an inebriated state what is better than vitamin water? It's got vitamins in it.

We went to the high-tech movie theatre at the Deer Park Outlets. For those who haven't been there, it's designed like a modern-outdoor-mall-city, almost like what you find walking through a casino in Vegas. It's got all the rich shoppes and higher end fast-food restaurants like Caesar's Palace does, with the same sort of design, but just outdoors. It's a contradiction of a location, much like our movie, but more on that in a bit.

Unable to deal with a cashier clerk, or wait patiently through a short line, we decided to buy our tickets at the side credit card kiosk. We walked into our theatre just in time. In time for ten minutes of the high-production value commercials that Coca-Cola and General Motors rolls out only in movie theatres, free of the broadcast time limits that television puts on them. When one is three sheets in the wind, these commercials are fascinating to watch. They trick you into thinking they are the new badass summer movie, only to reveal that they just want to sell you a Beamer.

Then the trailers start...and for twenty minutes you forget what movie you are even there to see in the first place.

It finally starts. And at first, it's very good.

Daniel Craig plays your typical Western hero, the man-with-no-name. There is a definitive Western feel, with of course a high-budget, but all the factors are their. Harrison Ford plays Dolarhyde (a cool Western name) as a gruff ex-colonel who is tough as nails and runs the town of Absolution by way of his cattle business. Because of course, the one who runs the cattle also gets to boss the town around; it's one of those cliche western deals that I never quite understood...oh well.

The first twenty minutes are near perfection. Daniel Craig pulls if off playing the tough cowboy character and Director Jon Favreau immerses the audiences immediately into this Western-genre film. But wait...there's aliens??

And not some pod people aliens or something. They are two-legged behemoths with the physical build of a WWE Heavyweight and the skin of an iguana, they are basically man-guanas. They also have an obligatory chest cavity that folds out to reveal a pair of slimy three-fingered hands that are only there apparently to feel up the young boys of the movie.

After twenty minutes they show up and boy does the movie change. Daniel Craig starts to talk. Unfortunately he shouldn't, his accent sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the other actors who try their best to throw on a Western drawl in their accents. Gruffly played Harrison Ford goes soft, and becomes the films father-figure. Sam Rockwell can't shoot a gun, but hmm, I wonder if he'll learn how to shoot by the end of the movie? That's the thing, after only a few short minutes and when the aliens are introduced the movie goes by the numbers, hitting every cliche of each Western and Alien-Invasion genres of movies. What could've been a really cool blend of the genres, something truly different and original, becomes a standard big-budget and bloated camp-fest. It's a shame really, because the actors involved are all very good and deserve better. Jon Favreau has proven his directing chops in the past with Iron Man, but here, he can't control the swerves that the film's script gives him.

Just think about taking it off dude. Easy as that.

Speaking of the script, it is downright awful. For instance, later in the film, Olivia Wilde's character asks Daniel Craig to take off the bracelet he is wearing. Up to that point, he hasn't figured out how to take it off, but knows how to use it as a weapon against the aliens....so, she tells him to simply "think about" taking it off and it will come off. Then she kisses him, and it comes off. The problem here is that in the first scene he tries desperately to take the thing off by smashing it with a rock. Wouldn't he have been thinking about taking it off as he smashes away at it???

I don't remember seeing a movie that made me miss the trailers when the projector started.

I give Cowboys and Aliens a very disappointing one and a half starts (out of four).