BoxOffice® — Sometimes the Jokes Just Write Themselves (An Occasional Series)

Seriously -- sometimes they do. But since the joke I'm about to make will probably occur to somebody else before the film at whose expense I'm making it gets released in February, I figure I ought to rush it into print and get the credit.

But first, by way of introduction, I should point out that this past Friday I happened to be in the darkened vastness of my local Hell Octaplex, checking out some recent releases I hadn't gotten around to previously and...

Hey, wait a minute. That means it's time for STEVE'S MOVIE REVIEWS^TM!!!

The Tourist -- Surprisingly palatable wrong-guy-gets-mistaken-for-a-criminal glamorous romantic intrigue a la Hitchcock, although it only works as well as it does because of the chemistry between Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. (Had it starred -- as was originally planned -- Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron, I suspect it would have been unwatchable.) In any case, why didn't anybody ever tell me that Angie is smokin' hot?

Tron Legacy -- Very loud and very stupid, but hey, that Bruce Boxleitner is certainly holding up well.

Love and Other Drugs -- Stop sufferin', take Bufferin.

But I digress. In any case, as those who know me well have probably guessed, I was -- as is my wont -- taking devious advantage of AMC's before-noon half-price discount by sneaking into several more movies over the course of the day than I had actually purchased tickets for. I consider this to be Sticking It to the Man, by the way, but nobody really gives a crap because the theaters make all their money on the overpriced popcorn and Reese's Pieces (the latter were delightful, in case you were wondering.)

Anyway, one of the downsides of this little scam is that you have to endure a lot of trailers, and on this particular day, I think I endured more than twenty, each promoting a movie more insulting to one's intelligence than the last, or so it seemed. Seriously, there were people around me, not all of them geezers I might add, who were groaning even louder than I was, and during the trailer for Thor, I was groaning to beat the proverbial band.

In any case, here's the one that was, for me, the proverbial last straw, and -- as you've doubtless figured -- the one occasioning the titular joke of the day.

So, in that spirit ,please enjoy the trailer for yet another teens-with-special-powers-kind-of-like-vampires-but-they're-actually-aliens love story, the unfortunately monikered I Am Number Four --

...and perhaps forgive me when I say that, no, I think it's pretty obvious that this movie is going to be more like Number Two. If you know what I mean.

Thank you.

Sometimes the Jokes Just Write Themselves (An Occasional Series)

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