Cloverfield: You Make Me Want To Throw Up!

So we finally found some time to get out into society and watch a movie on the big screen this weekend.  The wife & I planned to see Cloverfield on Saturday and then Juno on Sunday – but like most things in our lives, we ended up being lazy and missing the latter of the two.  Saturday though, we got ready, got cash, got tickets, got popcorn, got drinks and got ready for a movie.

There are a few spoilers after this point, so I will be hiding the remainder of this post, in hopes to not ruin anyone’s “good time” by talking about this, that and the other.  If you wish to see a review of this film – I will do my best to give you my two cents after the jump.

Cloverfield is a documentary-type movie, along the lines of the Blair Witch Project.  A quote from the official website…

“Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city.  Told from the point of view of their video camera, the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal, horrifying event of their lives.”

Exactly – so are you getting this now?  Its a handy-cam shot movie from the point of view of someone actually in the chaos. 

No news to me, I knew what it was, loved the way Blair Witch was shot… not very impressed with Open Water – but this one had that unknown monster that I wanted to see.  The monster that viral marketing created such a buzz about on the internet.  So the handy-cam thing didn’t bother me one bit.   Until the movie started.

Holy… mother… 

Seriously, I have made fun of kids that have problems traveling due to motion sickness.  Made fun of my wife even, when she would be reading in the car and have to stop and practically go to sleep right that moment – because she was having a bout of motion sickness.  So was I ever suprised when halfway into the movie I was feelin’ a bit blah.  Yeah – mister tough guy, nothing phases me… motion sickness is for wussies… had motion sickness.

You have to understand that this movie isn’t just your normal handy-cam movie.  Imagine being at your little cousin’s birthday party taping and when you watch it back its a little shakey and you laugh and make a few comments on how whomever was taping had turrets and you were waiting for the profanity to start any moment.  Now… imagine that same scenario, but throw in a monster the size of downtown NY chasing your sin-covered ass through central park.  Yeah, it gets a little shakey at best.  It gets downright running-with-your-camera-in-one-hand-and-your-life-in-the-other… shakey.

So here I sit, when the monster is just starting to be seen in full force, and I have to spend about 5 out of every 20 minutes staring at the Exit sign, hoping I don’t blow my popcorn over the lady in front of me.  I would watch for a bit, stop – close my eyes, fan my fat ass with my hat, see if the Exit sign was still there to comfort me and then gather myself to watch another 5 minutes or so.  Repeat.  Rinse.

Shala has never seen me have this problem, so she is like…

“What is up?”

“This movie is making me sick?!”

“What?”

“The movie… I’m getting sick.”

“Like how?”

“Like I’m going to throw up.”

She laughs immediately, since she is thinking in her head that I’m prolly getting sick from the emotion of the movie, the gore perhaps, the circumstances… and not the fact that it looks like our nephew filmed it while cracked out on sugar.

“Like motion sickness.”

“Ooooooooooohhhh.”

Which makes her laugh even more, because of all the times I have told her how much of a wuss she was, or how only weak people got motion sickness.  She says…

“Do you want to leave?”

Thinking about the 25 bucks we have paid to sit in this germ infested seat, stick our shoes to this floor and eat this stale, butter-drenched popcorn… I quickly say… “NO“.

So the remainder of the movie I did my 5 out of 20 min routine and made it to the credits.

Word to the wise… don’t go and watch this movie if you are prone to motion sickness, unless you have medication.  Most theaters are putting up signs at the box office that says something to the same effect – but ours didn’t have it.  Honestly, I probably would have laughed at the sign and anyone poppin’ pills in order to watch the film anyhow, so it wouldn’t have done me any good.  But, just so you can have a personal account of it – it is true.

Ok… the movie itself.  The monster… HOLY MOLY, it is huge.  Destruction… major.  Get ready for some great effects (although filmed on a handy-cam).  I wasn’t totally blown away by the movie itself, but the idea was great – marketing leading up to it was awesome and the experience was top-notch.  Minus the throwing-up feeling about midway through.

The ending – not happy about that at all.  However, I did expect it to be that way.  I mean how can one wrap up a movie if it isn’t even supposed to be a movie right?  At the end of your home movies, do you give a synopsis and recap before turning the camera off?  Nope.  Neither does it.  Just disaster, pillaging… dead camera.  Thanks, good night.  Go home and hate your neighbors.  After throwing up on them.

Then you will see this small piece at the end, I guess when all the rocks and monsters were landing on them it happened to hit the record button to stop it from recording – instead of just crushing the entire thing… and we you see the video that has been being taped over the whole time.  Key the love story in the whole thing.  I am not even going to go into it, you should have known there would be one.

Anyhow – you just happen to see them taping the beach/ocean while talking and you see some astroid or something land in the ocean.  The stupid part is that no one happened to notice it on the whole entire earth prior, but on the video its their, just so happened it didn’t get erased by the hours of taping prior… and it was the very next thing that would have, had the monster not crushed the city at the exact time…  a little dumb if you ask me.

So kiss my ass Cloverfield.  Thanks for making me feel like a pansy, making my wife laugh at me and now call me a pansy and for giving me exactly what I thought you were… dissapointment.  Suck it Cloverfield and your marketing dept. for making it so hard not to go see.  I gotta go throw up now.  For more reasons than one.