A tale of two movies: Am I getting dumber?

Good morning!

As many of you know, one of my favorite TV shows of all time is "Friends."  While I was a decade older and settled in the suburbs while Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Joey, and Chandler were living single in New York, the show did bring out countless universal truths.

The one I want to deal with today is movies. Watch this clip and then I'll get to the point.

See, Rachel told people her favorite movie was "Dangerous Liaisons."  I've seen that movie. It's high brow. I've also seen it on stage.  It's still high brow, but it's live and it makes me feel all cultured.  "Weekend at Bernie's"  yeah, not so much with the high brow.

And yet, it's a funny movie that's often referred to in our culture.  Whereas, the last time anyone talked about Dangerous Liaisons was the conversation about whether the play was better than the movie.  (It was, in case you wondered.)

We like what we like.  We know we should like the intelligent, high brow movies, but "Weekend at Bernie's" is the one we re watch time and time again.

Which brings me to my movie viewing last night.  I rented "Mr. Turner."  It's an Oscar nominated film about a 18th century British artist going through his interesting life.  Great cinematography, great actors, great subject.

And I couldn't make it to the end.  I couldn't make it past the first forty five minutes.

I was hating myself, but it was a seriously boring movie.  I mean, really, really dull.

And then Skippy came home, and his friend Leia showed up. They ordered pizza and wings and popped in the 2001 movie "Wet hot American Summer."

The title says it all, there's really no guessing about what's going on.  It's a movie set in a summer camp in 1981.  It's a brilliant spoof on all the non john Hughes films of the 1980's that were simply gratuitous "jiggle films."  I was laughing until I wept. The 20-somethings watching this with me were lost most of the time, so I had to explain much of the film to them.  It was a fantastic 97 minutes.

So, am I getting dumber?

I mean, I love historical movies. I love biopics.  And yet I had no interest in Mr. Turner.  But turn on a teen romp and I was all over it.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY BRAIN?

Apparently I'm just getting dumber.  I have tickets in the next couple weeks to see "Streetcar Named Desire" and "Othello." Maybe I should give those to someone who would appreciate them while I check out an Adam Sandler retrospective.