Monday, April 24, 2006

The Movie: Hoot


The entling and I went to Walden's preview screening of Hoot on Good Friday. We got there very early and managed to get the last two seats that were not directly beneath the screen. I wished my oldest entling was there, with her press card as an entire row of seats was blocked off for the Press.

As folks got seated, scenes from the movie were showing on the screen in a slideshow but the soundtrack was from Return of the King. I had to laugh when we walked into the theater and withing 2 seconds, my daughter identified Aragorn's grunt as he blocks the sword of the King of the Dead. I think this family knows every exhale and sword klang in the LOTR movies.

Hoot was enjoyable. I think they were trying very hard to be true to the material. The hapless Officer Delinko displayed the comic cluelessness from the book and also the basic decency and doggedness of the character. The one weakness, in my opinion, was Mullet Fingers. I could not see Cody Linley as the mystical Mullet Fingers who is as much spirit of nature as kid. Brie Larson was very good as Beatrice and Logan Lerman as Roy was excellent. The character of Curly played by Tim Blake Nelson, was not nearly mean or weird enough.

Florida is on beautiful display. In a live Q&A following the movie, Jimmy Buffet and Carl Hiaasen along with the director and producer persons, talked about making the movie. The questions were interesting but after the 4th question about the environmental message of the movie we got restless and moved toward the exits, without hearing Jimmy sing. Could someone say, "He has answered that question 12 different ways now, can we move on?" Hiaasen did say (and repeated) that he wanted to write a book were the owls he remembered from his boyhood won against the developers for a change.

Possibly the most intelligent comments came from Brie Larson who shared that she is an avid reader. She commented that kids at school are always asking her "Why do you read so much?" not being able to imagine reading for pleasure instead of just for an assignment. Her comment resonated with my entling who fields that question on almost a daily basis.

It was fun. The owls are very dear.

No comments: