Monday, September 28, 2009

Surrogates

Wow, look at the new Robo-digs, huh? Nice, clean black with the logo on top. Very pretty. Don't get me wrong, I'll always look back on the pea soup green days with a wistful tear in my eye. But progress is progress.

I'm getting sidetracked. What did I want to talk about today?

AH YES! Surrogates.

Not like surrogate mothers (although did you hear about the couple that tried to do the test tube baby thing only to find out that the doctor knocked her up with the wrong sperm? How messed up is that?)

No, like the movie starring Bruce Willis and, eh, some other people. Ving Rhames, the farmer from Babe, then a bunch of actors I've never seen before.

Quick synopsis for you, courtesy of the IMDB: "Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop (Willis) is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others’ surrogates."

Basically, instead of people walking around and having to actually do things for themselves, they sit in a chair and operate / inhabit these surrogate robot things, which basically allow them to live their lives without leaving their home. And then, if your surrogate gets killed or something, you can just get another surrogate robot thingy and it's like a do over.

It's a lazy man's paradise.

Rotten Tomatoes currently gives it a 35% suck percentage, which is a little harsh I think. The movie, it mean, it was popcorn: you go, you watch the explosions, the premise is kind of cool, the script isn't anything fantastic but overall you have a good time.

There's nothing wrong with that. Not every movie can be brilliant. And yeah, I realize there's supposed to be a none-too-subtle message about how people need to stop spending so much time on their goddamn Nintendo machines and more time actually talking to people and blah blah blah. But whatever. Mostly, I came away from the movie thinking about what I would do if I had a surrogate.

Pretty much everything I came up with involved leaping off of bridges or holding up banks or doing various inappropriate things in public. This should surprise no one.

4 comments:

Crump said...

but I love my Nintendo machine~

Alisa said...

Rotten toes is kind of snobby with their ratings sometimes, plus maybe the harshness has to do with the fact that Surrogates completely dissed the media, and did not allow for any media/critics screenings before the movie came out, which was kind of odd, and a first, I think.

Alisa said...

oh, i mean with RT it's a percentages based on the culmative from critics, this maybe a lot of the critics were bitter about not having been able to prescreen it, and then were unduly harsh on it. just a guess. ??

Unknown said...

Thanks, Aly. That would make sense.

I always just assumed the suck percentage was due to the fact that critics hate fun. But then, I tend to oversimplify things.

For those interested: Surrogates is now a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes instead of the 35% from Monday. This means that, between Monday and today, Surrogates has found a way to suck 3% less.

WV: Catiner, a canteen full of cats.