Imagine That

Normally when I take off on a road trip, I like putting a lot of miles behind me as soon as possible, just to get up some momentum. Maybe it's the fact that my sister is shuttering up her place in New England, or the fact that I've been in motion so much lately, but this roadtrip has begun with the slowest of crawls.

I made it all of thirty-files miles on the first afternoon. Granted I didn't get started until midafternoon, but as I mentioned, I just had to stop and see a movie at the AMC in Tyngsboro one last time, and by the time I was done, I had just enough strength to pull off the road into a motel in Nashua.

On day two I dawdled in the motel until late morning, catching up this blog and then drove less than an hour north to the north side of Manchester, to make another farewell visit, this time to the Regal Cinemas second-run chain that sits atop a hillock beside I-93.

This was actually a must-visit, cleaning up things on my list. In particular there were a pair of Hollywood movies that had come out in June but had already gotten the boot from the cinemplexes, and which I wanted to see while I still had the chance. Actually there had been there such movies, but Brothers Bloom had already left the Regal. Must have been a real turkey. I'd been seeing the trailers since last October, and then kept delaying the release. I'll have to catch in on Redbox when it comes out a couple months from now.

It was a blistering hot day, as compared to the cold and snowy afternoons when I had last been up here, last December. I parked my car along the edge of the parking lot in the ample shade of some trees. Since I was early, I read from my copy of Fallen Founder about Aaron Burr for a half hour until it was time to go in. I felt like I was basting in the car while I read.

I love the ticket price---three bucks fifty at the Regal for the matinees. Can't beat it, even if part of goes into the pockets of Phil Anschutz and his personal Senator Michael Bennett. At least they're not getting much of my money.

First up on my list was the 12:50 showing of Imagine That, the Eddie Murphy vehicle which had opened and quickly closed to horrible reviews in June while I was in France.

I wanted to give the movie a fair chance. After all, every one panned the hell out of Meet Dave last summer. Although I didn't think it was a great movie, I actually laughed more than a few times during it.

One thing I remembered about the Regal Discount Cinema is that the projectors, or something else, scratch the hell out the prints. Just like when I saw How to Lose Friends and Alienate People last fall, I was going to have to see Imagine That between flickering lines of white on the screen. Not good. But I knew I'd get used to it after a while.

As you probably know, this is one of those "magic happens" movies. Eddie Murphy is Evan Danielson, a high-powered financial analyst. He is divorced and doesn't pay much attention to his young daughter, who seems lost in a world of imaginary friends.

The story is driven by the sudden ability of the daughter to get valuable insights into stock movements from her imaginary friends. At first Danielson (Murphy) thinks his daughter is crazy, and unloads on her for screwing up his notes with sparkles and crayon drawings. But then almost accidently he learns that she someone is able to channel the future. He then beocmes converted to her magic, and suddenly he is a whiz.

Of course what the movie is really about is Danielson's new ability to connect with his daughter. This is meant to be heartwarming. The magic is a complete crutch, and it is played as such, in a very contemporary way. It just happens, without any explanation.

Eventually Danielson will encounter difficulties, in the form of a rival (played in camp fashion by Thomas Hayden Church) who attempts to learn the secret of Danielson's newfound clairvoyance, and to sabotage him. This all builds up to a meeting with the "big boss" (Martin Sheen, well cast) to see which of the two rivals will become the next head of the division of the company.

I was suprised that even despite the gratuitous magical element, the story mostly works. Narrative speaking, it seemed to flow fairly well and I wasn't offended by any of the plot actions. Although I thought Murphy was fine, doing his usual schtick. I guess I'm sort of a fan, given that I liked his last movie too.

What sort of did offend me, however, were some of the premises of the plot. Let me explain: Danielson (Murphy) is a divorced workaholic who makes lots of money. All his exwife (Vanessa Williams) can do is bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch about how bad a father Danielson is, even though it appears she probably lives off his child support payments, given any realistic scenario. Likewise the daughter is petulant and withdrawn even though by the standards of just about any kid the world, she has a really, really good life. I couldn't help feel for the guy. Can't a financial anlayist get a break?

The movie seems to endorse our current cultural notion that it is the responsiblity of the parents to cater to the playful whims of their children, and to enter into the children's play worlds in order to, gee idunno, boost the kids' self-esteem I suppose. What happened to the idea that raising a kid is about introducing the kid to the reality of the adult world, and what really happens outside the world of imaginary friends?

I didn't think Danielson was that bad of a dad at the beginnign of the movie, but somehow our sentimental training is supposed to make us believe he is negligent. Worse yet, after Danielson spends an entire week living in his daughter's imaginary world, his wife still won't cut him the slightest slack at a moment when his entire career depends on it.

We get the same old cliche line about how Danielson has "two jobs," one of which is being a dad to his daughter, and she needs to know that "that job is just as imporant as his other one."

I call bullshit. What the movie really says is that he money-earning job should always take a backseat to anything related to his dad job.

There's a beautiful (and by that I mean horrid in a Postmodern sense) scene early in the movie that illustrates this well. Danielson, in the midst of an important business meeting, is called out of it for an "emergency" related to his daughter at school. He has to make a very awkward departure in front of an important client. What is the emergency? Is his daughter injured? In the hospital? No. His daughter won't come in from recess. It's not even the end of the school day. The school day is still going on.

If that had been me, I would have blown up at the crappy school teacher. That's your fucking job, lady! Deal with it! The WTF aspect of this was that Danielson lodges no such complaint. It's just assumed that the fact that she won't come in from recess is grounds to drag him away from whatever business he was conducting.

There were a few things about this movie that were actually entertaining. First off, the satire (I guess it was satire) of the current state of the financial investment business was sort of fun to watch. The movie suggests that being good sort of boils down to "magic." In the climax we got two versions, an authentic magic versus a fake won.

We've come a long way since Melanie Griffith accosted Phillip Bosco in the elevator in Working Girl (1988) to show him the proof that the portfolio he saw at the meeting was hers, and not Sigourney Weaver's. She drags out her newspaper clippings and recreates her thought process step by step.

But that was twenty years ago, at the front end of this long bubble, when the Fed was just ramping up the money creation process, to create a thousand new billionaires out of no real wealth but speculation. Now we've been reduced to unexplained magic. That says it all.

The other thing I really enjoyed about the movie was that it takes place in Denver. Not only was it shot on location, but it is full-on set in Denver, more than any other movie I have seen in years. It really embraces the city, with many familiar location shots to anyone who lives there. For my Colorado friends, it's worth seeing just for that.