Prequel Thoughts (Yes. Really.)

No, they really aren't good!

Disney Plus gave me a chance to revisit the Star Wars prequels.  I have copies gathering dust on a shelf, but I thought I’d sample the new streaming service with some movies I haven’t seen in a long time. 

Truthfully, I didn’t watch them all the way.  I kinda scrubbed through the first two.  I’ll probably sit through the entire third one only because I’ve seen it the fewest times.  But, I’m not hopeful.  They’re still not good.

I’d seen Episodes I and II multiple times because they came out when my boys were little.  They were into everything.  The figures, the lightsabers, the ships, the robots.  We had board games and video games.  They dressed up Star Wars for Halloween.  I loved that so much.  But the movies themselves, they never really stuck.

I’ve rewritten them so many times in my head and I think I have solid fixes for everything.  It’s all for naught because they are what they are and they will never be changed.  It was a multi-billion missed opportunity, even though all of the movies were financially successful. 

My only thought last night as I watched them was, which one sucks more and why?

Movies, especially fantasy and sci-fi, are allowed one or two sins. A miscasting, a plot hole, dialogue that’s a little flat, dated special effects, shitty music.  Every movie gets at least one, maybe two of these, and can still be considered good or at least a solid film experience.  If you start having more than two, you might be faced with a turd.  The cool thing is these sins occur in the eye of the beholder, and that’s where arguments begin. 

The Phantom Menace has too many sins. Lucas’ traditionally wooden dialogue seems almost petrified when the actors deliver it and the lessons that he learned in the original series aren’t used.  The originals are fun, with moments of melodrama sprinkled throughout to give them some dramatic weight.  Think about all the old scenes on the Falcon.  Jokes, levity, flirting, and you get the exposition out there.  The quiet and solemn scenes only happen when Vader and the Emperor hash out their evil shit.  Phantom is almost all solemn scenes.  Lots of slow walking and escorting people from place to place.  There’s also too much air between delivered lines which felt like the padding of an already bloated scene.

There are some action bits that age okay, but they’re mostly flat because the CG in 1999 isn’t holding up.  The saber battle at the end is still very cool, and it might be the best one in the entire series. I won’t bitch at all about that.

The glaring sins begin with weird Asian-American accents by the by Trade guys that sucked then and seem ridiculous now.  Jar Jar still sucks, and Jake Lloyd was horrifically miscast as a little Anakin. His direction was bad and so was the dialogue he delivered. Podracers couldn’t make up for all of that mess.  I could go beat by beat complaining about the plot, but to save time and sanity I will declare now that the biggest problem with Episode I is that it does not need to exist!  I don’t mean the wholesale dumping of these movies into the trash bin of history.  I mean, that story-wise, even in the story that Lucas cobbled together for the prequels, Episode I is pointless.  One of the first scenes of Episode II features Obi-Wan and Anakin in an elevator reminiscing about the past, as they are about to meet Padme.  That very concise scene could have kicked off the entire series.

You don’t need any of it. No Qui-Gon, no little Anakin, no Ani’s mom, no Trade bullshit, no Jar Jar.  Lucas rewound too far.

Attack of the Clones is just a flat-out boring movie.  The last twenty minutes are battle scenes that aren’t as cool as I remember and the huge assault by the Jedi wasn’t that impressive.  Most of the movie contains stiff romantic scenes and a lot of walking and nodding in the halls of the Senate. Yoda’s saber battle isn’t a fitting successor to the three-way battle in Ep I, and Hayden Christensen isn’t that great, either.  My ultimate revelation? Episode II is shittier than Episode I.  Neither are good, but at least Episode I has moments that you remember.  Sabers, Maul, Podrace. Do you even remember what happens in Episode II?  There aren’t any quotes or scenes that anyone has ever mentioned since the movie was released.  Plus, Lucas should have fixed the problems he had in the first one and he didn’t.

Here is my fix:

Erase Episode I, except keep the character of Darth Maul.

The new Episode I is what Ep II is currently, except lose Dooku and replace with Maul.  The entire trilogy is the story of Obi-Wan; through his eyes.  Anakin and Padme grow closer through adventure, not a trip to Naples or wherever.  Keep all the Palpatine bullshit, but in the background. 

Biggest change:  Eliminate the entire notion of the Jedi council.  Their role is murky at best and they are treated like bureaucrats. Instead, make them mysterious, hooded, in the shadows.  Their home and meetings are secret.  When they walk into a room, everything stops.  They aren’t cops.  They are outside of normal society, and step in when needed.  I want them to be bad-ass mofo’s.

The new Episode II is a war movie.  Battle scenes, a homefront, romance.  Lots of losses and Obi-Wan sees his protégé slip away.  A new figure emerges and kills Maul.  He is Vader, but he’s also Anakin still.  He’s playing two parts just like Palpatine.  Obi-Wan discovers the secret.

Ep III.  Battle, Jedi’s are getting slaughtered, Padme gives birth in secret and dies from a war wound.  Anakin get fucked up, add helmet. Credits.

I think every fan of Star Wars has their own version of the above, so I’m happy to add mine to the pile. 

It’s Just Too Darn White In Here.

What, nine different cultures came together to create this deliciousness? 

             I’m an American.  I was born in Upstate New York and this is the country I’ve lived in my whole life.  America is a unique place because it may be the only country where each person has a different definition of what the country should be.  It’s an idea first, then a country.  My idea of America is a place where people from all over the world came to make a life for themselves.  In those four hundred years, we have created thousands of subcultures, accents, cuisines, languages, communities, and…hairstyles that are somehow linked to an original country and still remaining uniquely American.  

             Gumbo.  Chow Mein.  Buffalo wing pizza.  Square dancing. The high-top fade.

             I’m also white.  German, French, Irish, Italian, some Polish in there too.  Pretty honky.  But those cultures don’t make me feel at home.  American culture does. By its very nature, it is comprised of mixed race and ethnicity; religion and social class.  I feel so connected to it that when I experience something that’s too white, I have a knee-jerk reaction to reject it. Even though I’m white. 

             Remember the 1980’s?  The friggin’ 1980’s?  Well, I do.  I didn’t like the decade that much.  I especially didn’t like the music that was pumped through the soundtrack of every John Hughes movie.  You know what I mean. Synthesizer-heavy, whiny, empty songs of sorrow from young white people.  That shit always got under my skin.  I hated it. It was something about white people complaining that made me want to puke.  It wasn’t a white band ripping off a black sound as best as they could, it was raw white suburban songs of breakups and feeling sad because the skies were gray.  American pop began from black music from the church and the fields.  It became rock and country, hip hop and soul.  The more you pull it away from those roots and whiten it up, the less I’m interested. 

             I tried to explain it this way:  I like the mix of American influences.  If it was in one big Venn circle, the further you got away it, the less likely I was interested.  Especially the super-white stuff.

             I can’t tell you why Joy Division was whiter than Tom Petty.  But they were.

             Most of the shit in my music collection and on my phone is by white people.  There’s just something they’ve tapped into that interests me that I don’t hear from in those songs from 80’s.  I also am not a fan of the Winter Olympics.  There’s some international stuff that’s fun, but when you get into the skiing and snowboarding shit, it’s obviously the white people’s Olympics.  When white people begin to be beaten by others, they tend to create new sports to dominate.  The new sports are more exclusive to join and require expensive equipment. They can win because they can afford it. There’s something about watching the 16-year-old with the groovy first name land at the bottom of the hill in front of her hedge-fund parents that rubs me the wrong way.  Too white, is all I can think of.

             You won’t hear me bitching about inclusivity in our entertainment, either.  I like it in my sci-fi, fantasy, action, drama, and comedy. It adds to the validity of the project.  It’s odd to see an all-white cast these days, isn’t it?  I’m glad.  Inclusion means new outlooks, opinions and new stories.  I’m white, I probably have a pretty white point of view, but I already know what it is.  There’s room for so many voices out there that may surprise you and make for a better piece of art. This isn’t the result of a sea change in the American cultural landscape. These are stories that have been here for decades. Centuries.  The difference it we’re getting access to them now because of technology and the way we access things. That white America you believe constituted the entirety of our national story was always just one point of view.  It was just bigger and louder.

             Sorry, all you white-supremacist scumbags out there, being white is not the end-all be-all of the human existence.  We’re part of the story but we’re not the whole story.  I’m a white guy; almost my entire family is white, but it’s also not our singular defining feature, either. We benefit from cultural influences and that very notion is so very American. We are who we are because we get to experience differences. It happens all over the world, but we established a country where that was essentially the prime directive.  Embrace it.

             I also never liked Bing Crosby.  Punk-ass bitch.

              

I Shall Host You At The Waystation

Plumbing the depths of understanding who you are and who you were meant to be isn’t all bad.  At first, for most people, it's necessary.  We all need to know who we are and how we fit in.  After that work is done, you should just go and be that person.  Hunting for every scrap of your personality isn’t crucial to a healthy life. Although, when you write, you are essentially examining different aspects of yourself over and over again. You end up using every part of your personality buffalo.  It can get really dumb.
(Just like that opening paragraph.)

One of the many unusual parts of me is the need to be a host.  I friggin’ love to host things.  I know, I know. I’ve bitched and moaned about how anti-social I am and how engaging with others is foreign to me. That’s just it.  Hosting means you can control the social environment and be able to interact at the same time.  I like to entertain and cook and serve for people too. I like to figure out what to serve. My wife is the real chef, but I like to be in the kitchen. I like to wander around from conversation to conversation and try and dig into each one.  I like picking out background music. I like to organize games and all of that shit. 

Do I?  Hardly ever.

Here are some remaining daydreams and memories to further explain this fluffy, sweet, and lighthearted corner of my mind.

I have always been obsessed with waystations.  What the hell is a waystation, you ask?  Great question.  It’s the closest term I can use to approximate this emotion, so I’m running with it.  In every big epic movie, there is a scene in a bar, a tavern, a restaurant where characters from the story interact.  They get a new chunk of the story and meet new characters to further the plot.  It’s the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars, the Hogs Head Inn in Harry Potter, the Prancing Pony in Lord of the Rings.  It’s the place where you see the crazy drinks and butterbeer and dragon egg omelets.  I love those scenes.  I always wanted to be a part of a place like that.  I could take care of weary travelers, offer them food or drink and some time by a big fire. You don’t go on the adventure, but you are somehow an essential part of the story.  It appeals to me.

I love entertaining. I loved doing comedy, mostly for my friends and family.  I get a charge out of it too, but making people laugh is a goddamned pleasure.  I remember back in 1989, my grandmother was staying with us.  There was a reunion that year, and some of the obligatory family drama was bringing my grandmother down.  At that time, I taped every damn comedy special that came on HBO.  I remembered one by Alan King, who was close to my grandmother’s age and of her WWII generation. I asked her if she had ever heard of him and I believe she did.  I put in the tape for her and she laughed out loud for an hour.  She knew all the references and she had a good time.  That is one of my favorite memories of my grandmother, even though I didn’t tell her the jokes, I did help get her to laugh.  I turned my living room into a waystation for one afternoon.

It comes from a love of giving.  That sounds self-congratulatory, but it is a fact.  Hey, I don’t mind getting things, but I love to give things. I spent thirty years making mix tapes for other people.  Maybe 300 or so at my last count.  I liked barbecues and birthday parties and Secret Santa exchanges and all that corny shit.  I suppose you need someone who’s willing to make the effort to make those things happen.  In my life, it’s me.

If I like creating social events, why am I not social?  I have a few ideas, but the truth is I don’t care.  If I can find a way to create them again, I’ll do it. 

I think I’m supposed to.

Three Opinions Outside Anywhere, USA

Relax.  It's a lot of buildings.

               (Sometimes it doesn’t warrant 800 words.  I make a small pile of ‘em to get them out of my brain.)

             “I miss New York when it was grittier, scarier.”  I will never in a million years understand this notion.  I’ve heard this a hundred times from former residents or admirers of New York City.  They resent the cleaned-up Times Square, with tourist stores and ten-story neon signs.  What they long for is the seventies and eighties version, with widespread drug abuse, prostitution, peep shows, and garbage lining the streets.  Something about this older version feels more authentic to them.  More real and less sanitized.  I’m assuming of course that they’re not wishing they could be the victim of a crime; I just think that is somehow looked cooler back then.

             I’ve thought about this for years, especially when it’s been pointed out that I’ve lived in one version of the suburbs or another my whole life: The scary, bullet-ridden kind and the quieter kind where you get the occasional noise complaint or occurrence of mailbox baseball.  This may come as a shock, but I like the quiet one better. See, my theory is that most of these people who prefer a scary NYC lived some awesomely privileged lives. Congratulations, you’ve never been scared to go home. Whether they had money or not, they likely didn’t live where scary shit happened.  Because if you did, and you had the opportunity to escape. You’d realize that there are far worse things than a giant M & M store.  I’d take a Disney movie-turned into a stage play over busted crack vials on the street any day.  You resent that your childhood was boring, and you lived in a lame place.  Be thankful.  Boring is good.

             On a tangent, I’d like to also say to any and all citizens of New York City that absolutely no one gives a shit that you were born there, grew up there, or live there presently.  There is nothing more narcissistic than New York’s hometown pride.  They are the cream of the crop when it comes to believing that anyone is impressed that they are from a place. They think it's like sharing a war story from a veteran, or like you’ve climbed the Matterhorn with a donkey on your back.  Nope.  You are from a huge city where millions of other people live. New Yorkers love their city, and they have a lot of reason to. It’s an amazing place.  But they seem to be under the delusion that New York is the only city that exists.  It’s not.

 The same goes from wherever you’re from, too.  Texas people believe it means something to be from Texas.  It doesn’t.  Nobody cares.  Chicago, Detroit, Hawaii, Alaska, Miami, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Kalamazoo.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t love where you live or be proud of a place that you’re from.  I love Oregon.  But I don’t expect anyone to give a shit.  We also aren’t automatic representatives of our hometowns.  I’ve been asked about Florida a bunch after I moved out here and I have nothing interesting to tell.  Outside of the Sunshine State, it’s believed that Florida is part Wild West, part Hee-Haw, part Bizarro World.  It’s not.  It's filled with plenty of lunatics and shit-for-brains, but so is your state.  It’s just really fucking humid there. 

I guess the common thread today is the ideas of home and community.  Not the actual town, but our attachment to the idea of it.  That brings me to an opinion I have that surprises a lot of people. It bumps them because I have a degree in history and I’ve always been mindful of historical contexts.  I don’t care about preserving Main Street. I remember a show on the History Channel before it became about Ice Road Truckers.  It was about the push to keep the buildings of the Main Streets of old towns intact.  Not for any historical significance necessarily, but just because it was built in the forties or so and people don’t like the idea of it going away.

I say, plow that shit.  Unless it actually has some historic value, (a historical figure's home, the site of an important event, the first firehouse built in the state, etc.) I say it’s perfectly cool to let that shit go.  If Main Street failed its Main Street’s fault.  Main Street is essentially a collection of business ventures.  They failed over and over, so it’s time to move on.  These particular buildings were there to participate in our shared capitalist system.  They weren’t like more ancient towns, created around churches or settled near waterways for international trade.  Those places can still exist.  They reinvent themselves over and over.  A lot of these Main Streets were attempts to attract business to small towns.  They wanted to play the game of capitalism and they lost. I don’t need to see why we have to preserve that.  I don’t care about closing malls or old drive-ins either.  You can’t preserve something simply because it makes you bummed that an era is gone.

What was there before Main Street?  A meadow?  Grazing land for indigenous people and animals?  No tears for letting that turn into a Woolworth?

What to put in the place of Main Street? I don’t know…maybe homeless shelters, affordable housing, vocational schools, community food banks, community gardens, pre-K’s, free clinics, city parks, transit systems, windmills, solar panels, fruit trees, shade trees, community pools, adult care facilities, research centers, infrastructure projects that attract workers, dog walks, dog parks, petting zoos, farmer’s markets, art fairs, skate parks, skating rinks, festival space…or you could just raze the whole thing and let nature have it back.

Why Do I Keep Thinking About Cast Away?

Cast Away.  The movie with Tom Hanks about a guy who gets stranded on an island in the Pacific for 1000 days.  Wilson the ball.  FedEx product placement galore.  I saw this movie in a dollar theater with my wife and I enjoyed it just fine.  It runs on cable as a Saturday afternoon movie constantly.  I may have watched it once more all the way through.  It does not even enter my top 100 movies list.

But I think about it all the time.

I should say, the movie crosses my brain, or has done so, for the better part of two decades.  Something about the story stamped itself in my mind, and I have chewed on it in the car, on a lazy morning, or in the shower dozens of times.

I’m a sucker for a happy ending.  Sue me.  But Cast Away has a bittersweet ending, and when I first noticed my subconscious obsession with it, I thought that my brain wanted to rewrite the ending to something happier or more ‘Hollywood’.  That wasn’t it.  I love the ending just the way it is.  I’ve rewritten the Star Wars prequel trilogy in my mind, but this ending doesn’t need to change a thing.  It wasn’t the ending.  It wasn’t the casting, writing, or music.  I wasn’t drawn to the location.  I’m not a tropical beach guy and a life on a beach does not appeal to me at all. 

So, what is it? I’m actually trying to figure it out as I write all of this down.  I know I chew on this all the time and this is more of self-analysis than a movie review.

I know I wanted to see what happened next.  I realize that the movie was about getting Tom Hanks rail-thin and talking to a volleyball.  But the story of a man who lost everything in his life and returning is insanely interesting to me.  The ending could be the beginning of a TV show, or another movie. He is seemingly healthy and wiser and more knowledgeable about his life.  What next?  If your life was wiped clean and you had to start over, what would you do?  Would you fall over in a heap and lose your shit, or would you thrive?  The ending could seem ambiguous, but I just think it’s as realistic as they could imagine. 

Then we have Wilson.  In the character’s deepest expression of loneliness, he arranges a face on a volleyball and speaks aloud to it.  It serves a function in the movie, so we have some dialogue, but it’s also such a powerful relationship.  I talk aloud all the time.  All the time. It’s just thinking out loud…I haven’t painted a face on my coffee maker or anything.  I started doing it in college as a way to study and remember things for an exam.  Hearing it aloud was my way of getting it to stick.  But nowadays I talk aloud in the car during the day if I’m trying to sort things out.  Hanks’ character needed the same thing.  It was a proxy relationship that kept him sane and fed the parts of his mind that were starving for attention.  When the ball floated away during his exodus to find home, he wept and screamed that he was sorry.  That really hit me.  It was the part of his mind that kept him waking up every morning and, at that moment, it felt as if he was letting it die.  I’m not smart enough to pick that apart, but it was powerful.

I’d like to think I dwell on this movie because I believe I could survive.  If I lost everything, I’d be able to live.  I also feel as alone as he does on that island sometimes, and I have to remember that it is as much a fantasy as that volleyball having the ability to talk. Maybe the opportunity to drop out of society for a while is appealing to me?  That doesn’t seem right.  All of these could be reasons.  I could also look at Tom Hanks’ physical transformation for the part and feel jealous, and I want an excuse to lose a shitload of weight fast. 

I mean…maybe?

Morning Jim vs. Afternoon Jim

Oh, brains. Aren’t they so wonderfully fucked up and ridiculous?  I’m quite sure mine is. 

I had to explain in an older post that I am a morning person.  I’m not pleasant and nauseatingly positive like a stereotypical morning person, I’m just firing on all cylinders earlier in the day.  I work early, I plan early, I come up with ideas early.  The afternoon is a slog where I set up menial chores and the occasional nap.  At some point in the evening, I get one more window at full power then I’m done.  I don’t stay up past ten and I prefer it that way.

Even though my energy pumps through my veins, I still struggle with my morning self because he can’t seem to get along with my afternoon self.  It seems like every day I set up obtainable goals and by 2 pm I’ve somehow shit all over them.  This is the fault of my afternoon self, for sure, but I would think that Morning Me would have this figured out.  I make to-do lists, and during some afternoons, I don’t just ignore the list, I forget that I created one.

Morning Me is strict with his diet and doesn’t miss work details.

Afternoon Me overeats and sleeps.  He forgets stuff, too.

Morning Me tackles large tasks and completes them efficiently.

Afternoon Me rolls that momentum into a syrup-covered sludge of dumb. 

Morning Me plans out of a course of action.

Afternoon Me puts it off until tomorrow.

I get to plan my day and arrange for the tougher stuff to be done first.  I’ve learned that much.  I need to get it over with because putting things off is a non-starter. If morning me puts things off, I might as well curl up in bed and watch Simpsons reruns on my tablet and eat M&M’s until I pass out. 

I have a few rules, and a few I’m pushing harder.  First, when I feel like napping and I have the time, I walk instead.  It’s basically giving Afternoon Me the finger.  The more energy I can produce the weaker he gets.  I also avoid anything creative during the afternoon, even on days off.  I’ve tried writing in the middle of my day, to break things up and get a word count moving.  It’s terrible.  I question everything, I quit projects.  So, nothing creative, difficult or taxing.  But also, nothing too soft.  I’m trying to choke him out.  Maybe in forty more years I’ll get it done.

My wife wonders why I’m up and about on weekend mornings.  She’s still in bed or easing into her day, and I’ve already knocked out three or four chores.  I’m on my second cup of coffee dressed, moving.  I’m looked at the time every ten minutes or so because I know by one o’clock or so I will stop caring.  If it’s gonna get done, its gonna get done when most people are wiping the crust out of their eyes.

The unfathomable amount of ideas and plans that have crashed and burned because of Afternoon Me is a colossal bummer. I can’t imagine how healthy, fit, and trim I’d be.  Shit, maybe I’d still have some hair. I might be on my tenth book by now.  Who knows? 

Who is this asshole?  Why is he always trying to derail my life?  I understand he could be a combination of a blood sugar imbalance, lack of sleep, stress, remnants of anxiety and depression, boredom, loneliness and extra weight all manifesting in a period of the day where I have to pause and replenish both physical and mental energy in order to function another six or seven hours…but still…what a dick.

Do you even understand how awesome Morning Me is?  I love this guy!  Eats right, focused, creative.  If Morning Me and Afternoon Me could find some common ground, or Morning Me could just beat the hell out of Afternoon Me once and for all, there would be no limit to my success!  The positive outlook would radiate enough to help those around me more.  A better man, neighbor, citizen! 

Damn you, Afternoon Me!

The Beginning of Up Isn’t Sad. It’s Life.

The real hero.

             Like millions of others, I’ve watched a few Disney films with the release of the new streaming service.  I’m still tempted to pull up the original Herbie movies, but I’m afraid they didn’t age very well, and I want to keep my memories right where they are. 

             My daughter and I re-watched Up.  If this movie remains in people’s hearts, it’s because of all the talking doggies and their undeniable adorableness. I’m guessing that most people tolerate all the old-timer stuff and wait until they get to South America.  I guess that’s where all the fun is.

             What clicked for me is the popular meme out there that the first few minutes of Up are painfully sad.  It’s a bit of a cliché at this point. “That’s about as fun as the first fifteen minutes of Up.” In case you don’t know, the first fifteen minutes are like this: a little boy and a little girl meet.  They grow up together and eventually get married.  They live a long life together and have a dream to visit South America.  The dream is pushed aside by life, and they try to have children.  There is a miscarriage.  They turn their efforts to the South America trip they always dreamed of and save.  Life gets in the way again and they have to spend the savings on everyday bullshit. They never take the trip. They grow old. The woman dies.  The man is left alone.

             My question remains:  Why is this sad?

             You read that right.  I don’t think it’s sad.  At all.  Maybe a montage where a woman is crying after losing a baby is a bit much for a Pixar movie, I’ll concede that, but the bulk of the story isn’t sad.  It’s real life.  It’s as everyday as the rain, and as dependable as a new iPhone on the market every year.  What is the sad part?  The fact that they have a dream for a big trip and can’t go?  I mean, I’ve never gone anywhere, and I’m not a computer-animated image.  I’m a real person.  I bet there are millions of us who can’t grab the dream we wanted since we were children.

             Is it that they can’t have children?  There is adoption, and other ways to create a family.  It wasn’t the end of the road if they didn’t want it to be.  Was it that she died at the end and left him alone?  Well, people die.  What a lot of them don’t get and what makes this opening scene uplifting and not a downer is that they had AN ENTIRE LIFE TOGETHER. Those two fell in love when they were under ten and managed to live into their seventies or eighties.  And, they had a good time doing it, too.

             Is this a millennial thing?  I hate bringing that shit up because I’m a big fan of that generation.  But, there are some observations I have about their oversensitivity and confusing pathos and emotional manipulation.  In other words, they don’t like sad stuff. 

             The couple (I don’t even remember their names) live in a sweet little house and manage to eke out a living from the husband’s income as a balloon salesman.  Not sure how that worked, but hey, the economy has changed. That’s something you should envy, not deride.   They spent all their time together, enjoyed each other’s company and had a long successful relationship.  They had least had one friend because someone had to take all of those photos that ended up in the photo album.  Are you telling me their story is a bummer because not everything worked out for them?  They won the relationship lottery and I’m supposed to be upset because one of them died in their twilight years?

             The story is sweet because of what they had, not what they didn’t.  Maybe it’s me.  Maybe I’m an optimist when it comes to things like this and I figured out the theme before the movie got started.  Take it from a guy who’s in a very long relationship; one that began when I was nineteen. The marriage itself was enough for them.  They already won.  They could have opened their lives to others if they couldn’t have kids and South America was just extra gravy on a giant, fluffy pile of mashed potatoes.

             I mean, a two-story restored Victorian-era home, on a balloon salesman’s salary?  Refinance! You’d have money for the South America trip with cash to spare!