Movie Monday: Two Tales of Expectations Versus Reality

I believe that I've mentioned, before, that I usually enjoy movies more when I go into them with no expectations.

I really wish I had done that in the past week.

Instead, however, I rented "The Change-Up" from Netflix, hoping for a grown-up, male-bonding, oddly-sexy version of "Freaky Friday" (the one with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris). What I got, instead, was an immature, overly-testosteroned, swearing-filled version of "Freaky Friday" (the one with Lindsey Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis). I mean, the lead characters were played by Jason Bateman (really funny, sardonic, ironic... usually) and Ryan Reynolds (comically ingratiating, sexy, shirtless... usually). That should have been a good combo. But it was really really bad. I mean... really bad. Like D- bad.

To balance that out, I went to see the 3-D re-release of "Beauty and the Beast" in the theater last week. I honestly can't remember seeing it in its entirety since it first came out. And I was excited to see what they could do with the 3-D effects. When I was getting my popcorn, the guy behind the counter sounded not-too-thrilled by the 3-D of it, except for the ballroom scene - which I guess makes sense, since that was one of the first scenes in a major movie that was done with computer animation (for the background). And he was kind of right. Aside from a couple of scenes where the ambiance was enhanced by the 3-D, it really didn't do much for the movie.

Here's the thing, though. Maybe it's like this in the original, and I just haven't seen it in forever so I've forgotten, but there were a few scenes where the animation just seemed "off." Scenes where Belle's whole face kind of changed shape - and the same thing happened to the Beast a few times. I don't remember that in the original, though, so I kind of wonder if it was caused by the folks working on the 3-D-ifying of it.

And, even though I had the entire theater to myself (Really. I was the only person in a theater that probably seats over 300 people.), I'm not sure I really enjoyed it. I mean, I even got to sing along when I wanted, and laugh and cheer whenever I wanted without bothering anyone. And parts of it were phenomenal even after all this time - and after seeing it on the screen, and on multiple live theater stages - and I still got teary in all the right places. Not enough to give it an A, but enough to give it a solid B - simply because I'm not sure about those weird facial changes that really kind of threw me out of the "reality" of the movie.

Or, maybe, it's just that they through me out of my expectations of the movie.