September 13, 2007
On the Air Madagascar flight to Italy, I paused at the first item on the small green menu card: a salad of mixed poultry. In the dish were vegetables, mayonnaise and chunks of baloney, or something. But, I didn't really care about the airline's food. After three months deprived of any media in my mother tongue, I was interested in the movies.
In the Land of Women and Spiderman 3 were listed to play, respectively, according to the glossy guide tucked into the seat before me. Temptingly, each film description was followed by a note indicating the English audio channel. But, it turned out there was no such channel. I tried to watch the first movie in French and then in Italian and then, somewhat desperately tried to lip read, before giving up and grumpily reading. I had more luck watching Spiderman in Italian, mostly because I could follow the action and make up the dialog, although possibly inaccurately, which allowed me to write this movie review:
Okay, first everyone in the metropolis loved Spiderman. Randomly, some black goo fell out of space. Then, Spidy got a Depeche Mode haircut, and so everyone hated him and he started wearing black outfits. There were a bunch of bad guys, aerial chase scenes and fist fights. A couple good guys became bad guys, and one of them changed back to a good guy. Possibly, he went through one more good/bad cycle, but it was difficult to determine. Clearly, the mix of characters was to show off the fast-moving special effects, which were impressive. On second thought: were some of the effects too fake looking? Or, would any depiction seem so, because I don't have enough context for flying through the air. Also, what happened to the comic book feel; the camera angles and lighting seemed different from the first installment. Back to the plot: there were more dramatic action scenes high in the sky, a bad guy became a good guy, a funeral and then dancing. Fin.
Spoiler alert: the previous paragraph may ruin the movie for you.
