The Tooth Hurts

While I very much enjoyed my viewing of The Princess and the Frog yesterday, having to sit through the trailers that proceeded it was complete and utter torture.

Here's what I saw previews of:

- Cats and Dogs 2. Fucking Cats and Dogs 2!!! Does anyone even remember the first one? If not, that's because it was fucking awful. I guess the reason they waited ten years for a sequel is so that they have a whole new generation of children to terrorize without latent memories of the old one.

- The Spy Next Door, an ingenious-looking Disney comedy with the brilliant cast of Jackie Chan, Billy Ray Cyrus AND George Lopez! Also featuring a little girl beating up bad guys and saying "funny" lines, everyone's favorite! No way this movie could suck, right?

- Despicable Me, something animated with Steve Carrel as a goofball supervillain which looks completely and utterly meh.

- How to Train Your Dragon, a crap-looking animated thing with Frankie Muniz as a Viking fighting dragons. Paltry animation, another variant on the zero-to-hero plot I so often rail about, dragons, and Frankie Muniz - what's not to like?

- The Last Song, a weepy teen drama by the author of The Notebook (gag!) with Miley Cyrus (projectile vomit!), a hot beach dude tracing her body with sea shells, her dorky daddy and smartass brother, about finding out the truth about love etc. etc. And every single line and shot in the trailer came straight out of the Screenwriter's Cliche Handbook. The worst part is that this movie seemed to be the best of the lot.

And then after the movie, when I'm feeling good about life after finishing finals and watching a really good movie, I came across this in the theater outside:



At that point I went insane.

I'm not advancing any claims that such movies are any worse than crap like The Love Bug or Casper or The Little Rascals, but all the same, I feel really sorry for the kids who have to watch this junk - and even moreso, their parents. Parents, please ignore this shit and go see a good movie. Take advantage of Princess and the Frog while it lasts, or at least wait until the next Pixar film. Or stay at home and replay that well-worn VHS of The Lion King for the 900th time. If you take your kids to see Tooth Fairy, you are an abusive parent.

Quite frankly, I felt like I'd stumbled into an episode of The Critic and was watching a parade of hilarious thirty-second movie parodies. But these are real. And God help us all.