The wife and I went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night. I’ll put the review up later. Let’s do a segue into the main action here…

See the wife didn’t care one way or another about going to the film. Beside her lack of interest, everything seemed aligned against us too, we left late, got there late, had to get money in transit. We had the one minute – do you not want to go? since when do you care about what I want? argument. This was all before we got out of the car. Then at the theater, the special needs attendant was selling tickets, which is fine except he’s a little bit slower than the some of the other attendants and like I mentioned we were late. But I’m thinking karma so I behave and breathe into my tardiness.

But the gaggle of 12 year old girls pretending they were 13 tried my patience. True, they had the first position in the line when we got there but as a group they fought about why they were there in the first place. “oh my god what are we going to see?” – “i’m 13!” – “No! you’re 12!” – “Who said I’m fat?” type distractions provided an opportunity for customers who wanted concessions, because the ticket guy didn’t want to listen to the girl school argument any more than anyone else, so he left the ticket line to scoop popcorn.

So we get our tickets and now the film is in progress. And there’s something horribly wrong with the screen, because it’s dark in the theater. Oh there’s a moving picture show going on, but parts of the screen are a nice study in dark shadows. For a second I think, hmm, it’s art film, they like to do weird things. And even though we missed about 2 minutes it was clear this wasn’t going to be a linear story. Maybe the shadow dancing is an import part of the plot.

Five minutes later the manager comes in and apologizes for the burnt bulb and asks everyone if they want a refund. None of us move. Two minutes later he comes back with the granddaddy manager special readmission passes, good any time for any movie.

Now I get to see 2 movies this week. And the wife did like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by the end. It’s all aces for me.

Because of a bet about the box office gross of Jersey Girl I have to wait to see that movie until Monday night. Essentially a friend bet me that Jersey Girl will do under a certain amount and I didn’t want to win just by my 13 bucks so the wife and I went to see Scooby Doo instead.

I’m going to confess my Scooby Doo fanboy nature. This goes back to my childhood. Scooby was just better than Garfield and He-Man. True Spiderman was best of all, but that’s another movie sequel and review.

Once again the zany kids set off to solve a mystery. This time the villain threatens to crumble Mystery Inc, because they are the targets of a smear operation led by a mysterious figure. They face goblins and ghosts and creepy things, oh my! Even more spooky they must face the legions of evil tyrants they unmasked years ago back in the cartoon days. Which by the way, how old are they supposed to be anyway? In the TV show Shaggy was 14, Fred 17, Daphne 16, Velma 15. Ain’t no one in this movie even close to those ages.

There’s some good laughs, a couple of fart jokes, but in the end of the day plot is 90 percent action based. Without fail every 240 seconds there’s another action sequence to wake people up. Shaggy, Scooby and Velma are spot on. Side point, I’m getting used to Scooby looking like a computer generated acid trip.

Watch for the inside joke for adults during the whip cream sequence with Scooby and Shaggy. Hint, it’s got nothing to do with cherries.

Three good things about the movie

1) It kept the hordes of children in the audience laughing.

2) The guy who plays Shaggy is Shaggy. He’s almost too Shaggy.

3) In many levels the sequel surpasses the original. The action this time is better, Scooby seems more natural looking.

Three bad things? Well, if you like the notion of this thing we call Scooby Doo, I don’t think there are three bad things. If you don’t dig on Scooby, you probably won’t like this picture. It’s that simple.

Some of the laughs are cheap shots, but they work in context. All in all an enjoyable flick. Fun for the whole family. It’s not a bullseye masterpiece, but it will probably do the trick for a rainy afternoon.