Thor had a movie weekend, getting treated to The Pirates Band of Misfits in 3-D and The Avengers in plain old D. Grandma and I took him to the former, and the latter was a BFamily outing. I am happy to say I enjoyed both, though The Avengers has already placed itself as movie of the year for me.
Pirates, coming from the mastermind behind Wallace and Gromit is a good-natured morality tale about the importance of loyalty and friendship. I adored the daft hero, voiced by Hugh Grant, and loved that the super villain was none other than Queen Victoria herself. Thor laughed out loud several times, and so did I. There was plenty of humor for the grown-ups, without breaking the 4th wall as the Shrek movies are wont to do. We left the theater happy, and happy to talk about what we’d just seen.
We left The Avengers cheering, and Thor has gone to bed talking about what kinds of things he would smash, were he The Hulk. Y’all, five minutes in and I leaned over to B yodeling, “This is everything I wanted The Hunger Games to be! Why couldn’t Joss Whedon have directed that?!”
I clapped. I cheered. I squealed. I scrunched up in my seat and said, “oof!” I found myself sitting forward, hands on my armrests, eyes wide, mouth open, waiting for the next scene to come, and I thought, “I never want this to end! Ever!”
Since I have nothing bad to say about the movie, I’ll just list my favorite things:
- RDJ and Goop have amazing chemistry. Amazing. I would pay to watch a movie that was just the two of them flirting with each other. I would.
- RDJ. 75% of what was wonderful about this movie was Tony Stark, and 100% of what is wonderful about Tony Stark is RDJ.
- I love The Hulk. I grew up watching the Bill Bixby tv show, and I was not disappointed by this movie version of the mild scientist you shouldn’t make angry. And when Hulk smashes? When Hulk smashed, my heart grew two sizes.
- The dialog was snappy and snarky, and just as well done as the engaging CGI. It isn’t often that an action movie’s dialog can live up to the great action sequences, but you could have taken out the action and had a great movie, and you could have taken out the dialog and had a– Actually, the dialog built the movie up.
- Joss Whedon.
- Thor and Loki. I love everything about Thor and Loki. Tom Hiddleston is a brilliant villain. Chris Hemsworth is a brilliant dumb-jock-god.
- Everything about The Avengers. Twice. And again.
The Outside Lane 
OH yes, we all loved it dearly. It was so worth the long line we stood in. I actually want to see it again, which is not something I can usually say about action movies.