Dancing with Dogs: Spider-Man 2, Dodgeball and Open Water

Spider-Man 2, Dodgeball and Open Water

I watched all the three DVDs listed above over the New Years’ weekend. Spider-Man 2 was pretty good. A super-hero movie with heart and some actual plot? Who would have thunk that! I enjoyed seeing the conflict behind the mask so to speak and see the man behind the hero. Worth owning on DVD!

Dodgeball was a bunch of inane fun that is sure to make you laugh as long as you remember to check your brain out before you start watching the movie.

The movie that affected me the most happened to be Open Water. Amazing, considering almost nothing happens in the movie. It is the story of a yuppie couple who may or may not be married, living the usual busy life and planning a last minute vacation to a generic island getaway. They go scuba-diving and get left in the ocean full of sharks (real one, not computer-generated or mechanical) due to a counting error on their boat’s behalf. The rest of the movie is basically about what happens next and I don’t know if I want to give anything away.

Why I found this amazing is that I got sucked into it without even realizing it. When it started off, my first thought was about how it really felt like a made-for-TV movie with the bland actors, bland settings, bland dialogue - pretty much bland everything. It was so uninteresting. You feel like you are looking into your neighbor’s bedroom, it is so boring. The first night on the island, the couple gets naked in bed, but as any couple with a loooong-time relationship, decides against having sex. They are too tired to do anything. I was ready for the sharks to show up 5 minutes into the movie.

Spoilers ahead…

I think it is this everyday quality of the actors that actually makes the movie hit so close home. It could be you! Most of the movie is really the couple bobbing up and down in the ocean - first having fun in the water, taking pictures, then wondering if they are lost, then finding out that their boat actually left them, arguing about swimming vs. waiting for the boat to come back. They go through a whole gamut of emotions including blaming each other and getting defensive like you and I would.

You go through this entire emotinal journey with them and without realizing it, you start thinking like them…surely, the boat people will realize these people were missing…surely, there will be a search party…surely, someone would miss them…For God’s sake, how can anybody not realize they are gone? The direction and editing is awesome in that there are no dramatic moments in the movie. Just a slow march towards inevitability. Just the time it takes till you come out of denial and realize the hopelessness of the situation for what it is. It is more about loneliness when the world forgets about you more than about the sharks that go bump into you in the ocean. I think that is why the movie haunts me so much.

Posted by shanti at January 6, 2005 3:36 PM