Monday, January 23, 2012

Jason hosts Bad Movie Night--PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES

Here's some interesting trivia for you kids out there. Did you know that The Pirates of the Caribbean was originally a ride at Disneyland? It's true, in fact the ride existed for 36 years before being turned into one actually-pretty-good movie followed by 3 god-awful sequels.

I mention this because one of the attractions in the ride was a scene where several pirates chased women around in circles, with one obese woman chasing a pirate instead. In fact, as a little boy this might have been my first indication that while little boys find little girls to be icky, grown men find grown women to something worth chasing (at least if they're not too fat). Sometime later they changed it so the one woman chasing the pirate was threatening him with a rolling pin--apparently a sexually aggressive woman was not acceptable, although men raping women is still just good family entertainment. But nowadays (since the late 90's), the women are now carrying plates of food (perhaps all along the pirates were chasing the women to force them to cook?) And we wonder why we have an obesity epidemic? Is this really the right message to send our kid? Our disgusting, pudgy, little lardball kids?

Now I want to make sure I'm on the right side of this. So let me just say that there are many, many bad things about rape. If one were to list the pros and cons of rape, it would be no contest. I'm not afraid to take a controversial position now and then, and I will state for the record that I am firmly, solidly, proudly anti-rape, and I don't care who that offends. But in the interest of fairness and showing both sides of the issue, I will concede that rape does burn calories. Really, you don't even have to be successful, even attempted rape burns plenty of calories--and that way everyone wins!

Anyway, I think I've pretty much digressed from whatever point I might have had in the beginning, and taken us all to someplace we never cared to go. Much like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES.

Running Time: 136 minutes
My Total Minutes: 261,971

No comments: