Miami Vice...."Eeh"

I've been out of touch recently, because I've been working. Sad, but true. More on that later.

In the Meantime, Let's Talk Miami Vice! Oh Boy!
Yesterday, Girl Kid and I went to see Miami Vice. I know, I know. I am a total slut with no standards at all. In my defense, the local rag gave this movie three stars, and said, "It's a smart, serious, adult crime thriller...", and it was directly by Michael Mann, who is guilty of many crimes, but who did bring us the sublime Heat, which was full of gunfire but was in fact, cool and edgy and great, and also Manhunter, which scared me more than any movie ever. As for Miami Vice? Um...no. it is not cool, edgy or scary, but it does have a lot of people getting perforated with great, big holes. I think that shooting someone in the chest with a rocket-to-air launcher is, dare I say it, "overkill"; but using this argument clincher as a recurring feature throughout the movie is redundant and silly. Miami Vice pretty much is the poster child for Big and Stupid, leaving out, for the most part, the all important third attribute, Fun. We all know I'm a sucker for Big Stupid Fun, but leaving out the fun is a crime.

Wherein I Snort Up A Lung
Actually, I'm lying, Miami Vice was hilarious. The dialog was perhaps the most cheesy I've ever experienced in all my years of movie going, so you know that when I say the writing was bad, it was truly horrific. I mean, really, "go-fast boat" instead of "speedboat"? How is it possible to make dialog actually WORSE and MORE CHEESY than it was on original TV show? Don Johnson should give Michael Mann money for actually making him look like the "smart" one.

And that was the problem. Every other word in the first hour was chortle-inducing in the extreme, but no one but me was laughing. Seriously multiplex dwellers, what gives? Someone says "go-fast boat" while flipping their hair and looking all pouty and you don't find this spew-inducingly funny? I actually got into a sort of laughing jag, where I was afraid I would spiral into that place where you can't stop laughing and you think you might die from lack of air. As fun as this sounds, being the only person laughing out of possibly 500 deadly serious people sitting in the dark is a bit unnerving. I was afraid the people behind me would stab me with their cell phones antennas, and so I sat there, trying not to laugh out loud too much, holding my stomach and suppressing snorts until I thought my head would implode. Girl Kid had to poke me in the ribs, which frankly didn't help at all.

Watching our muscle boys Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx scowl and squidge their way through every scene was an experiment in the surreal. I swear, Mr. Foxx must have had to have that squint surgically removed after the film wrapped, it was so ever-present. Maybe he had an eyebrow masseuse on 24 hour call. Ol' Colin at least got to vary his expression from squinty to smoldery from time to time, because he is given the job of being all Mr. Seductive with China's greatest national export, Gong Li. Really. Gong Li. I mean, come on! What is the star of Farewell My Concubine and Memoirs of a Geisha doing in this thing? I mean, GONG FREAKING LI! Jeezus. Seeing poor Ms. Li sucking face continually with Ireland's fifth most famous export (after Irish Spring soap, whisky, Liam Neeson and the IRA) made me very very sorry, and also a bit worried for our country, because now China really will want to squish us. And you know they can, because all they have to do is walk across the Bering Sea, down through Canada (where they will be welcomed as heros and showered with Eau de Moose [don't ask] and beer in thanks), and sit on us until we die. There's like what, four of them for every one of us? We'd be road kill, so we really shouldn't deliberately piss them off by making Gong Li kiss everyone in the movie. Okay, she only makes out with three guys (Colin, the Columbian drug lord, and the drug lord's evil minion, but that last one is only implied), but really. She's not a hooker, she's just played one in the movies. Hollywood, play nice, and maybe China will let us live.

The Shower Scene(s)
In Miami Vice, we are treated to not one, but two shower scenes, one for each star. Early on in the movie, Jamie Foxx gets all nekkid (full backal, and dude, that guy is has such a muscular butt, he looks a tad deformed) to have his obligatory slippery when wet scene. His love interest slash "dame in jeopardy plot point" is up-and-coming British It Girl Naomie Harris, (who also plays the charcoal chomping voodoo queen with the hots for Johnny Depp [well, duh] in Pirates of the Caribbean II). I can now report that Naomie also, has a well muscled set of maximuses in the be-hind area. Later, Colin and Gong Li also have a sudden need to get clean, which leads me to...

The Sex Scenes
Near the beginning of the movie, Jamie and Naomie go straight from Shower to Sex, and so we are treated to more of Mr. Foxx's backal attributes. But this is where things get weird--after lying directly on her like the top slice of bread on a bacon and tomato sandwich, he grinds around for a few seconds, and then pretends to "finish", and then jokes "Just kidding baby", wherein she tells him to "Go ahead honey, just fall asleep right here", and he does. During all of this, all we see of Naomie is part of her little impish face squished up against Jamie's big, oiled and beefy shoulder. She definitely doesn't look happy, and at no time does she fake her own little "moment", so we know she's not having any fun at all. How many woman have used that technique just to get a guy to finish and get off her? Lots. What are we supposed to take away from this? Tubbs is bad in bed? Did they think this would make Crockett's later love scenes more steamy? If so, why don't we get to see Colin Farrell's naked butt quite as much? I'm guessing it's because his backside is not as screen-worthy. Or is spotty. Or something. Still, I have to think there was some racism happening throughout. Crockett is definitely the main character of what is supposed to be a two-star vehicle, and whenever we see them both looking squintily off into the distance (which is a LOT), Tubbs is always in the background. Actually, I think the camera crew got the bulk of the crotch time with our stars, because our boys are shot from below quite a bit. (Hubba hubba cameraman Bubba.)

Jong Li plays the evil drug lord's...well, I guess business partner. She prances around in skin-tight suits, which immediately made me think of Romey and Michelle's High School Reunion, "We're like, business women, do you have some sort of business women's lunch?" (Now, there's a great movie!) Still no sooner does Ms. Li get Crockett to all to herself, they whisk away to Cuba in a go-fast boat for mojitos (no, I'm not kidding) which leads to THEIR shower scene, which includes what was to be the main theme of their love making, mainly grabbing the other person's head and batting it around, like bears. This did not look fun or sexy at all, but Gong and Colin managed to stretch their acting skills as far as looking into each others eyes with something resembling a modicum of passion. Lather, rinse, repeat, bat, bat, grab hair, yank head around, kiss awkwardly, gaze lovingly. Later Gong finds out he's a cop, but he saves her anyway even though she's at least partially responsible for the afore-mentioned giant perforations in the bodies of certain characters at the opening of the film. She pretty amazing looking though, so it's clearly alright. But of course, they don't get to be together in the end, because that would be wrong. She's a criminal, and so that would make it definitely another kind of movie. And he's a wild card who can't be tied down. Or something.

Jamie and Colin certainly have something going on however, and I think their shower/sex scenes would have been a hell of a lot more convincing. But again, that would have been another sort of movie entirely. (Maybe even a good one.) In the meantime, guns roar, speedboats (ha!) do their thing, Colin Farrell almost sports a mullet, and hair spray rules all. And lots of people end up with holes in them, but they don't count, because, well, they have holes in them. Oh yeah, and the dude who played the bad guy in Charlie's Angels II and Rachel Griffith's sexy next door neighbor in Six Feet Under, Season Five, has so few lines as a member of Miami Dade's finest that I doubt he even needed to warm up his SAG card, which it too bad really, because that guy is too good to waste in dreck like this.

What else? Colin Farrell swaggers around with this off-kilter gait, as if there's something so big in his pants that it's throwing him off balance every time he takes a step. Actually, I've seen him walk this way in real life, so there may be something to that. And Jamie Foxx sports a cunning, pointy beard that would have made Rasputin proud, and made me want to get out my scissors.

The Verdict
Girls are expendable, (but sexy), because it's really your best buddy who matters the most, even if you would never sleep with him...really...I swear we're not gay...I mean, man, he's got such steely eyes...those pecs...those delts...that deformed behind..."oops, how'd that happen?" I wish.

In the meantime my babies, I will report more soon, but it may be only on the weekends, because I'm a bit crunched at the moment. I promise. And now to go fire off a hotly worded email to that idiot movie reviewer at the Seattle Times...I swear, I think he didn't really see the movie. Or maybe he was tanked on mojitos.