the universe punishes me for supporting RPattz' film career...

Warning: Spoilers ahead if you can't look at the movie poster and figure out what's going to happen in the end anyway...


I was chatting with the nice young man behind the concessions counter—who may or may not yet know that he prefers dudes—while trying to punch a straw through the lid of the soda I just purchased when the cup tips over and spills all over the counter, my pants, and soaks through my shoes. In fact, at that very moment, I was saying something like, "How is this a small?" And my young friend agreed, "It would be like, an extra large anywhere else." So you can imagine 32 oz. of diet soda sloshing around my toes. And it was a full 32; just had to say "no ice" didn't I.

I wasn't pissed. I saw the humor in it. I was laughing in my head when I heard the girly shriek I made when I saw it spilling all over and the guy going "oh my god, oh I'm so sorry, oh my god..." And I hung around trying to sop up some of the liquid but he shooed me off saying "I don't want you to miss your moooovieeee..."

I sat down mid-preview for a Chinese language film. Wait, am I in the right theater? Is this the movie? No, it's a trailer. Whew. My film starts up. Robert Pattinson is in the opening scene. WHAT?! Oh, okay. Serves me right for buying a ticket to a movie I knew nothing about. So the soda spill was the universe punishing me for paying $6 to further RPattz' career. No wonder the guy at concessions didn't want me to miss anything. Wait, but I didn't know this was an RPattz movie. Maybe the universe was punishing me for buying a soda after I'd sworn off them a little over a week ago. Give me a break, it was hot and I didn't want a drink with high fructose corn syrup in it. I only ended up drinking a portion of it before I had to get up to pee. And it was right in the middle of Reese Witherspoon's backstory so I missed that. I threw away the rest of that $5 beverage. Waste!

So it might be more obvious to you that I was watching Water for Elephants because unlike me, you do not live in a cave and have actually heard about this. I've never gone into a movie more blindly. Boy, this one had it all though: animal cruelty, a miscast vampire as the protagonist (I'm told he's quite the heartthrob but even after finally seeing his work I can't figure out why. Admittedly, he was less pasty than usual.), circus backdrop, a little person, Reese Witherspoon looking impossibly beautiful, good costumes, good extras, and Christoph Waltz.

Waltz was easily the best thing about this one. When he started punching the shit out of that elephant I thought, this guy's good. He went from Nazi (Inglourious Basterds) to beating the shit out of an elephant. That's seriously the only thing I've seen this guy do, but he does it well. He must be the go-to guy for all the asshole roles. And I can respect a man who does the tough work of being the bad guy. And not the sexy villain type but I mean the dick that nobody is supposed to like. Make no mistake here, he has no redeeming qualities. When all the other movies are trying to blur the lines between the hero and the bad guy, this was a good slap in the face. **SPOILER ALERT** It made the whole thing really really really simple for the gal to cheat on him and leave him and run off with the vampire. Wait so the bad guy was a real bad guy but the protagonist was a wife-stealing good guy? Sounds like he has some ethics to sort out. Oh but it's okay because he's kind to the pretty lady and the animals. Confuse me some more.

Reese Witherspoon as I said earlier was impossibly beautiful. In every scene. But then, does she ever look gross? I haven't seen it yet. It made me wonder if every film she makes is a way of sticking it to her ex-husband Ryan Phillippe for cheating on her. Then I thought, what's he been up to lately. What's the last thing I saw him in? Oh yeah, MacGruber (not recommended). He had a stalk of celery in his ass. There's really no reason to spike the ball, Reese.

Finally, Robert Pattinson... There were a handful of teenage girls sitting behind me that let out an audible gasp at his first closeup and then giggled throughout his entire love scene. Oh em gee. The producers probably put him in this film because they figured it would guarantee the teen girl/gay boys would fill seats. And it did. But that's a terrible reason to do it. These girls would pay money to see this guy do anything, so make more stupid vampire movies, ya dingbats! That's what they want anyway and then my path doesn't need to cross theirs. Putting the appropriate actor in Water for Elephants would have made this good movie (you heard me) a great one. Add a few tweaks to the characters and then you'd have something special. Instead I suspect a lot of people who would probably enjoy this film will avoid it because you DID put RPattz in it. Like me. Had I known I would have avoided entirely. I dunno who, another actor that was actually attractive to someone who isn't a teenager. An actor that Reese would think is attractive. I'm not convinced she really thought this guy was hot—she was just trying to get the hell away from that psychotic elephant stabber she married.

I'm going to make a quick comment on the animal cruelty. I get it. I get that the elephant is an actor and wasn't actually getting her ass kicked by Christoph Waltz. It wasn't real blood. I get it. BUT, the tricks they make her do in the film that are supposed to be so breathtaking are CRUEL. She does things elephants would never do in the wild. Yes, for a circus in 1931, you might have seen tricks like that, but it was cruel back then too. For example, it's unnatural and painful for an elephant to do a handstand. And training one to do it probably took more prodding and poking than anyone wants to admit. I hear there's actually a boycott on the movie. Again, had I KNOWN... Anyway, human actors can make the choice to suffer for their art. Animal actors don't get to do that. It kind of pissed me off more to see the parts that were supposed to be beautiful than the screen violence.

Conclusion: I'm not really blaming it on the universe because I'm not an insane person. I am clumsy as hell.