Heard yesterday: “Louisiana is the only place where you can experience all four seasons in a 24 hour period.” Last week we had snow. Today I’m wearing shorts. Sheesh.

We took Anna to see The Tale of Despereaux. Okay, this is a wonderful story, but how in the name of little green gods can this be rated G?? I mean, there’s a scene where the princess is in mortal peril of being eaten by rats! And it’s pretty obvious what happens to the “King Rat” at the end. At one point my 4 ½ year old was huddled in my lap, telling me she wanted to go home. I’ve never read the book, and I’ll admit that it’s a wonderful and beautiful movie, but I think that it had enough dark themes to get it bumped up to a PG.

Then in the evening, Jack and I utilized a babysitter and went to see Seven Pounds.

Long, ponderous, depressing, and definitely not one of Will Smith’s better projects.

Lots of spoilers below:

Okay, the first time we saw the clipping of the seven people who died in the fiery crash, it was pretty obvious what was going on. And, there were enough flashbacks (god almighty, enough already with the flashbacks!!) that we knew that his wife had been killed as well.

The scene where he donates the bone marrow without anesthesia is apparently supposed to show us that he’s so “tortured and guilt-ridden” that he doesn’t feel he deserves to have any painkillers… But, y’know, we GOT that he’s guilt-ridden. Really. (See above note re flashbacks.)

And THEN, if the woman you’ve fallen in love with supposedly has serious congestive heart failure and supposedly has about a month to live, WHY WOULD YOU FUCK HER??? Why don’t you just take her for a fucking jog around the block while you’re at it?

But the final straw, for me, was when the corneal transplant somehow also changed the recipient’s eyes from blue to brown. I had to restrain my self from shouting, “Oh give me a break!” at the screen, remembering just in time that I was in a theater and not in my living room. Though, if I’d been in my living room and watching it on DVD, then maybe I could have fast forwarded through the interminably slow and plodding middle section.

And… a jellyfish??? Oh come ON! Because, you know, it’s oh so easy to buy a lethal jellyfish so that you can keep it in a tank in your hotel room. Yeah, it would be way too complicated to just take some sort of drug overdose. And, if a couple of the EMS guys got zapped, would he then have to donate a couple of extra organs to atone for those deaths too?? Not that emergency scenes are ever chaotic and it’s not like water got slopped over the edge of the tub that could destroy the warning note or anything, and of course it would be so incredibly easy to SEE a jellyfish in a tub full of ice?

Anyway. On the way home, Jack and I were comparing all of the ways we found the movie lacking. I was relating my dissatisfaction with the way it ended (I kept hoping that they would end it in a non-predictable way,) and Jack said, “No, I was pretty happy with the ending. Because, if the jellyfish hadn’t killed him in the end, we’d still be watching the damn movie.”

Yeah, it’s pretty bad when you’re rooting for the jellyfish.