This evening on the bus home to Toronto we got two movies. (Finally! The last
6 or 7 bus rides I’ve been on have been moviless) First up was Charlie’s
Angels, and then Message in a Bottle.

Wait, no, it wasn’t Charlie’s Angels, it was “Heavily Edited Excerpts from
Charlie’s Angels, Greyhound Bus Edition”

Right from the start I knew this was going to be trouble. You know that scene
at the beginning where Drew Barrymore grabs the guy on the plane and jumps
out the window? That entire sequence was cut. (Okay, I could almost
understand clipping that it if we were in an airplane…)

Next, Cameron Diaz wakes up and does her little underwear dance. (*vacant
drool*) and goes to the door where she says, posessed by another woman’s
voice: “I signed the waiver, so you can just deliver them to the office.” I
was kindof stunned. Not that I think Charlie’s Angels was a great peice of
film or anything, but if someone completely re-wrote all the veiled allusions
in a film I created, I’d -freak out-. I don’t understand why they left the
underwear dance in but clipped “You can just put things in my slot.”

Anyhow, it gets worse from there. You know all that kung-fu? None of them
ever connect. They run vaguely towards eachother with cartwheeling fists, and
then someone flies backwards. It was all edited into a great big non-contact
telekinetic fight. Which would work for Jedis, maybe, but does not fly with
three chicks in wetsuits.

That whole sequence with the dominatrix in the tech company? Gone. The geisha
sequence was like 3 seconds long, and the octoberfest dancing was clipped
into a musical montage. There was no “relationship” between Drew and the bad
guy.

What it eventually became was “Bill Murray’s Sumo Wrestling Extravaganza,
with bits of Cameron Diaz’s Glorious Underwear Dance.”.

Should I even get started on Message in a Bottle? It’s one of the few movies
that I’ve ever fallen asleep on in the theatre, and it had the same effect on
the people in the bus. Robin Wright is still a hottie, all these years
after “The Princess Bride”, but watching her bicker with and bemoan Kevin
Costner’s boatmaker was enough to make me want to jump overboard
myself. “Please don’t throw me a life preserver, I want it to end as quickly
as possible!”

I’m such a meanie after I’ve been cooped up on a bus for 6 hours.