The Promotion

It’s not very often that Mrs 6k gets me to go to the cinema. Nor that she gets me to watch a film at home – either on the TV or DVD. The reason for this is very simple – I don’t like movies.

People don’t seem to understand that not liking movies is actually completely fine. And I don’t understand people because people don’t understand that. See, I like football. But I understand that some people don’t like football. And that’s fine because if everyone were exactly the same then life would be very boring. Or perhaps it would actually be very cool, because we wouldn’t know the difference and the world would be set up to cater for stuff that everyone liked. Football or movies (or both) would be on 24/7. Everyone would be happy all the time. Utopia.
But I digress.

No, people recoil in horror when I tell them that I have never seen any of The Matrix Trilogy, none of the new Star Wars films, Harry Sodding Potter, Batman or Lord of the Bloody Rings. How can I have survived this long without those “essential” experiences?
Well, I guess that depends on your definition of “essential”. If it means trotting off to waste two or three hours of your life so that you can say you’ve seen the rubbish bits of the film that fill in between the trailers everyone’s been watching for the last 6 months on YouTube, then fine. Well done. My only interest in films stems from the need to have some sort of awareness of plot and cast for pub quiz purposes. I don’t need to pay R70 to sit with 100 cellphone-using, popcorn-crunching people in the dark for 3 hours to pick that up.
Oh yes, and I do know what cinematography is, but I don’t pretend to be an expert in it. Especially at braais.
Like some people do.
You know? Yes, you know.
So no, films are not for me. Thank you, but no thank you.

Marriage. Now that’s for me. And marriage requires work, love, and a willingness to compromise. And thus, because Mrs 6k does enjoy watching films, I do watch films with her every now and again. However, she has scored a couple of own goals of late, which may affect that ongoing arrangement that we have regarding movie watching. Last week, we went to watch The Proposal. The Proposal could be described as a “chickflick”, a “romcom” or “utterly pisspoor”. And it starred Sandra Bullock. I don’t have hugely strong feelings about Hollywood stars generally, but I do hate her with a passion. Even putting that aside though, the film was bloody awful.

Yesterday, Mrs 6k and Alex went off to find a DVD for our viewing pleasure. Alex came back with Curious George, which he watched all afternoon. Wonderful stuff. My wife came back with The Promotion. This was “a comedy”. I’ve used the inverted commas there because I always thought that “comedy” was meant to be amusing, funny, comical, humorous.
This was none of the above.
It was mildly depressing story of two assistant managers at a supermarket, one of whom is a recovering drug addict and the other who has self-esteem and security issues stemming from a lack of achievement in his life. These two assistant managers are both interviewed for a manager’s position at the supermarket, without hilarious consequences. Two hours later, one of them gets the job and the other doesn’t.

The lesson here could be “don’t watch films whose titles begin with The Pro…” but why make things so very complicated?
Just follow my advice and don’t watch films full stop. Believe me, it’s a great way to not spend a couple of hours.