Once again my family dragged me to see another movie last weekend. Instead of a nerdular, sexist, futuristic drama, we went to see a family movie called Up. I always expect great things from Pixar and they didn’t fail to produce a heart-warming, squishy, family movie that is appropriate for children. I really loved the story, although it did fall for the token female bit, just like every other movie. The main character’s wife Ellie dies early on in the movie and we don’t get another female character until the boy discovers that the beautiful bird is a mom. “Kevin’s a girl!” he laughingly exclaimed. Why yes she is! Why there are girls everywhere but they aren’t good enough to be characters in a movie. But don’t worry kids, only uptight cranky feminists even notice little details like the erasure of half of the population. The rest of you normal people, the non-feminists, won’t notice a thing because male-as-default-standard is pervasive.

Ooops sorry, I lost my pretty little head just now. Where was I? TEE HEE HEE!!11 Oh yeah, I was reviewing a movie.

Up was pretty great. What I liked best about it was the fact that the hero protagonist was a cranky old man. I can’t for the life of me remember his name right now. I know I could use my google-foo to figure it out but it’s much more fun to refer to him as a cranky old man, so that is what I will do from now on. Every other movie has a hero protagonist that is young and dead sexy but not Up. We get treated to a cranky old man brandishing a walker supported by four tennis balls. The old man fight scenes were superb and magnificent. The plot was sufficiently complicated and interesting and they threw enough bones to the parents in the audience to keep us from losing interest.

By the way, let me interrupt this movie review to rant about society’s general fear and loathing of aging and the elderly. It’s a whole lot of bunk. I can’t wait to get old. I don’t care if my arm flaps drag on the sidewalk. I am going to be one of those old ladies that isn’t going to take any crap from anybody. If I feel like wearing ratty old sweat pants, then by gum I’m going to wear ratty old sweatpants. When I was a young teenager that the jerk-off young guys thought was sexy, I did not appreciate being hooted, hollered and leered at in public. I couldn’t wait to get old enough that the jerk-offs would never feel the urge to act that way towards me ever again and that sentiment has not changed. We should glorify all the elderly people and show them the respect they deserve instead of pretending they don’t exist. As for our collective obsession with youth, y’all can stuff it where the sun don’t shine. Throw away the Viagra and the Botox, you don’t need it. We need more movies with old people and interesting characters instead of always the same old white doods.

Back to the review. Up had talking dogs, the realization of a life-long dream and the creation of a brand-new family. It had all those things that make you go “AWWWWW” while the tears well up and you desperately look for a few kernels of popcorn to nibble on so that you’re kids don’t notice your over-emotionalness. (That is too a word. Look it up.)

Go and see Up. It’s totally worth the money.

Of course it contains spoilers. You are only reading this because you aren’t going to see the movie anyway.

I just finished going to the Star Trek movie with Ethan and the kids, Hannah and Katrina. At first I never imagined that I would be going to see this movie after I read some rumors on the internet that Uhura and Kirk were going to hook up. Fortunately those rumors were untrue. They managed to make it even worse than that. Uhura’s hooking up with a colleague was entirely unnecessary but completely predictable. If what you were looking for in a science fiction movie is a safe, predictable plotline you won’t be disappointed. There was an evil bad guy with tattoos, men in charge while women run around in hottie gear comforting the big strong men, the death of an unknown crew member that nobody cares about, lots of cool technology, explosions, and Bones giving his classic line “I’m a doctor not a _______!” The movie was safe, like a warm hug from Mom. It’s a good thing I was in the mood for mindless, patriarchy brain-washing or this movie would have made me mad.

I have a suggestion for the sequel to this movie (Of course there will be a sequel) that would shake things up a bit and piss off all those Trekkie nerds.

Put the men in skirts.

I know what you are thinking already. “Oh Tanya quit being such a feminazi, man-hater! They had to put all the women in the movie in skirts because that’s what happened in the original series. Why don’t you just get over the cognitive dissonance you experienced as a child watching Star Trek reruns because the women wore short skirts? Because we exist to give men boners and that’s how it will always be? There is nothing degrading about women having an inferior uniform design. Besides, all women everywhere dress for combat in high heel shoes, dangling earrings and short skirts. ”

Ok, I agree. So let’s put the men in skirts. Let’s portray the women as swaggering frat-boy-genius alcoholic lotharios that constantly hook up with green men and hang out under beds. That would shake things up a bit and make it interesting.

But it will never happen because even though most movies are almost universally mindless boring dreck, when I am desperate for entertainment in my meaningless life I will continue to drop 40 bucks to watch this crap.