This weekend was a double-movie weekend. On Friday night, I went out to see the new Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer movie with some of my peeps from work, and late Saturday I succumbed to the influence of the females in my house, and went to catch the new Nancy Drew film.

The good news: my expectations were suitably low, so the movies weren’t actually physically painful.

That sounds like a pretty mediocre recommendation, but let’s face it: the first Fantastic Four movie was dreadful. Really dreadful. Painful to watch. While it would be a stretch to call the second one “good”, it’s got at least some good bits and a climax which is sort of cool. But since negative criticism is more fun to write:

• Dear God. Jessica Alba is a beautiful girl. She does not need to be painted, bronzed, and wear a wig. Her skin tone varies from “somewhat reasonable” to “oompa loompa”. Her opening scene just made me blink and ask “how much botox did they shoot into her face?” Yaz asked “what did they have the makeup gun set to? Whore?”
• A word I never want to hear in any non Star Trek movie: “tachyon”.
• Spiderman 3 jumped the shark with the Tobey McGuire dance sequence. F4 came dangerously, dangerously close.
• A wedding. No action film should ever have a wedding. A wedding between characters of a TV show is the kiss of death, and it’s again quite dangerous in this one.
• Why did they bring back Von Doom? He’s pointless. Again, better than Spiderman 3, where EVERY villain was pointless, but still.

Still, it was better. No great, but I didn’t leave feeling rooked out of $10. Maybe just $2.50.

Nancy Drew: a completely different movie, but again, I entered with low expectations. Some negatives:

• Nancy adopts an annoying sidekick named Corky. We get it: he’s the fat dorky younger brother type who is trying to act cool. How stereotypical is that?
• Nancy performs an emergency trachiotomy. Nuff said.
• The bad guy tries to get her with a bomb. A bomb which beeps. Which has a convenient counter on the front indicating how much time is left. Just sitting on the drivers seat when she goes back to the car. Sigh.
• Nancy’s dad is working hard to make ends meet. So… they take a job in L.A. And somehow manage to rent a vast run down mansion. In Hollywood. Because that’s all they could afford. Ahem.

Still, it had secret passages, a mystery, boxes with secret panels. My wife didn’t like it, but since my expectations were so low, I didn’t actually mind it all that much. If you are a fourteen year old girl, maybe you’ll find it worth matinee money.

One bright note: Nancy’s costuming was really well done. A strangely eclectic voyage through preppy chic.

Upcoming preview that I saw: Transformers. I’ll probably see it on opening weekend.