What I Watched When I Had The Flu

Subtitle: Fever Dreams Galore!

I was incredibly lucky when I had one of the worst stomach flus I've ever had this past weekend, because my cable provider was offering the free preview weekend with all the movie channels! So I had plenty of things to watch between visits to the porcelain god. Let's take a look at what I watched (that I remember when I wasn't completely passed out):

Congo
The Mighty Ducks
Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Bridesmaids
Fright Night (the remake)

Congo
I came in about half way through Congo, so I missed this classic of cinema:



It is an absolutely ridiculous movie, with the sign language talking gorilla, the evil white gorillas, and the fact that Laura Linney is in an action flick. Plus, she and everyone seemed to have and endless supply of everything, including a giant laser that she uses at the end to blow up a satellite IN SPACE! And then the survivors leave in a hot air balloon and a gorilla with no experience in the wild heads off with a family unit. In fairness, it's apparently meant to be an adventure in the vein of King Solomon's Mines book, but it's still pretty silly.
FEVER DREAM LEVEL: Oh Man, Is That Gorilla Talking? Far Out

The Mighty Ducks
I did not watch it in its entirety either, as I was pretty much clicking around to anything that would entertain me. But I couldn't resist this childhood classic, and saw the scene where Coach Bombay explains why ducks are so tough. In retrospect, the reasoning is pretty weak, but it works for the kids and I dare you not tell yell, "DUCKS FLY TOGETHER!" when you play hockey with someone.
FEVER DREAM LEVEL: Nostalgic. This Used To Be My Playground

Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Wide awake for this one as I hadn't seen it, and was curious since I had seen the others and read the books. Frankly, they added a lot of unnecessary drama and action to a story that is one of the more action packed in the series. It may be that the story was too episodic for a movie because they do pretty much sail from one dangerous locale to the next, but people almost turn into gold and definitely turn into dragons along the way. They threw in a subplot with kidnapped Narnians being sacrificed to a green mist, Lucy being jealous of Susan's budding beauty, Edmund being very jealous of Caspian and by extension Peter, had the White Witch appear again, and left the one kid a dragon much longer than in the original story. While the inclusion of the White Witch and Peter and Susan added some slight cohesion to the overall film series, I was left fairly unimpressed and wished I could watch the sort of hokey but very endearing BBC versions they used to play on PBS.
FEVER DREAM LEVEL: Awake and Judgemental

Bridesmaids
Love it. Makes me laugh every time.
FEVER DREAM LEVEL: Everything is HILARIOUS!

Fright Night (remake)
Doesn't even hold a candle to the original by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy David Tennant's goofy, drunk Peter Vincent so much that I'm willing to give it the slightest of passes. I remember laughing my head off in the theater at it and it's still relatively fun at home. Colin Farrell brings some weird energy to his vampire that I thought was fun, but he never gets to show it off as much as he should. The movie ends up getting bogged down in the more action-y elements and creature effects, so some of the fun vampire stuff gets lost. And nothing will ever top Chris Sarandon's line reading of "Welcome to Fright Night....For Real."
FEVER DREAM LEVEL: Confused. I Wish I Was Watching The Other One
Finally, sometime around Sunday, I recovered and watched the Golden Globes, Downton Abbey, and Once Upon A Time (the last two being my usual Sunday night viewing). But it was rough going for a couple of days there, thank God I had an endless supply of movies at my disposal (yes, I have Netflix, and all that, but there were too many extra steps involved to use it on the Wii given my weakened state).

So remember kids, if you want to have weird dreams while you're unable to eat for two days, be sure to watch a ton of movies!