Don't Get Attached To The Country Boy

Fact 1: Six out of ten Americans struggle with obesity.

Fact 2: One of the six will sit in front of me in the movie theater. He will make frequent trips to the restroom.

Fact 3: If I dare tell him this is distracting, the other five will show up and make me eat my socks.

Whenever I go to watch a movie, I have to remind myself of these three things. It helps me know what I'm getting into. I was never a Boy Scout, but "Always Be Prepared" seems like a great motto for anybody, and definitely for me.

I recently went to a movie theater and, despite my best efforts to resist, I gave in and bought some popcorn. It's not that I'm trying to watch what I eat or anything, it's just that these days popcorn costs a ridiculous amount of money (approximately $.25 per kernel). Anyways, the movie I saw was a war movie, and it only served to confirm my theory that every war movie is the same. Sure, minor details may change from film to film - such as whether or not we are fighting Nazis, the Japanese, or more Nazis - but when all is said and done, every war film follows the same formula.

The Plot Summary of Every War Movie You Have Ever Seen:

The squad/unit/team of good guys are sent on the mother of all missions facing impossible odds. For reasons of political correctness, their unit contains at least one of each of the following: A black man, an Italian, a Jew, and a country boy with a drawl. There is also a battle-hardened veteran, a coward who must prove himself, and a Brooklyn native with a bad mouth. At any given time in the film, one or more of these men will die. (Probably the sweet little country boy, so don't get too attached. He's toast.) Still, the mission will be a success and the main hero will live to tell the story of his squad's heroism and cultural diversity.

Did I miss anything? Maybe, but you get the point. Don't get me wrong though; I like war movies! I have been a big war movie fan ever since I was really little, and maybe even before. Of course, the war movies I grew up on were black and white, and they almost always starred John Wayne. These were the kind of films wherein bad guys would get shot, twirl around once with their hands in the air, fall to the ground, and then die. Also, they would hardly ever bleed, and if they did bleed they never bled actual blood.* It would be a small trickle of dark liquid from the corner of their mouth, closely resembling Hershey's syrup. The old-time directors could get away with this because the films were, after all, black and white.

Warning: The following paragraph contains graphic descriptions of war-related violence that may fry young, impressionable minds. Your innocence, once lost, can never be regained.

Fast-forward to today's gritty films, and you can just forget about the little trickle of Hershey's. The movies now want us to believe that a soldier's every body part is like a raspberry jelly doughnut waiting to burst. Yes, Hollywood has cranked the gory knob from "high" to "way-beyond-realistic." Now, hardly a moment goes by on the screen without some poor soldier getting blown to smithereens by an RPG (Really Powerful Gun). In the scenes following, the soldier lies gasping for his final breaths, while looking as though he had spent time in a blender set on "puree." Medics scramble to save him, but only succeed in drenching themselves in the soldier's... uh, raspberry jelly. Things have definitely changed a bit since the days of black and white, twirl-before-you-die war movies, haven't they? Still, the basic formula has remained consistent and I really doubt that we'll see that change anytime soon. It's nice that there are some things in life we can rely on, isn't it?

I feel pretty much the same way about sports movies, too. Am I the only one who has noticed that they are all strikingly similar? That is, with the exception of Rocky, in which Sylvester Stallone (played by Rocky Balboa) does not win the climactic fight, but gets beat to a pulp instead. How refreshing! I'm not a pessimist, I just like variety. He loses the fight and then spends the last moments of the film stumbling through the crowd yelling for Adrian from the side of his mouth. The funny thing is, Adrian is standing in front of him the whole time, but you can't blame Rocky for being a little bit loopy. After all, the man is exhausted, not to mention the fact that he's lost a lot of raspberry jelly.


* Whoa! Try saying that sentence five times as fast as you can!