CLOVERFIELD - See it

Avid readers know what a huge movie fan I am. I will not spoil endings or talk to you about a movie until you have actually watched it.

The large and in charge ladies of the matinee who sat behind me in the theater were very vocal before and after Cloverfield. After the movie these ladies seemed disappointed. So I thought it might help if you set expectations at the appropriate level.

Cloverfield is a monster movie. But the movie is NOT about the monster. If you want to see a movie about the beast, watch Peter Jackson’s King Kong or better yet rent Monster Island.

Cloverfield is about a group of New Yorkers surviving an attack. It happens to be about a monster attack, but there are some points of the movie it won’t matter to you what it is, you just remember that we can be attacked.

When I was growing up in Detroit our local ABC affiliate would show Godzilla movies after school on Fridays. These were the “man in costume” movies.

These Godzilla movies were made soon after the dropping of Fat Man and Little Boy, the nuclear bombs deployed over Japan.

Godzilla has been portrayed as a creature of destruction and savior to the people of Japan depending which movie. I have heard the argument that the movies were an escape from reality while remaining politically charged and moralistic. I can appreciate these arguments. But to me, they are just really fun movies.

Cloverfield will be described by “intellectuals” who review movies the same way. To them I say you should enjoy the movie for what it is and stop reading into it so much.

Last week when leaving I am John Legend for a second time one little boy asked his father if that could really happen? His father let the little boy enjoy his childhood and several full night of sleep in his future saying, “no, people can’t jump around like that.”

But we know that our future is undecided. Just as in the Mary Shelly classic we know that man should not disturb nature, that no matter how confidant/arrogant we get, humanity will one day find that it’s hubris will be found in science. Our entertainment value is finding a way to survive what is out of our control.