Blue Valentine

Deb 9 Me 3 (+)

This is all my fault. I read the synopsis and it said skin, language, blah blah blah and a beating. So I love the skin part and hate the beating part. But I’m thinking a little skin might override the beating so I reluctantly go see the movie. The first twenty minutes or so I’m ready to leave. From the first scene I’m thinking is this person gonna get beat up, that person, will they be the beater or the beaten? I’m totally fixating on the pending pounding that someone is going to get or give and I’m not really watching the movie, just anticipating the thrashing. So the stuff that’s going on may or may not have been worth watching, I don’t know, I’m just waiting for the beating. Eventually there is a pugilistic exercise, but I’m thinking, “that’s pretty light, there must be a beating coming up soon”. So the rest of the film I’m still distracted thinking the real beating is yet to come. So I never really saw the movie. Sitting right there for 114 minutes and didn’t see much of anything. There was skin, but I gotta tell you, I’ve seldom seen such joyless skin in a movie.

I have a feeling this was a pretty good movie, not a light-hearted romp through these people’s relationship, but probably heartfelt. I’m not sure why they felt they had to have a beating in the movie. It wasn’t a huge plot point and didn’t really offer any more insight to the player’s motivations. I’m glad the synopsis mentioned there was a beating, it’s my fault that I couldn’t look past that one element and see the rest of the movie. So I think it sucked, but it probably didn’t.