So a rare occasions without children on Friday night, so Lora and I went to dinner, ate way too much food (fresh, fried potato chips smothered in bleu cheese... oh yeah), and then we went to see "Watchmen".

Unfortunately, "Monsters Vs. Aliens" booted "Watchmen" off the IMAX screens (grrrr...) and the absolute collapse of attendance since the first week pushed the movie to the small theatre in only it's 3rd week (more on that later). So we settled in and hunkered down for the 2 hours and 42 minutes of superhero goodness.

"Watchmen" did not disappoint. It was amazing. With the caveat that it was NOT as amazing as the graphic novel, but as far as superhero movies go, this was probably my favorite since "Spiderman" (the first movie) or "Darkman" (both Sam Raimi movies, by the way). If you haven't had the opportunity to see "Darkman" it stars Liam Neeson as a Batman like vigilante who was injured to extant of no longer being able to feel pain as well as having some sort of high octane adrenaline boost that ups his strength. But I digress...

First the good pieces... "Watchmen" is incredibly true to the dialogue and the artwork. I swear there were times I could swear I recognized the exact images on screen from the graphic novel. The actors were all dead ringers to their drawn counterparts, although I never quite realized how much Dan Dreiberg resembled Chevy Chase. Maybe it was the glasses. I did keep expecting someone to call him Clark Griswold though. Special effects were phenominal as well.

Now the bad. Wow, did they have to cut from the graphic novel. I guess there was no other way around this (other than making this a trilogy) to come out with a movie of reasonable length. Personally, I think there should have been multiple movies. The graphic novel itself was originally a 12 issue mini-series, so it's not like there weren't sections you could easily break for. Now, Lora loved it without having read the novel, so it can still stand on it's own merits as a movie, but I think it would have been so much better if there was more time to explain things and more layers could have been added in. It did feel rushed to me, even at the long length.

At lastly, the ending. I won't ruin it for anyone who hasn't read the graphic novel or seen the movie, but I didn't like it. I didn't feel it was realistic, and I certainly don't think it would have led to the final conclusion like the graphic novel's alternative ending did. That's all I'll say.

And I'll also say... DON'T TAKE YOUR CHILDREN! I heard figures of a 40% walkout rate, mostly from parents who took their kids thinking they were going to see the next "Iron Man" or "Spider Man". Not even close. Sex, violence, nudity, profanity, child molestation, end of the world... it's not appropriate in the least for kids to see. Yet as a co-worker of mine mentioned eariler today, they're marketing "Watchmen" action figures at ToysR'Us. Very irresponsible.

Ok... enough non-Disney talk! Next blog I'm going back to talking about PINS!!!