I’m usually a hard egg to crack when it comes to movies that put a lump in my throat and make my eyes manufacture clear salty fluids. I think Problem Child 2 was the last one to have that effect on me, only because it sucked so hard I had to force myself to sit through and endure it because I had paid my hard earned $ for the ticket and wouldn’t be able to live with the fact that I paid $5 to walk out of a shitty movie. Instead, I spent the rest of the film counting each popcorn kernel I put in my mouth (I think the final tally was 956?)
Anyhoo, Kimb and I went to see Hotel Rwanda last night and I think both of us were ready to break down quite a few times throughout the movie. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story and rather ignorant with the daily news (like myself) I’ll try to dumb it down and invent a “pretend” scenario that might be able to help you understand things a bit more:
Imagine if where you lived, all citizens were segregated into 2 types of people: the Purple and the Plaid. Someone from the Purple group kills your president. This upsets the Plaids, all Hell breaks loose, and all of the Plaid people decide that all Purple citizens need to be sliced and diced to death via machetes – women, children, boys, men, and anything else that moves until the Purples are no more. The people that are there to protect the Purples at some point throw their hands up and say “Sorry – we know hundreds of thousands of innocent people including your friends and families are being slaughtered, but we’re gonna have to go home now. You’re on your own – bye, have a nice day, hope you don’t get chopped up like all of the billions of corpses laying on the streets blocking traffic out there!” And off they go, buckling up their seatbelts trying not to catch a blade, bullet, or drive over a corpse on their way out.
Sounds great, huh? That is a very vague interpretation of what happened in Rwanda 10 years ago, and it got much, much worse than that. It was incredibly real, disturbing, educational, and something that I think could be a great reality check for all humans in general.
Think life sucks? Go see this film ASAFP and you’ll quickly realize that yeah, things aren’t so great all the time, but at least you’re not living in paranoia 24/7 of being chopped up with a giant dull, dirty blade because of the shape of your nose.
