The Straws That Broke This Camel's Back

We need to get out of our house. Sure we've been to Pocatello in the last seven months, but that's it. No offense to Pocatello (although she does tend to take things personally), but that's not a vacation. Mostly we've just been stuck in the house working. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place to be stuck. Brand new basement, TV, comfy couches, projects to work on. (Speaking of projects, this week I'm finishing everything in the guest room. This post is helping me procrastinate climbing up on the shelf in the closet to crouch in the fetal position and paint the corners of that closet. Don't be jealous.)

Last weekend we watched two really bad movies set in Vegas. As soon as the second one was over, I went into the office and planned a vacation to Not Vegas. Bah. I'd like to give you the low-down on these movies as a warning. You may do something more rash than going on vacation if you see them.

First we have '21' - the title refers to Blackjack, not the legal age for drinking, gambling, and general debauchery. A shy MIT student, Ben, is about to graduate and is hoping to get into Harvard Medical School. He is very poor and he can't afford to go without a scholarship, so he has applied for the Robinson Scholarship. He has two nerdy, jolly friends.

Ben answers one question in his math class taught by Professor Kevin Spacey and he is suddenly invited to join Spacey's Counting Cards Club. The other lackeys in this club are Cocky White Guy with Bad Hair, Token Asian Guy, Token Asian Girl, and Obviously Too Pretty to be Good at Math or Counting Girl. Spacey has to twist Ben's arm for exactly 30 seconds before Ben decides to potentially throw away his academic career, not find out if he got the Robinson Scholarship, and embark on an illegal adventure.

Spacey's team teaches Ben their elaborate card counting system and Ben abandons all his other studies to learn it. Part of the system is this really tricky signal they give each other to indicate that a table is "hot." The team member sitting at the "hot" table puts his/her hands behind his/her back AND LOOKS RIGHT AT THE GUY WHO IS ABOUT TO COME OVER AND HUSTLE THE TABLE. Dumb. I didn't have to be Laurence Fishburne or a computer or even a little bit smart to notice that signal.

Oh, btw, Laurence Fishburne has been trying to catch Kevin Spacey (who never participates in the card counting - he just takes 50% of whatever they win) for 30 years. Fishburne says to his partner at one point that he (Fishburne) doesn't count cards because he likes to be on the right side of the law. Not because he doesn't know how.

Ben is only playing until he gets the $300,000 (what the?!) he needs to go to Harvard. Since he is a genius, he's keeping his money behind a ceiling tile in his dorm room at MIT. Safety first. When the heat comes, Ben ends up getting beat down by Laurence Fishburne in a dark room. He returns to Boston to find that all his money is gone. The money behind the ceiling tile? I'm so surprised! Blah blah blah - Ben gets back into the group to "earn" the money back. He also convinces Spacey (in disguise, natch) to join them at the tables. For some reason Spacey doesn't catch on that he's being set up. After a lot of running through The Casino That Paid A Lot of Money to Advertise in This Movie, Spacey gets to the car with the bag of chips, which turns out to be a bag of chocolate coins and the driver of the car is Laurence Fishburne's partner. When Ben and the always believable Kate Bosworth (not) make it to the alley, Fishburne is there to take the real bag of chips from Ben because Fishburne is done being on the right side of the law. Starting right now. Then the MIT students walk through the casino in slow motion as Ben narrates what else happened to them (this is a real story, so it's okay - it didn't make the movie better, but it's okay). We see that Ben has invited his law-abiding nerd friends to join him in his Vegas life. Booo.

Next we have "Lucky You" with Eric Bana (the Hulk) as a gambler who doesn't know when to fold 'em. Drew Barrymore shows up so that Bana can steal her money, sleep with her, and steal her money again. Bana is trying to get into the World Series of Poker, but he can't seem to keep the $10,000 in his pocket long enough. His father, Robert Duvall, is also a compulsive gambler and every time he shows up at the same casino as Bana, Bana loses all his money immediately, so unnerved is he by his father's presence. At one point Bana has the $10,000 in his pocket and Duvall shows up at the diner where Bana and Barrymore are having coffee. Drew takes a phone call and leaves father and son to play a quick game of poker. Duvall ends up taking all of his son's money. What?

It's kind of okay because it brings us to the only (ONLY) enjoyable scene in the movie. Horatio Sands (of SNL) bets Bana $10,000 that Bana can't run five miles and play 18 holes of golf (getting a certain score I can't remember now) in under three hours. Awesome. Drew holds the stop watch and when Bana finishes the last hole in an amazing putt, she admits that the time is three hours and two seconds. Now Bana is $20,000 in the hole. He gets mad at Drew for not lying because he's great boyfriend material like that.

Of course Bana ends up at the World Series of Poker. I swear more than half of the movie is the World Series of Poker with all the real players making cameos. If I wanted to watch that, I'd be on a family vacation in Bear Lake in 2006 not able to leave the condo with a crying baby. Sheesh. Bo. Ring.

Bana and Drew end up together even though he has no personality and he steals her money. They cap the movie by having a conversation made up entirely of cliches.

These two movies had the same effect on me that the real Las Vegas does - I wanted to take a bath in my own bathroom and get Vegas off of me. Vacation here I come!