I ate too much cereal this week and now don't have any clean bowls. Tomorrow morning I will be faced with a difficult decision: wash a bowl or eat breakfast out of a pot. I'm leaning towards the pot.

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"The Birdcage" came out in 1996 and was a smash hit. Since I was a teenager in 1996 and saw pretty much every movie made, I remember going to see it. I also remember "The Birdcage" being one of the first movies I ever walked out on. It was boringly bad and I couldn't understand why it was a huge hit. And as far as I could tell, no one in the theater like it either: not a soul was laughing.

But that was then, this is now. Ten years later, praise for "The Birdcage" has not died down: those who seen it speaking lovingly of it. I never understood why people loved it--I remember the spring of 1996 when I saw it: the movie was hella boring. But a decade of praise has you questioning your judgment. After all, I was only a teenager back then. Maybe my taste in film hadn't developed yet. Maybe the humour was over my head. Maybe I wasn't smart enough to understand it. Being the open-minded individual I am, recently I decided to "The Birdcage" another shot.

Now, in 2007, "The Birdcage" is not only the first movie I walked out on, it's also the first movie I walked out on twice. After sitting through an hour of the DVD I discovered my taste hasn't changed. I'm not older and wiser--the movie sucked in 1996 and it sucks in 2007. I simply do not understand why people love it. I tried to force myself to stick it out--maybe it gets good in the end--but I couldn't do it. Sitting on the couch I found myself getting restless--like I do during boring, crappy movies.

I didn't find Nathan Lane's character funny. He played a stereotypical, flamboyant, over-the-top homosexual: I love stereotypes and gay people, but he simply wasn't funny. If anything, he was annoying. I wanted to bitch-slap him. And as far as I could tell, he was supposed to be the 'funny' element of the film.

I don't find cross-dressing humour to be funny. I know "Some Like It Hot" is supposed to be one of the greatest comedies of all time and I suppose it might've been funny in its day. But in today's world, it's overdone. A man wearing women's clothes isn't funny anymore (nor was it funny in 1996). One of the key elements to humour is the odd and absurd. In 1959 it was absurd to see a man dressed up like a woman. But in today's world, it's as tired as Michael Jackson/molestation jokes. From sitcoms to movies to the guy who lives down the street from me, a man in woman's clothing is practically an everyday occurrence--it's just not funny. I rank cross-dressing as low as burp and fart jokes in comedy: it's cheap, easy to do, low-brow, and about as fresh as the pizza in my fridge.

There are only handful of movies I didn't watch until the end. Most of the time, I try to tough it out (I figure there has to be a redeeming element to every movie or it would have never been made). Whenever I do leave a movie, I wonder if I messed something (how can a studio make a movie that bad). Now that I've given "The Birdcage" a second chance, I know there isn't anything I missed: it's so bad, I walked out twice.

© 2007 siknerd.com