Have you ever been so excited that a movie was coming out that you wrote down the release date on your calendar and counted down the days?  And felt disappointed when you didn’t make it out to the theater to see it, for some reason or another.  And put it on your Netflix cue even before it was released so you’d be the first one to see it.  And get so excited when you received the e-mail on Tuesday morning—“for Wednesday, The Soloist”. 

And then you watch the movie.

It’s not so much that the movie was bad—it wasn’t.  It was actually good—well, ok, at least.  And I LOVE Robert Downey Junior in EVERYTHING that he does; but the goddamn anticipation left me flat.  I remember seeing previews for the Soloist about a year before it came out and nearly crying because it just looked so GREAT.  The flashes of images and the music and the dark movie theater all came together to make me want to see this film.

And then you see the movie.

I remember seeing Jamie Foxx on In Living Color and really liking him.  And in Tha Playas Club, he was actually really good.  Then he did Ray, which was, from what I understand, really, REALLY good.  And he was good in it from what I hear (I don’t care much for Ray Charles, even though my sister did see him at LAX when we were young, plus Jamie was on In Living Color and Tha Playas Club—fuck does he know about acting), and he actually didn’t suck in this movie, but not sucking is not the same as being amazing.

And I cannot stress this point enough: the movie is ok.  There are some really nice things going on in it.  There is the main story of a relatively self-effacing while simultaneously self aggrandizing columnist for the LA Times who befriends (sort-of) a schizophrenic musical wunderkind who lives on the streets and plays violin just like he was ringing a bell, though it only has two strings.  Then there is the back stories of Juniors character and his managing editor’s failed past marriage, the gradual folding of the newspaper industry as a whole and the looming dissipation of the medium as a whole, the treatment and lives of the homeless as a whole, the treatment and approach to treatment of mental illness, current events of Los Angeles circa 2005, current events of the United States circa 2005 (read Katrina)—it’s just a lot of stuff going on.  Not bad, just a bit too much.

I guess the Soloist is much like how Mitch Hedberg describes pancakes:  Exciting at first, but by the end, you’re fucking sick of ‘em.  We are easily fooled animals.  Marketing is impressive and those people really know what they are doing.  They evoke, incite, inspire and entertain us and our emotions and our responses so much so that we lose control and consume what it is that they are feeding us (re: The Soloist).  It is sickening to think about but fascinating at the same time.  I don’t know.  I could be wrong.

I guess what I am trying to say is: MADMEN is Awesome and you should watch it every Sunday, 10 pm on AMC.