The new Fast and the Furious movie is out, Tokyo Drift. I've already entered it on my Netflix list. I love the Fast and Furious series. A lot of people argue that this series of movies contains poor acting. Well, I'm not watching the actors. I'm watching the cars. Every movie should have a good car chase or two, just like each episode of The Dukes of Hazzard. A few times I've been roped into watching a romantic comedy, like the one where Meg Ryan learns how to use email to send love notes, or the one where Richard Gere learns how to dance with J-Lo. Yikes! These were just boring train wrecks. Now, if there was the promise of a car chase or two, maybe even just a drag race, I could have stayed awake through Meg Ryan checking her email. All of the bad acting would have been passable if there was a tricked out Honda Civic to watch in the background.
Unfortunately, my Echo doesn't have the performance to drift effectively ("drift" is when the car is sliding through a turn). Plus, the Farmington police probably know who I am, since my picture is in the paper frequently. I can't imagine the embarrassment of being caught drifting in the goofy Echo, and the officer says, "Hey, aren't you a columnist for the Farmington Independent?" So I must live vicariously through the Fast and the Furious, Gone in 60 Seconds, and the good old stand-by, The Dukes of Hazzard, in order to experience the exhilaration of driving recklessly. The bridges in Hazzard County are in a constant state of disrepair, so Bo and Luke often need to jump the river because the bridge is out. Each time the General Lee flies into the air, sailing over the water, I picture the Echo sailing over the vermilion River in Farmington. The vermilion River is more like a creek, eddying through town just west of the railroad tracks, so it's possible that the Echo could actually make it over the vermilion River. Of course, Dakota County is continually repairing bridges, and the chances of one being out are practically nil. Even if I came across a bridge that was out, I'd never do anything so dangerous as to jump it with my little Toyota. Yet it's still fun to fantasize, and that's what watching the Dukes of Hazzard is all about. It's about fantasizing that you could jump a river, out run the cops, fly across an open-pit mine and still make it back to the Boar's Nest for popcorn and beer.
Around Farmington, I'm a member of the slow and the serious driving club. But that doesn't stop me from wishing that every movie contained a good car chase or two. If that was true, you might be able to convince me to watch "The Devil Wears Prada" this summer. If the protagonists tossed their purses in the passenger seat of their convertibles and then floored it in an illegal street race, the movie would probably be a lot more interesting. All of us slow and serious drivers would pack into the theater, Raisenettes in hand, to ogle the cars and cheer on the drivers. Man, I don't think I'll be able to wait for Tokyo Drift to hit Netflix. I might have to go to a weeknight showing tonight.
Check out the IMDB review of the original movie "The Fast and the Furious".
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The thing that always bugged me about the Dukes of Hazzard is that they kept reusing the same footage of the car chases over and over again. The same dirt road and the same bridge out.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of like the live action equivalent of the same stone house that keeps scrolling by in a Flintstones chase scene.
You're absolutely right about the same car chase scenery being used again and again. I've heard an urban legend that this is because the producers had trouble getting enough Dodge Chargers for the series. The story is that so many Chargers were wrecked in the production of the show, that there were problems acquiring more of them. Although this is a nice explanation of the redundant scenery in the programs, I resist it. Only 75,000 Del Sols were sold in the US, yet I've managed to own two of them, and I've seen a couple of them around Farmington on a regular basis. If anyone out there knows how many Chargers were sold in the US, I'd be interested to know.
ReplyDeleteyeah no one is there to watch the actors.. hehe.. only the cars.. hehe.. :)
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