A Movie A Week: Week 14 - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Movie: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Theater: Regal Tara Cinemas 4
Snack: Caramel Popcorn and Coke

This was probably the worst movie experience I've ever had.  Not because of the movie, which I enjoyed.  Nor because of the theater, which has apparently been renovated since the last time I was there and is now a really nice space to watch a movie.  No, the problem was that a few minutes before the movie started, I began to feel sick to my stomach.  Long story short, I ended up projectile vomiting in the bathroom.  Not a great opening act for a movie to follow.  Was it the food from the theater?  Well, I didn't finish any of it just to be on the safe side, but I don't really know (and there did not appear to be an epidemic of sick movie-goers that day).  It was definitely something I ate, though.  Once I had emptied my stomach I felt fine, if a little gross.  So, that incident tainted this week's movie-going experience, but even so, I stayed and watched the whole movie.

As for the movie itself, I enjoyed it.  Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt are both very appealing actors and they have really good chemistry here.  The story is fun, too.  I particularly enjoyed Kristin Scott Thomas as the aggressively disingenuous bureaucrat hell-bent on generating positive PR.  For all that I liked the film, I did leave with a couple of complaints.  There are mild spoilers involved in discussing them, so if you are reading this and are concerned about such things, consider yourself warned.  There is a scene in the film that is almost action-movie-esque, where Ewan McGregor's character disarms a would be assassin with a skilled casting of a fishing line.  It just felt ridiculously incongruous with the tone of the rest of the film.  I understand that the scene exists to cement the relation ship of McGregor's character and the sheikh character, but surely there was a less absurd way to accomplish this.  I also felt that the subplot with the boyfriend of the Emily Blunt character was an unnecessary diversion.  Again, I understand the reason it exists from a story perspective, as a dramatic obstacle to our two leads getting together.  I just found that the third act "surprise" with the character was completely unsurprising and that this complication just wasn't needed to give the relationship between the lead characters a satisfying arc.  Still, these flaws are not crippling.  This may not be one of the great films, but it is a good one.