Watching The Box With My Parents

As you may have ascertained from my last post, my parents are characters. They realize this and accept it; at one point, my mother literally asked me why I haven't written a movie about how weird they are and made a bunch of money off of it. Yeah, and you wonder why I am the way that I am. Anyways, my parents watch a lot of movies (only because my mom, an eternal cheapskate, gets free rentals from her work) and they always have strong opinions about them: "Stupid! Overrated! What the hell? I don't get it! Artsy fartsy crap!" If you think I'm a tough grader, they are incredibly hard to please. And when they do like a movie, it's always something incredibly embarrassing like Daddy Day Care. Needless to say, when I lived at home, we always disagreed on the movies we watched together, which always ended up with colorful discussions like the ones I mentioned with Children of Men and Kill Bill Volume 1.

When I went home last week, my mother mentioned that she had rented The Box and, sensing a strong opinion from them, I was immediately filled with glee. Having already seen it back in October, I knew my parents would absolutely HATE it with a passion (maybe not as much as they hate The Piano--a film they still talk about nearly 20 years later--but close) so I was excited for their imminent end-of-movie rant. As the film progressed, they sat back in their chairs, intrigued by the mystery and trying to guess the giant "twist" they knew was coming. I wish I had written the guesses down, but the craziest one I remember came courtesy of my mother: "They must be aliens!" I just sat there, laughing to myself, while my mother kept asking, "Are we even on the right track?" No, mother, not even close. So when the big "reveal" came around, just as I thought, they were pissed. A two minute tirade filled with quips like "So stupid," "Crap," and "I just wasted two hours of my life on this?!" followed but the most interesting comment/question came from my dad: "Why did you want to see this movie again?!" I agree that the ending doesn't work and, for better or worse, the film is a complete mess. But there's no denying that The Box is a fascinating failure. It's not even close to a good movie, and it's not for everyone, but, honestly, I could watch it again while never seeing The Hurt Locker ever again. The Box C+, My Parents' Reaction A++++

Another reason to want to see The Box again?

James Marsden soaking wet.