Brain Fertilizer

If you've never seen The Specials (and you probably haven't even heard of it, except maybe earlier here), you need to put it onto your Netflix/Blockbuster queue.

It's a low, low budget film, which is a strange choice considering it's a movie about Superheroes. But it's the right choice, because the movie focuses on the people, and the interactions. The friend who recommended it to me said that no one ever uses their Superpowers in the movie (other than a quick sequence of each "power" at the end), but there are actually two demonstrated uses of Superpowers...if you see the movie, come back here and we'll see if you got 'em both. You'll slap your forehead on one of 'em, probably.

It makes some great comments on human nature, but that's a by-product; at least, at the point where it really tries to make a comment, it gets sappy and stupid. But when it is just trying to be funny (and the movie is funny), it shows a depth of understanding and the ability to communicate the understanding.

At one point, a guy and girl end up "getting together". I'm not saying who, because I don't want to give away any spoilers, and who they are is mostly unimportant to the point of this paragraph. The thing I found irritatingly correct is that it is absolutely up the girl. She had given no hint of liking the guy, and he wasn't at her place to make a move and probably never considered it before. But since she offers, he takes. And if the movie continued through real life, he probably would find himself in a committed relationship and then married, because she had decided. And as long as she continues to put the effort into the relationship, he'll probably stick with it. There are some variations for infidelity, and much of that depends on how much the woman decides to maintain her end, how much she establishes and enforces the guidelines against cheating...and if the guy is just plain a selfish jerk or not. Anyway, I'm not sure the director and characters really put that much into that situation; whether they did or didn't, I got that much out of it...inadvertant insight being the best part of Hollywood.

Anyway, go see the movie. It's awesome.