Category: Humor

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It’s a good thing opposites attract, because when it comes to the movie choices Lori and I make… we rarely agree. And that was the consensus when were exiting the theater after watching The Grey last Friday night.

It’s funny, Lori and I have a terrible record for movie choices on our anniversary. We laugh about it, because usually we’re pretty good about finding something that we both like when we actually ante up for the theatre. She typically likes romantic comedies, with favorites like While You Were Sleeping and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. My favorites are Jaws, The Shawshank Redemption, Heat and A Bronx Tale. But years of marriage have taught us to find common ground in films. She enjoys the occasional action film, and I the occasional romantic comedy. And we both can always land on fantasy-adventure greats like Lord of the Rings. Despite our years of discovering common cinematic ground, our anniversary movie choices over the last 21 years have been epic fails. For some reason we have a terrible history finding good films come anniversary time.

Most of you read about the plans I had for Lori and I last weekend. She had the choice of three dates and opted for the shopping and night out locally. The date started amazing: we shopped, we had a nice dinner, we laughed, we talked. But then, forgetting about our anniversary-movie-flop curse, we decided to include a movie into the mix.

She actually suggested the new Liam Neeson film, The Grey. “Todd loved it,” she said. “And it has Liam Neison.” (Todd… did you hear that? She trusted your opinion from our Movie Reviews & Quick Q’s page. Ha! Keep reading, my friend!)

I thought the film looked good as well; so we easily agreed to see it.

We should have known better.

It was our anniversary after all. There is no way we’ll ever make a good movie choice on our anniversary!

I remember the one year that we chose Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film Collateral Damage. I know, I know. How could we even have thought… Anyway, we went to see it. Then there was the year we saw Hannibal. Yeah… you’re losing all respect for me, aren’t you?

I don’t know what it is. I think something is in the air early February every year and it affects our judgment.

So this year we go and see The Grey.

At the end, Lori turns to me, almost angry, and says, “That was the worst film I’ve ever seen in my life!”

In all honesty, I can only remember thinking two thoughts at this point. 1. Is there any way I’m going to be able to salvage this night and still get lucky? (Sorry, but we married guys still think this way!) And… 2. I’m going to seriously kill my buddy Todd!

Funny, I didn’t find The Grey so terrible. It’s not gonna go down as one of my favorites, but I liked the fact that it wasn’t your typical Hollywood, predictable, mindless-action flick. I grew to like several of the characters in this story about a handful of men in a desperate situation, struggling to survive. But I totally understand Lori’s perspective. The movie was very dark and didn’t leave the audience much to celebrate as they left the theatre. It sure didn’t leave Lori feeling like celebrating anything as we left the theatre!

Luckily, 21 years together have taught us a few things. We talked about the film for about 5 to 10 minutes on the way home—in this case, I let her vent. It was actually quite entertaining. I wish the filmmakers could have heard her opinion. She was on a roll, trashing every aspect of the film. Gene Siskel would have been proud.

After shooting the film full of holes, she took a deep breath and looked at me with her amazing brown eyes. After taking in her adorable features for a moment, I said, “I’m really sorry you hated that film so much. What can I do to make it up to you?”

“Comedy.” She said. “I need comedy!”

We got home, I lit a fire, we snuggled on the couch and laughed together, watching a comedy.

The night was salvaged, and The Grey forever goes down in my anniversary-movie-flop hall-of-fame.

What about you? What has been your biggest date flop?