The Deal That Wasn't

So I went to see Blonde last/Tuesday night.  Review: The many critics who say Ana de Armas is revelatory in a movie that fails her ... well, I may have been conditioned to believe that after all the reviews I saw, but I think the critics are right.  It's tough to give a damn about a movie when its lead character has no agency, who does not do things but instead has things done to her.  (That's why I think Sicario is such an overrated film: It's just Emily Blunt's character going through a bunch of shit.)  Also, the incessant and trippy cinematic effects director Andrew Dominik deploys, while dazzling in and of itself, eventually detracted from Blonde and called attention to itself.  Maybe the scattershot wizardry of the film and the passiveness of Marilyn Monroe was mandated by the source material, the 2000 fictional biography of the same name by famed author Joyce Carol Oates.  If that's the case, then Blonde the book is overrated, even though it was universally acclaimed at the time of its release.

(With that said, I just read through a review by Sean Burns of WBUR.  He too doesn't seem too enthralled by it, but makes allowances that the countless episodes of exploitation of Marilyn/Norma Jean is a meta-criticism of celebrity culture and how fans fetishize and then dispose of actors by using their on-screen images for our own lusts.  OK, maybe I'm being a bit harsh on the film.)

Anyway, after my stripper girlfriend bailed on me -- she said she got an hour east of her home out in west-central Minnesota before her car started to poop out on her; I thought she would be in the Twin Cities around noon time, not 5 p.m. -- I made sure on my phone about how long the drive to the theater would be and when the movie would start.  But damn you, Google Maps, you sly bastard, I saw an ad for Groupon where I could buy not just the ticket but also popcorn and pop at a discount.  Groupon, my old friend who I haven't used in a long time!  So I spent five minutes (needed to reset my password) getting on and then buying both deals.  I was going to use cash, but I couldn't pass up this deal.

After I exited the theater, I was looking at the movie posters on the wall.  The last one I saw was not for a movie, but for a deal at the theater: On Tuesdays, tickets are $7.  I bought mine on Groupon for $9.50.

(smacks head)

Hey, I haven't been to this theater in years, so I'm not beating myself up too much here.  Besides, I don't know if I'm going to watch a film there before January, which is when the Groupons (and I used both last/Tuesday night) expire.  But I still feel dumb for basically overpaying for a ticket just based on the day of the week I go.  And this was supposed to be a deal!