TRON: Legacy

I watched this with my Dad on Sunday, and it has been such a long time since we watched a movie together, just that fact was really nice. The movie itself wasn't bad either. I really liked how The Grid was stylized and the neon red/blue on black look of everything. (My Dad noted that The Grid in this movie was "less tacky" than the 1982 original). The two games Sam has to play when he first enters The Grid were really cool, I am sure there is a computer game version of that motorcycle one and I need to find it. With all the good things about the special effects and digitized-ness of it all, the one downer was I am 99% sure that young Jeff Bridges and Clu (who is a computer program based on Jeff Bridges 20 years ago) was a computer graphic, the face was strange and looked like something out of Final Fantasy. Granted, computer graphics have come a long way and can look pretty life-like, I can still tell the difference and it was distracting, like the movie makers were trying to trick me.

I would say that 30% of the movie was back story, 50% was action, and 20% was new plot information. As someone who had never seen the original TRON, I appreciated all the back info and even found it really interesting. Despite this, I still found myself confused at times, but it was nothing that I couldn't guess or assume or found out later. The action was good too, I'm all for a good jet fighting scene or running away from the bad-guy scene. However, I'm not going to lie, I did start to doze off towards the end and had to rewatch the last 10 minutes, I think it had something to do with the monotony of the action. I also find that action movies can be subject to cheese, I guess it's just a product of circumstances. This movie did have its share of cheesy lines ("but I would give it all up for just one more day with you" etc.) I just snickered and moved on, the cheese was mostly forgivable, except the ending, that was pretty cheesy.

As someone who had seen the original, my Dad's first impression after watching the movie was that "there was no plot". After he mentioned this I could totally understand that - the story is: the kid goes looking for his dad, finds him, and tries to get him back home, that's. about. it. Of course it was jazzed up with awesome special effects and I was too busy trying to figure out the back story that I didn't immediately notice the lack of the right-now story, which is probably what Disney was hoping for.

Solid performances from Jeff Bridges, cutie Garrett Hedlund, and hottie Olivia Wilde. I am also a fan of James Frain from The Tudors and True Blood, so it was nice to see him in this strange role.

A virtual action/adventure for the whole family!