It's Just Abbey

Alright. I’ll admit it. I went and saw Fast and Furious. I have no idea if I liked the film or not. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great.

I will state that I have seen all three prior movies. The first out of boredom and the second two were watched by a proverbial gun to the head. The Fast and the Furious (the first one) wasn’t terrible. I actually was mildly amused by it. 2 Fast 2 Furious was… I dunno. I forget. Not memorable at all for me. All I took away from that movie was that I REALLY wanted a hot pink car. And the third movie Tokyo Drift, aka 3 Fast 3 Furious, was shiny and didn’t have Paul Walker in it. As you can see, I am clearly a HUGE fan of these movies.

So I went to this movie more as a joke and something to do rather than to see an enjoyable film. So I got my tub of overly buttered popcorn and settled in for something to laugh about on the ride home. I was mildly surprised to realize I actual enjoyed watching this film. My world wasn’t rocked but I sat through the whole film without letting my mind wander. Plus the Wolverine and Transformers preview beforehand made the geek in me too excited to doze off. They gave me hope. They were like an amazing pregame before an okay football game.

It had a decent storyline that kept a person who knows nothing about cars engaged. It only had a few moments where someone who hadn’t seen the first three would get confused. Overall, it was a decent popcorn flick. It is also very clear how this movie will translate into a video game. Several of the scenes I felt like I was playing without a controller in my hand. It was quite an odd sensation.

I will say that as a woman I am always a bit annoyed by these kinds of movies because there is a complete lack of strong women. It is a movie for men by men. There was only one strong woman character. The only other woman in the film was twig thin, throwing herself at Vin Diesel constantly and had character structure thinner than her waist. Same problem I had with He’s Just Not That Into You. The men are built up with plenty of background and emotion. You only need to know one thing about the women. They are pretty and get sad a lot. But I since this is a dude movie, I will make that observation and carry on.

The parking lot for the theater was almost the most amusing part. It was filled with dozens of tricked out foreign cars and killer paint jobs. I would scoff at them for being posers but then I had a thought. I imagine it is much like when nerds like me go see Harry Potter. Yeah, we have wands, cloaks, silly glasses and a mild knowledge of Latin but we aren’t actually magical and going on awesome adventures.

It was hardly a movie I think will break any box office records, but it was a relatively fun movie to sit back and watch on a rainy night. Fast and Furious: Take it or leave it.