How many more ways can the directors dream up for Bruce Willis, aka John McClane, to avoid death in Die Hard? Rather than being an edge of the seat action adventure the latest offering should really be reclassified as a comedy, with parents giving guidance to their children along the lines of "Don't worry dear, the Russians don't all sing Frank Sinatra that badly." Lexi and I chuckled along merrily to the opening car chases, variety of shoot outs and amazing co-incidences, with my favourite being the car parked outside a favoured Chechen nightclub. How lucky for Father and Son McClane that the boot contained a fully functioning arsenal and the car was full of enough fuel to allow them to drive overnight to Chernobyl . My favourite section was the Baddy About To Kill Our Heroes section. John and Jack are kneeling, hands tied and time appears to be up for them. However Bruce decides to find something funny, while Jack joins in in order to hide the sound of sawing through their bonds thanks to a well hidden blade. But we all know what the real joke is in the scene, don't we? It is of course the main baddy who not only has smouldering good looks and can dance in a manner that would make Bruce Forsyth proud he insists on eating carrots while doing all this. Yes carrots. Raw carrots in fact. The makers of Die Hard must have given up aiming for anything other than high comedy years ago but adding carrot-eating to the skill set of the arch baddy was a master stroke. Hilarious. After that I lost what little belief I had in the film and scoured each new scene for evidence of fruit and vegetables. Would there be a quick cut away to our pair of lads sharing a sly tomato? How about two unlucky guards being shot while peeling potatoes? Or maybe even the femme fatale doing something unmentionable with an orange, radish and clove of garlic while hiding behind a stick of celery?
But how on earth did Lexi andI find ourselves laughing at this rubbish in the first place? I had arranged to go to another school yesterday evening to watch some drama put together by the very marvellous Frantic Assembly. The school was 38 km away from home and so after dropping Rupert back home from a party and leaving Pat and David in charge Lexi and I set off. We arrived in perfect time for the 7.00pm start only to discover that the start time had been brought forward to 6.00pm. Frantic Assembly had emailed me to tell me of the change, but of course I had not checked my emails that day. Drat.
Such is life so we consoled ourselves by eating at the extremely good D'Tandoor Restaurant. It turned out that by accident we had arrived on Valentine's Day, yes ever the romantic, and the restaurant had laid on a buffet style arrangement all for RM49 per diner. The main man of D'Tandoor was very keen for us to partake of this fine fare as they had clearly cooked far too much food and it was extremely good.
But what to do after such a excellent meal? Well the cinema of course, and Die Hard. We ended up plumping for the Gold Class seats as it was the show that had the shortest waiting time, but did have a relatively hefty price tag of RM55 per seat. But what amazing seats! Leather padded arm chairs that glided back into the recumbent position at the flick of a switch. Duvets were also provided. So comfortable were the seats that I could have dozed off quite easily. Two things did keep me awake though. Firstly the carrot crunching of villains as previously mentioned and secondly the phones belonging to our near neighbours. The bloke next to us's phone went of once, resulting in a Paddington Bear Hard Stare from yours truly. When it went off a second time I had to have a stern word and he ceased his conversation. Eagled eyed Lexi though noticed movements and mutterings coming from under the duvet next to the phantom phoner and faster than you can crunch a carrot she dashed over and removed the duvet from the fidgeting mound to find a bloke chattering on his phone. He did look very surprised, even in the dark. Why do people pay big bucks to laugh at Die Hard and then try to spend hours on the phone? These chaps could have saved themselves a fortune if they had instead chosen to sit in a coffee house and field phone calls there. They might also have then had the added advantage of being able to speak to each other too.
All very strange.