And the only thing that stands in the way of our enduring love is the fact that I'm not a cartoon character. (Oh, and he already has a thing for that cartoon reporter, Roxanne. Whatever. I'm sure the animators can just draw me as her. I mean, let's not get picky about it. I'm sure we can work through those little details in the name of true love.)

Yes, that's right. My new imaginary boyfriend is Megamind, the blue space alien evil genius with the soulful green eyes voiced by Will Ferrell (for whom I totally would not leave my husband). But to tell you why he's so hot, I'm going to have to include some (moderate) spoilers, so if you're the kind of person who likes to approach movies as a blank slate, go watch it now.

So, did you see it? Did you see how Megamind was alone in his dark prison cell as a child, working on his plans for a popcorn maker to get the other kids to like him? And how it didn't work? And how he sat alone at a table at school with the fish that was his only friend? Did you see how he said the only thing he was good at was being bad? And how guys like him never get the girl?

Did you see how everyone abandoned him his whole life long? Did you see how lonely he was? And how misunderstood? And how he pretended to be someone else? And he lied? (Favorite line in the movie: in response to the question of what he will do when the girl he loves finds out about his deception, he says, "She'll never find out! That's the whole point of lying!" If you were in the theater with me, I apologize for the fact that you couldn't hear the next five lines of dialogue over my howling laughter.)

That all is so. freaking. hot.

That's like a cartoon portrayal of my dream man, which I recognized, because I was sitting next to the man I've adored for twenty years now, who was lonely and never felt good enough to get the girl and pretended to be someone else and lied. And it ate my heart out that no one would love this poor space alien right. I was cheering so hard for him to get the girl, from the deepest reaches of my codie soul, I was yelling at Roxanne to recognize the goodness and fragility beneath his evil exterior. For crying out loud, couldn't she see it? She could save him, and he would love her forever. Sigh. So goes the fantasy.

Ok, I'm off to hang a picture of Megamind up by my bed, and wonder what our children will look like. Only not really, because please, I'm like 40-something, I've had my tubes tied and which makes me too old for the sad geekiness of cartoon romance. (You know, if I were 30, maybe...) And besides, who needs Megamind? I've already played out that fantasy with his real life counterpart, and I'm happy to hold hands with him as I walk out of the theater, smiling.

It's been a long time since I nerdily reviewed a movie, but my husband and I went to see New Moon this weekend, and I just couldn't resist writing a post about it.  The movie is a vampire love story.  No, actually it's a vampire, werewolf, human love triangle.  Bella (a human teenage girl) is the object of affection of both Edward (the 109-year-old teenage-looking vampire) and Jacob (the teenage werewolf).  It's also a stunning portrait of codependent craziness...

Picture Mark and me, cuddled up in a dark theater, surrounded by shrieking teenage girls.  On screen, shimmers the image of Bella talking about how she can't be happy without Edward.  Mark leans over to me and whispers, "She's such an incredible codie!"  And I whisper back, "Totally."

Of course, as I was contemplating writing this post, I thought, "Is it going too far to call Bella codependent?  Maybe she's just a typical teenager."  And then I realized that I thought she was a typical teenager because she was just. like. me.  And I'm, um, codependent.  In fact, I realized that she's so much like me that if you substitute "pasty white addict" for "pasty white vampire" and "hot ethnic addict" for "hot ethnic werewolf," the movie is so startlingly close to a retelling of my own teen years that I had a fleeting thought that I should investigate whether or not the author knows me in real life and then sue her for stealing my story.  Only I eventually broke up with the vampire, because, seriously, have you seen the werewolf with his shirt off?

For your entertainment and enlightenment, I thought I'd list some of the codependent behaviors and characteristics that Bella (aka Teenage Me) exhibits:

• Attracted to men who are unavailable or unstable.  (One could argue that Jacob seems available and stable at first, but note that Bella isn't attracted to him when he is.  It's not until he seems to be abandoning her, she chases after him and even asks him to run away with her.  This is the part I'm certain Stephenie Meyer stole from my life.)
• Attracted to men with big, dangerous secrets.  (Come on, a werewolf and a vampire?  How much more stand in for an addict can you get?)
• Addicted to romantic partners.  (She almost kills herself several times to achieve the "rush" she needs simply to see a dream version of Edward.)
• Terrified of abandonment.
• Embarrassed to receive gifts.
• Unfulfilled, depressed and empty without external validation.  (At one point she says that she is ok emotionally as long as she is not alone.)
• Feels responsible for fixing other people's problems and taking care of other people's feelings.  (She tells Jacob she'll run away with him to make him feel better, then flies to another country to keep prevent Edward from killing himself and more importantly, to keep him from, "feeling guilty.")

Ah, memories!  I can't tell you how relieved I am to have those days behind me, to have found recovery, and to be married to a werewolf, I mean, sex addict who has found recovery too.

Heads bent like flowers,
a giggling daisy chain,
girls walk with arms linked.

"Hey, it's your birthday!
I'll request a song for you!
Do you like Footloose?"

Like popcorn we bounce,
squealing as one breaks away,
rushing the DJ.

Twenty five years pass.
My daughter's hand rests in mine
like a rose petal.

Heads cocked birdlike hear
strains of "Footloose" and laughter
drift over schoolyard.

"What's that funny sound?"
I say, "An old song," but think,
"It's me. I'm fifteen."

While I was away on my mini vacation a few weeks ago, I relaxed with some cheesy movie watching. Among the brainless, feel-good flicks I watched was Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which stars Matthew McConaughey as Connor Mead, an alcoholic sex addict trying to turn his life around at his brother's wedding. Well, I don't think the movie actually refers to him as an alcoholic or a sex addict, but given the fact that, in an effort to numb his feelings, he trashes the wedding cake looking for a drink and tries to get the bride's mother into bed, it's probably safe to imply both.

Following the formula of A Christmas Carol, Connor Mead is visited by the ghost of his (sex addicted, alcoholic) Uncle Wayne who informs him he will be visited by three ghosts that night. Mead is then haunted by the ghosts of girlfriends past, present and future, who show him the girl he loved (who is conveniently a bridesmaid in his brother's wedding), the meaningless sex he's had trying to fill the emptiness and his lonely funeral. Predictably (not just for anyone who has ever read A Christmas Carol, but for anyone who has ever watched a good old Hollywood romantic comedy), the ghostly intervention does its trick; seeing what he once had, what he does have and what he will have if he doesn't change are enough to scare him into a new way of life (or at least the promise of a new way of life). He makes his amends, changes his thinking on love and relationships, saves his brother's wedding (after having ruined it in the first place) and gets the girl. (Ordinarily, I'd put a "spoiler alert" in there, but really, you can't be under any illusions that the movie is going to turn out any other way.)

The movie leaves them sitting on an old swing set together and pans away to let us imagine their happily ever after. He's got the girl and now he's a changed man. No more binge drinking or anonymous sex. She was the answer. The emptiness is filled. Of course, those of us in recovery know that no one person can be the answer and that there's no "ah-ha" moment that leads to instantaneous, sweeping change without any work. In real life, the movie's end is the beginning of the story. The intervention is over and now the work begins. But if it were real life, they'd find out soon enough, and sometimes it's just nice to smile and leave them sitting on the swings, in imagined peace.

John Malkovich plays an alcoholic who refuses to acknowledge he has a problem, even as his drinking gets him fired from his job at the CIA. His marriage falls apart, his wife locks him out of both the house and the bank account, and his checks start to bounce. Looking for both money and revenge, he breaks into his old home and goes straight for... Nope, not cash, jewelry or computers. He heads for the true valuables: the bottles of alcohol in the kitchen, where he fixes a drink and loads up a box full of booze.

But wait, there's more! What would a movie be for me without a sex addict? And it's got one in (Mm!) George Clooney, who spends the time he's not with his wife or with his mistress with women he meets on Internet dating sites. He's wonderfully (half) truthful about the fact that he's married; he claims to be in the midst of a divorce. And when he wants to bring another woman home, he even goes so far as to elaborately stage his house while his wife is out of town to make it appear that she's moving out. Of course, his wife has a detective following him, so it's only a matter of time before his double life comes crashing unmanageably down around him and his marriage falls apart for real.

The movie also does a fabulous job of capturing the ritualistic nature of sexual acting out, as Clooney's character takes a jog after each encounter and is even compulsive about the distance he needs to run. I was also delighted to find that while he had a hobby, that hobby was... building sex toys! Really, how many active addicts do you know who have time for non-addiction-related hobbies at the peak (or depth) of their addictions? And what Mark and I both really appreciated about this movie was that it able to show all of this without any gratuitous sex scenes.

Finally, what is an addiction movie without a starring codependent? And Frances McDormand is that codie. Desperate for affection, she has a series of plastic surgeries scheduled to change everything from her breasts to her vaccination scar. Over the course of the movie, she tries to use, change and control everyone around her in her attempt to pay for the surgeries that (she thinks) will bring her love and happiness. It's her need that drives the entire plot and spins the world around her into chaos, but (like any good codie in denial) she's quite oblivious. Go figure.

Why did I go anyway? Because the movie is a satire that also features Robert Downey Jr. in black face, which can be extremely offensive itself. I'm a huge fan of comedy that employs satire, sarcasm and irony, but I know these can be incredibly hard to pull of. (As I realize each time my own self-satire on this site goes unrecognized as humor and falls pathetically flat.) The reception of satirical humor depends a great deal on who the audience is, and I simply don't trust other people to interpret it for me, nor do I feel I can judge fairly from out of context snippets. (Um, and also, I really, truly love Jack Black and was so looking forward to this movie.) So, I decided to suspend judgment until I had seen the movie myself.

And after I saw it, I had some more thoughts on the controversy, but I also asked myself if the movie was worth seeing or not, independent of these issues? Well, not really. The movie did have some scenes that were quite funny. I was thinking of the Junky's Wife and laughing until I couldn't breathe during Jack Black's character's desperate attempts to get heroin. Robert Downey Jr. did a good job of handling the racially charged "n-word" and pulling off his his self-mocking use of black face. But Tropic Thunder wasn't wasn't consistently well done or consistently entertaining. It's not something you're going to quote for years or even remember for long after it leaves the theaters; it's a unevenly fun two hour distraction, much like Don't Mess with the Zohan.

But back to that controversy. What I found surprising was that the dialogue about disability that I found most deeply hurtful hasn't been mentioned in any of the press I've seen, which has focused exclusively on the use of the offensive word "retarded." I was disturbed by one quick scene in particular, in which agent Rick Peck (played by Matthew McConaughey) asks superstar Tugg Speedman (played by Ben Stiller) how Speedman's attempts to adopt a child are going. When Speedman tells him the adoption process has been fraught with complications, Peck looks at a picture of himself with a developmentally delayed middle-school-aged boy, who appears later in the movie wearing a bib, and says, "At least you get to pick yours."

Of course, I'm lifting Peck's line out of context, and you might think (as I would) that perhaps this was meant to mock Peck's character rather than his son. Sadly, no. The implication was that if one could choose to have one's own disabled child or another child free from disabilities, the wish would clearly be to have another child. But alas, those who have with children with disabilities are simply stuck with the unhappy burden of a despised and disappointing disabled child. And the movie did portray that view as one the audience ought to understand and sympathize with. One that should (but fortunately didn't, in our theater) bring a big laugh.

And that was what I found really awful. I know many parents of children with disabilities, different abilities or those quirky superpowers that just don't fit well in so many parts of this life. And we love our kids, fiercely. We love them in the face of those, like the makers of Tropic Thunder, who cruelly find them worthless and and think we ought to too. We love them, because we see them as the full and beautiful human beings they are.

So, I'm here to say that, on the whole, I love Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. and their movies. And because I do, I went to see this one in spite of the negative press. But now, having seen the work as a whole, I do agree that the portrayal of people with disabilities in this movie is inflammatory and derogatory. Far from adding to the humor of the film, it detracted from my enjoyment. Tropic Thunder would have been a better and more consistently funny film if, among other things, the portrayal of disabilities was actually used as satire, rather than as cheap mocking or cartoon slapstick.

Skip Tropic Thunder because it's offensive or skip it because it's not a great film, but either way, my recommendation is to skip it. (Unless you're the Junky's Wife, in which case you should totally rent it to watch Jack Black offering blow jobs for heroin.)

The movie was carried by Heath Ledger, whose performance as the Joker was terrifying. On the car ride home (where my husband and I deconstruct the movie) we talked about how comforting we both found routine, predictability and sameness in our lives and how terrifying unpredictability like the Joker's was. While we didn't encounter anyone in our own lives as dangerous and maniacal as the Joker, watching Heath Ledger somehow brought us both back to the powerlessness we felt in our lives as children: how we would try to find structure and rules for the craziness or rage we encountered, so that we could predict and avoid it. We cling to the structures we create to give us the illusion of control and avoid the terror of chaos, the terror of knowing that some people (people -- not machines or monsters or animals -- people) can and will hurt you and you may never understand why.

I also found a parallel in the movie between the pains of early recovery and the battles waged by District Attorney Harvey Dent and Police Commissioner Gordon resembled the pains of early recovery. Things, the movie kept telling you, get worse before they get better. Try to take down the mob bosses (or fight your personal demons or beat back the compulsions that have ruled your life) and those mob bosses (or demons) will fight back. They will not go quietly into that dark night. When you let them rule, there is a kind of peace. When you've found the tools to fight them and made some headway in restoring the rule of law, there is some peace. But in transition, in change, there is fear, violence and desperate struggle.

The thing that annoyed me most (that always annoys me) was the weak female protagonist. The character of Rachel Dawes was (presumably) the Assistant District Attorney of Gotham, but was defined throughout the movie by her relationship to Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne, and was referred to (even on the job, in court and by reporters) as "Harvey Dent's girlfriend." When Mark mused after the movie that he didn't understand her and that her role seemed dull and simplistic, I speculated that (like most female characters, in action movies or otherwise) she wasn't there to be an actual person, but was an object to move the plot forward: something for the men to fight over. Of course, the fact that she wasn't a fully fleshed out or real person made the actions she was supposed to forward nonsensical. (Note to writers: write your female characters as real, multi-faceted people, just like the men, and your work will benefit for it.)

And now I'll leave you with this: Dark Knight may have been a great adrenaline ride and given me lots (from childhood demons to portrayals of women) to think about, but Holy Recovery Nerddom, the Batman I love most will always be Adam West.

Mark and I went out to see Hancock last night. We were really looking forward to this one: July 4th weekend opening, Will Smith, superhero antics and alcoholism. It was slated to have everything!

And the first half of the movie delivered on its blockbuster promises. Will Smith was delightfully hilarious in his drunken belligerence and blaming. Like a good active addict, he destroyed everything he touched. Jason Bateman as Ray Embrey, Hancock's PR man, was the movie's codependent, out to fix him right. It was actually a refreshing twist to see a codependent role played out by a male buddy character rather than a female love interest.

Hancock, at Ray's insistence, starts attending meetings for alcoholism. I appreciated the fact that these meetings involved less crosstalk and less of an active leader role than the typical Hollywood screen versions of 12 Step, most of which employ these inaccuracies as narrative devices. (I'll have to do a separate post sometime on Hollywood 12 Step.) And Hancock reminded me of myself in early S-Anon meetings: saying nothing and listening grudgingly, although I liked his first share better than mine.

Yep, the first half of the movie had it all. There was action. There were laughs. There were 12 Step meetings and redemption. Then, it seemed to Mark and me, the writer died right there in the middle of the script. It was like that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Brother Maynard reads the last words of Joseph of Arimathea carved on a cave wall: "He who is valiant, and pure of spirit, may find the Holy Grail, in the Castle of... Aaaaaagggh." He speculates that Joseph died while carving and Galahad chimes in (in one of the movies many great lines), "Perhaps he was dictating."

It truly seemed as if someone new took over in the middle and wrote a completely different story, one which made no sense. It wasn't funny or dramatic or gripping. It was just jaw droppingly nonsensical. You'll notice, as I did, after you see the movie that every single scene from the trailer is one that takes place in the first (good) half of the movie.

So, here's my recommendation to you on Hancock. Go and see it. And when you are about halfway in, there will be a scene where Hancock puts on his new superhero outfit and is called in to rescue a female police officer. (I'm not giving anything away here; this is all in the trailer.) At the end of that scene, get up and walk out. You will have seen a complete story, from down and out bitterness to redemption. You will have seen everything funny and worthwhile and exciting in the movie. You will leave happy and feel it was money well spent, even if the movie was on the short side. You won't sit there for the rest of the movie wishing he were doing anger management classes with the villains (oh, that would have been delightful and funny) instead of "fighting" them, such as they are. You won't leave thinking, "What the hell was that about? And I wonder how that first writer died."

And for those of you girls and boys who enjoy ogling Will Smith's firm and well-formed behind, allow me to alert you to the fact that, like I Robot before it, Hancock did contain one gratuitous Will Smith bare butt cheek shot. It even came conveniently packaged with the line "my ass was hot," which allowed you to giggle and say, "Yes. Yes it was." And as with all good things in this movie, the scene even came in the movie's glorious first half, so you won't miss it if take my advice and walk out halfway through the show.

This past weekend, Mark and I left our kids in the care of our wonderful babysitter, who, next to The Junky's Wife is the love of our son's life. (Seriously, I don't even come close. I'm a distant fourth behind Daddy, JW and the babysitter.) Then we headed off to perform our weekly movie night ritual: stopping for take out at a local sandwich shop (where we are now officially regulars) before heading out to enjoy the latest blockbuster.

This week brought The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton. The "starring Ed Norton" part is important, because this movie wasn't on the original spreadsheet, where we painstakingly plotted out our summer movie watching. It was a late addition, after we saw previews in which Ed Norton flexed his acting muscles and looked just the right kind of tortured for the part, but maybe that's just those Fight Club overtones he carries with him. (What a great addiction movie that is!)

The Incredible Hulk was decent, as action movies go. The theater we were in had a good sound system, so the whole place vibrated as the Hulk walked. And the special effects -- the ease with which he broke and threw, um, almost anything -- really knocked home (so to speak) his size and power. They were the kind of scenes that make you exclaim things like, "Holy crap!"

But, of course, what Mark and I were looking for were some good addiction parallels. After all, there was Ed Norton with his Fight Club self in a life that was clearly out of control and unmanageable. And he did (I think I can tell you this, since it's hardly a spoiler) work on some (gasp!) breathing and anger management techniques. However, our hopes that the movie might explore this quest more deeply were in vain. It was not Bruce Banner grappling with his inner monster that kept the Hulk from going on killing rampages, so much as it was his outer codependent in the form of Liv Tyler. Sigh! (Poor Discovering Alcoholic -- waiting days for this, only to have me gloss the whole addiction subtext in one disappointing paragraph.)

My favorite part came during a cameo by the hot-in-recovery Robert Downey Jr., who was reprising his Iron Man role as Tony Stark. Mark did that comic book nerd thing and leaned over to excitedly whisper to me the movie makers were setting the stage for some future comic book thing I'd never heard of. I love that man. Um, Mark that is, not Robert Downey Jr. Well, ok, mostly Mark.

On the docket this weekend were You Don't Mess with the Zohan and Kung Fu Panda.

Zohan was a cotton candy movie: light, attractively artificial, entertaining in a way that hit hard with a none-too-complex sugary burst and then dissolved into nothingness. I laughed loud and long all the way through the movie at typical Adam Sandler penis centered humor, and as I walked out of the theater, found that I couldn't remember a single funny moment.

I actually had a hard time with the movie for two sex addiction related reasons, which contributed to my queasy dissatisfaction afterwards.

The first was Zohan's crazy oversexed behavior, which ends (in a fantasy as unreal as peace in the Middle East) when he meets the right woman. That particular codependent/addict fantasy (that change is easy and bad behavior can stop cold for "the one") is one that always cuts close to home and makes me particularly irritable.

The second was a bit more personal and specific to my situation. My husband had an affair (and hit his bottom as a sex addict) with a woman from Israel, and in spite of the fact that I know my feelings are bizarre and irrational (after all, he acted out with Americans and I don't have a problem with my own country because of it), all things Israeli now make me (at best) uncomfortable and (at worst) sick with rage.

I used to see news reports about terrorist attacks on Israelis and scan them for her name. (Yes, I admit it. I'm a self-proclaimed pacifist, and I was secretly, in my heart of hearts, cheering for terrorists based on my husband's philandering. Is it any wonder we're so far from world peace?) I've made progress on this front. I've forgiven the woman for her part in what happened. And I now pray that she'll find healing instead of have her arms ripped off by a car bomb.

Even so, the mention of Israel still has the potential to send me spiraling. Just a few weeks ago I was out shopping and found I was unable to buy a piece of clothing I liked as soon as I noticed the label "made in Israel." So, needless to say, Israeli music and women frolicking on Mediterranean beaches sent me spinning into a few post-traumatic flashbacks of details I know of that relationship. And that probably contributed to me feeling cranky enough when I got home to go sleep alone on the sofa.

Today (after some Tylenol took care of sofa-induced aches) we took the kids out to see Kung Fu Panda. We spent more on gas and incidentals than we spent on the actual movie, unless you calculate the cost on a per hour basis, in which case, the movie itself was really, really expensive. Our first mistake was not buying tickets ahead of time, online. We are experts at the online movie purchase, so I think our brains were simply addled by trying to get four people out of the house at the same time.

We got the kids all geared up for the show, drove to the theater and found the showing we expected to see was sold out. So, we bought tickets to the next show, and my son headed for meltdown mode because it was (ack!) a change of plans. A quick decision to blow some allowance money at the toy store averted that disaster and we headed home for a snack before a return trip to the theater. Because outings with my son are iffy, we took two cars (yeah, double the gas, good times) in case an early emergency escape became necessary.

Ordinarily we time our outings to avoid the previews, but the crowds were such that we would not have gotten seats together, if we waited. So, we were right on time. My son sat attentive through the first preview, asked "when is it starting?" for the next, and slumped in his seat for the remainder. My daughter, fortunately, was happily captivated by M&Ms and popcorn.

The movie started with a dream sequence in which the animation style was different from the commercials the kids had seen, leading my son to wail, "Why is this a different panda?!" When the dream sequence ended he squirmed and made noises for 5 or 10 more minutes before my husband took the emergency escape option. My daughter made it for another 15 or 20 minutes, when, having eaten her fill of popcorn and M&M's she said, "I'm all done watching this movie."

So, my review of Kung Fu Panda is, um, I didn't get to see Kung Fu Panda. I'll rent it sometime and let you know. I still have some Milk Duds left.