Very belated movie review

Usually, I kind of know what I'm getting in to before I go into a movie. There's a few exceptions, as a teenager and young adult, I'd watch most anything and saw some pretty lousy movies. Somewhere along the line, WW and I started to get fairly picky. With few exceptions, we check out what we watch beforehand and try to make sure it's worth watching. I still got some favorites that probably wouldn't make top of stack if it weren't for the fact that they somehow earned classic status...Sixteen Candles, Long Duk Dong cracks me up, but having just watched the movie again recently, I realize you got to overlook a LOT of crap to accept the funny stuff...The Jerk, come on, now that movie cracks me up. Here's a classic monologue from Steve. But yeah, it's got it's crap in there too. This topic probably warrants it's own post someday.

But the movie we just saw was "Million Dollar Baby". I know...old news, best picture like 5 YEARS ago, where have I been??? But I couldn't get over the title, it just didn't hook me in the least. I had NO DESIRE to even look at what it was about.

So fast forward to last week. I was in the library and right now we got no TV. No cable. Won't have any until mid next month. So I was checking out some books, the movie was laying there, I grabbed it.

All I knew about the movie was: Clint Eastwood, boxing, and a quote from my m-in-law from years ago "that movie was really good but sad".

Watched the first third of the movie on Saturday. It hooked me pretty good, good acting, good story. I was actually looking forward to the rest of the movie. But the "sad" quote from my m-in-law was in my brain, so I was a figurin' that the chick would get killed by the title fight.

Well, the fighter actually ends up breaking her neck in some freak accident in the ring brought on by some dirty play by the opponent (do I have to have a spoiler warning for a movie this old?).

At this point, Hollywood takes a good movie and turns it into a bad one; play up the emotions and lead people down the emotional path of justifying euthenasia. Thought provoking...yes. Would I want to be in that situation...no. They discredit the priest early in the flick, bring him back in the end to clearly state morality, and of course promptly contradict his words. Even if I did agree with the outcome, they took forever to get there.

A better writeup than mine here.
Really interested in the topic? Read all this and educate me.