This week's major DVD releases, aka "Oooh! Shiny!"

I woke up this morning tired, irritable, and full of self-loathing. The cavernous gray day was approaching.

Shower. Shave. Food. Flush. Drive. Work. Eat. Work. Drive. Home. Comfy pants. Remote. Video on demand. And...

...this week's DVD choices vomited onto my TV screen, seeming to mock my pathetic eagerness to be whisked away from the pathetic assembly-line tedium of my life and drawn, however briefly, into a cinematic fantasy. Did this week's releases keep me from swallowing Liquid Drano for one more day?

Tron: Legacy (2011, 125 min.)  Oooooh! Shiny! Yes, it's the muchly (and nerdly) anticipated sequel to the 8-bit original film from 1982. Honestly, it's the best 30-minute short film you've ever seen. Unfortunately, it's over two hours long. By the mid-way point, when Jeff Bridges' character starts laconically and endlessly preaching his views on the balance of nature and the symmetry of the universe, you start wishing he really was a computer program and you could click the little red X button on his head and close him down. This film is beautiful to look at but its attempt to force-feed me its Big Ideas left me feeling empty.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010, 113 min)  Michael Apted. Heard the name before? He's an acclaimed director who used to tell stories about remarkable women in films such as "Coal Miner's Daughter", "Gorillas in the Mist" and "Nell". Now, however, he's got his hand up a digital lion's furry butt making him babble Christian-ish twaddle in Liam Neeson's voice. This flick is a double-masted schooner sailing in the Ocean of Meh.

Little Fockers (2010, 98 min.)  Imagine that you're Robert DeNiro's and Dustin Hoffman's agent, leaning back in your office chair, staring at posters for "Raging Bull" and "The Graduate" on the wall while your tears of shame fall onto the script for "Little Fockers" that lays across your lap.

Focker.

Focker Focker Focker Focker Focker Focker Focker.



<glug> <glug> <glug>  Y'know, Drano isn't half bad once you get used to it.