Film Review: Boring safari still boring in 3D
Warren Haas and Mike Hingston, Peak Staff
African Safari 3D: Safari in the Okavango is playing at the IMAX Theatre at Canada Place.
Mike: Thanks for joining us. We’ve been doing these reviews for a while now, and there’s something important you should know about our reviewing process.
Warren: Basically we go into every movie not even knowing what we’re about to see. We get a piece of paper slid under our door with a time and a place, and that’s it.
M: So when we showed up at Canada Place last week — a theatre we’d never been to before — we were pleasantly surprised with what I like to call the royal treatment.
W: Yeah, that’s right. Free popcorn, free pop, free hors d’oeuvres. [I’m pretty sure what Warren means to say here is the French word for appetizers. He thought it was spelled orb verbs—Ed.] Shrimp, spring rolls, sushi, and vegetables and dip: that is what we call classy.
M: They also gave us these sweet sunglasses as we were going into the theatre. It was a little weird, what with the theatre already being so dark and everything, but as film critics we’re pretty used to having swag thrown at us.
W: We were further confused when the lights dimmed and everyone put on their sunglasses, but we were all like, “When in Rome . . . ”
M: It was only as the first trailer started rolling, however, that we figured it out. Warren turned to me and said, in horror, “Aw, this is one of those 3D bullshits, isn’t it?”
W: I’m not really a big fan of real life. I go to the cinema as an escape, so I don’t like it when a movie tries to tell me I am living in Africa with some wildlife filmers.
M: I have a riddle for you. What’s the only thing worse than a 3D movie about an African safari?
W: Ooh, I love riddles . . .
M: A 3D movie ‘about’ an African safari where nothing happens and no animals eat any other animals. It’s basically the story of one woman following around a better filmmaker and trying to steal his footage with her magic 3D IMAX movie camera. There isn’t even one chase scene.
W: And no giraffes. No fucking giraffes! If there’s one thing I know about Africa, it’s that giraffes live there.
M: Yeah. So essentially we watched a ‘making of’ DVD special feature where the best 3D effect was the woman saying, “Watch your head!” to the audience as ferns hit the camera.
W: I guess we were a little surprised when the geriatrics in the audience said that movie was “really, really good.” I guess they really, really like how gross elephants look kind of up close.
M: Gerries and tourists — the IMAX demographic.
W: This was the worst bad movie we’ve ever reviewed not starring Vin Diesel.
M: And to top it all off, at the end they took our fucking sunglasses back.