BEFORE: Everything sort of works out for a reason, right? Running my review of "The Bad Guys", which I watched in late April, gave me the opportunity to drive down to Atlantic City for just a couple of days, to take a break from the Tribeca Film Festival. It was actually terrible scheduling on our part, we'd planned to take a couple days off in May but then we both got COVID, and we didn't want to drive to another city and possibly infect people in a hotel before we both tested negative. So, we moved the May trip to June, but we didn't want to go on Father's Day weekend, that might be too crowded, so we picked the weekend before - which, of course, was right in the middle of Tribeca, so I maybe lost a shift or two. BUT, I'm going to make up for it, I'm booked almost solid for the rest of the month - July is a different story, though.
Anyway, we're in A.C. now, staying mid-strip at Bally's, and we used to drive here two or three times a year, but that was in the before-times, and we haven't been here since mid-2019, when we stayed at the Ocean and saw Pentatonix perform at the Hard Rock. Good times... It's a whole different city now, which is kind of what we were afraid of - the pandemic really did a number on this town, where tourism is the number one money-maker, and the gambling FROM those tourists is maybe a close second. Yes, people are still coming to the beach and the Boardwalk, but clearly not as many as before - I don't know where people are going, but it's probably not Atlantic City, not yet. And we saw a few people hit on the slots, but we both lost money - my guess is that the machines aren't programmed to pay out much, because the casinos are trying to make up for the last two years of down-time. I was two dollars up, but very briefly, and then after I lost $80 I stopped playing, why throw good money after bad?
But we had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant named Jerry Longo's Meatballs and Martinis - the place is new, as most of the restaurants seemed to be, which means they replaced the old ones, most of which closed, either by choice or not. It's hard to not think about all the people who lost jobs and businesses along the Boardwalk, so that just makes the whole trip kind of sad. More on this tomorrow - I'm going to catch up on the posted episodes of "Obi-Wan Kenobi" on Disney Plus and then a movie, via my phone.
Awkwafina carries over from "The Bad Guys".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" (Movie #4,008)
THE PLOT: In a realm known as Kumandra, a re-imagined Earth inhabited by an ancient civilization, a warrior named Raya is determined to find the last dragon.
AFTER: I was kicking myself a bit because it seemed I mistimed things, this film could have fit between "Shang-Chi" and "The Farewell", and I'd done a whole big Asian thing in January - only I couldn't possibly have worked this one in, because it wasn't released until March 5. So there. But I did circle back to Awkwafina, so holding this one back turned out to be the absolute right move, because it's also going to help me connect to the "Dr. Strange" sequel. See, what did I say, everything sort of works out for a reason, right? And I think it was then on Disney Premier Access for a while, but free with Disney Plus after June 4 - so I couldn't have watched it much earlier than THIS, without paying extra.
I had to break it up into two parts, however, half on Sunday night and half on Monday afternoon, because I was falling asleep - I must have been tired after the drive down to A.C. and then that big Italian meal - but also, it was very hard to focus on this film because the story is so damn complicated. And if it's complicated to ME, an adult man, how the heck is a KID supposed to follow it? There's an imaginary continent, it's separated into five different lands, there's a dragon gem, whatever that is, and after it breaks each land gets a piece of it, but this also allows a few thousand of these smoke-creatures called the Druun to come back and turn everybody into stone figures, only it's not everybody, it's just some people, so some of the people who didn't get turned to stone have to travel from place to place and find the gem pieces, and then it takes WAY too long for them to figure out what to do with them, if you ask me. My head was spinning, but maybe that was from the two beers I had at New Jersey's only fully rotating casino bar. (That will mess with your head, I assure you - try drinking and ending up in a different place than where you started, only I guess people do that all the time on trains and planes...)
Young warrior Princess Raya is the one who was supposed to help protect the Dragon Gem in the "Heart" kingdom, only when her father called representatives of the five lands together, to try to reunite Kumandra, Raya formed a friendship with Namaari, from the "Fang" kingdom. They're the same age, they're both warriors, and they're both self-proclaimed "dragon nerds" - love is in the air, if you ask me. But Namaari was really there to help steal the gem for Fang - so that's really going to interfere with Raya and her being besties, or girlfriends, or "girlfriends" or whatever. Girls are complicated, don't let anybody tell you differently, and two girls together are probably twice as complicated, at least.
The gem breaks in the scuffle (and so does Raya's heart), the Druun come back and turn half the people to stone, and honestly this seems a lot like Thanos snapping his fingers and killing half the people - it's the Marvel "Blip", only in ancient Asian form. Let's see, five gem pieces, six infinity gems, yeah, that tracks. Five years later, Raya sets out on a quest to find that dragon, who's "sleeping" at the end of one of the many rivers in the dragon-shaped water table. She finds Sisu, the last dragon of the title, and together they visit Tail, Talon and Spine, to collect pieces of the broken gem and also add traveling companions to their ensemble. It's the standard "rag-tag bunch of misfits" that needs to assemble, work together and use their talents to defeat the evil power.
The last piece of the gem is in the possession of the Fang tribe, so that means Raya's got to come to terms with her old frenemy / potential love interest Namaari - awkward! They exchange gifts, they fight, they work together, they accuse each other of being difficult. See, I told you girls are complicated - if these were two young men they'd just punch each other a few times and then go have a beer together. Or make out, whatever, it's Pride Month after all, do what you feel.
Anyway, things don't go well between Raya and Namaari, neither one can trust the other, and Sisu gets wounded in the scuffle, so it appears that all is lost. If ONLY this rag-tag bunch of misfits could figure out what to do with five pieces of a broken gem, though, they might have a chance. Come on, guys, you're killin' me here, figure it out. We all know it's a Disney film, so things are going to work out, so can we hurry this along, please? And yeah, I know they can't really show Raya and Namaari falling for each other, because the Chinese market is huge, and DisneyCorp didn't want this film to get censored there, so except for that one guy in "Jungle Cruise", and that glam fashion guy in "Cruella", Disney's policy is still "Don't Say Gay". It's two steps forward and one step back, I suppose. They can do female empowerment, but not two women with feelings for each other.
But hey, there are lots of characters, five dragons and three monkeys and people from five different lands, so lots of new action figures and toys, right?
Also starring the voices of Kelly Marie Tran (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Izaac Wang (last seen in "Good Boys"), Gemma Chan (last seen in "Eternals"), Daniel Dae Kim (last seen in "Hellboy" (2019)), Benedict Wong (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Jona Xiao (last seen in "Gifted"), Sandra Oh (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Thalia Tran, Lucille Soong (last seen in "Just Like Heaven"), Alan Tudyk (last heard in "Encanto"), Dichen Lachman, Patti Harrison, Jon "Dumbfoundead" Park, Sung Kang (last seen in "Live Free or Die Hard"), Sierra Katow, Ross Butler (last seen in "Shazam!"), Francois Chau (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Gordon Ip, Paul Yen,
RATING: 4 out of 10 congee ingredients
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