Blissfully Spongebob in Hartford

Oh, that crazy Colin McEnroe of the Hartford Courant. Like a good movie critic, went to his local cineplex to see Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2002 film, Blissfully Yours, which was released in the US last year. He walked into the wrong theater, though.

You have probably never even heard of this movie but Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Blissfully Yours was finally released in America this year, and its story of lovers who play hooky from their humdrum existence by taking a picnic into a verdant forest is regarded, by us film buffs, as a small masterpiece. When I saw it, I was surprised by the vivid colors, the playful dialogue and by the heavy reliance on seafood imagery until, after 30 minutes, it sank in that I had accidentally walked into the theater where the SpongeBob SquarePants movie was playing, because the ticket-tearing woman had said, Theater 12, last one on the left, which was wrong. The Sponge Bob movie (I stayed, because I was caught up in the plot, by that time) was actually pretty good but whoever directed it is certainly no Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

I guess he saw it eventually. Blissfully Yours was at No 9 on the Hartford Courant's Top 10 films of 2004.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)