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 A Surprisingly Deep Personal Experience
Truthfully, the description on the back cover of the book is pretty accurate. So, rather than repeat the brief summary you can find on amazon.com, I'll try to reflect a bit more on my own personal experience with the story that is told. And it really is a story. We see Mr. Murphy, the author, suffer through a kidney stone crisis at one point and experience his uneasiness about traveling home from a moviewatching expedition across the ocean shortly after the 9-11 attacks.
Fortunately with the drama, there's also a lot of fun.
First off, I love how each chapter in the 52 chapter book focuses on a certain theme. Before I began reading, I figured Mr. Murphy had watched 365 movies, and simply wrote little mini-reviews for each one. But he set out to do something much more creative, and the end result leaves the reader feeling much more fulfilled, even some of the movies Mr. Murphy listed as seeing are never brought up in the text.
To my surprise, I saw many silent films present in the book. This is a huge plus. I mean, I'm not sure if I'd go out of my way to see a silent movie, but I've always found their very concept to be quite charming. To date, I've only seen one such movie, but I wouldn't mind seeing another one somewhere down the line.
Another plus is the informative approach of certain chapters. Some tell you what working in a cinema projection booth is like, some tell you how to pick the best movie seat depending on what type of theater you're in, and some tell you how to do things you should never do like cut in line or sneak into a show. Martha Stewart even tries this in the book, but to no avail. Poor thing.
As you might notice on some of the other reviews here, the book contains constant complaints about the state of the cinema today compared to what it once was. While the sound and picture quality have improved drastically, the content of most mainstream pictures has been watered down into trite formulas that leave the audience in more of a robotic acceptance trance than a genuine appreciation for what was presented to them. However, as much as Mr. Murphy complains, he always keeps us aware that things can be changed, and gives us a clear path as to what we need to do on our end to make a trip to the cinema a true "event" again.
I was a bit disappointed to see that the "living solely on theater food for an entire week" stunt had to be altered. I was wondering if it was really possible. But I was more disappointed by the reviews of the Back to the Future and Terminator 2 attractions at Universal Studios. Mr. Murphy makes these experiences look positively awful, so bad that I question going to Disneyworld again. Which is a shame, because I loved Disney World as a kid. It would break my heart to go on a ride over there and get cussed at by someone in line the same way he did.
The Universal Studios part might have been a huge downer, but other bad film experiences turn out to be hilarious. A chapter on Corky Romano brought back fond Mystery Science Theater 3000 moments for me all over again. Former cast member Michael J. Nelson joins in the fun, only to be tormented so much by what's on the movie screen that he begins to sweat as Mr. Murphy cringes and rocks "back and forth in my chair as if I am on a charter plane on the way back from Mexico with two broken toilets."
Tons of humor in Mr. Murphy's story only add to the wonderful experience of watching movies from all parts of the globe, from places I've never heard of like Rarotonga, to places exotic enough to sound make-believe like the 24-hour sunlight of the arctic circle. I think the wonderful images of these places brought me more enjoyment than anything else in the book. They helped me remember that we really live in an amazing world, and something as simple as a movie theater can be varied in so many countless and wonderful ways.
 The sort of book you'd expect from Kevin Murphy
Anybody who's ever read an interview of, or an essay by, Mystery Science Theater 3000's Tom Servo will immediately recognize Murphy's voice upon cracking open this collection of anecdotes, rants, and love letters to and about the state of modern cinema. The premise is that, for an entire year, every day, Kevin Murphy would see a movie. He traveled across several continents in all seasons to scour out every conceivably interesting or unique theater he could dig up, writing about the places, the people, and, of course, the films.
Having been somewhat familiar with Murphy's attitude regarding modern film ("Most movies blow dead rats," he elegantly stated at one point), and knowing that he was a self-confessed movie snob, I was expecting the book to be one long, bitter complaint from an old curmudgeon who'd lost the ability to experience the magic in movies. Yes, Murphy does complain, long and loud and proud, and encourages others to join him; more on that in a moment. But by and large, rather than lashing out at competent films for his own lack of ability to appreciate them, Murphy comes across more as disappointed that Hollywood has become such an unfeeling assembly line process, squelching true vision and wringing out the special qualities of truly brilliant films to deliver overpriced, homogenized Happy Meals designed to sell tickets and be forgotten as soon as they've outlived their purpose. He admits that he doesn't enjoy movies the way he used to; in fact, the introduction states that this project was organized not only as a source of income, but as an effort to help him rekindle that sense of wonder and fascination he used to experience at the movies, before becoming jaded by the increasing similarities between Tinsel Town fare and the abominations he used to screen for MST3K. Throughout the world, Murphy rediscovers the joy of good movies and of the people who love them. He chats with film critic Richard Corliss in line at Cannes. He witnesses a man giving away two ice cream cones to children who don't have enough money for them. He marvels at a theater in Australia (the land of "No Worries") that trusts patrons with glasses of red wine while watching movies. He meets Santa Clause alone in the wilderness of Finland. And his complaints work as a nice contrast, to make the good moments seem all the better.
So what does he complain about? Movies, yes, but he's surprisingly easy on even the more banal ones. In fact, I can think of only a handful of movies that he completely panned, without mentioning even one redeeming quality (Town & Country, a testament to and vindication of the oversized egos of the rich, and Corky Romano, a painful showcase for Chris Kattan's talentlessness that had even the undemanding teenage crowd abandoning the movie before it was over). What drew more negative energy was the "googolplex", i.e. any theater with more than 18 screens. They are loud and overpriced, with commercials and previews showing long past the movie's official starting time, staffed by rude employees, run by managers who automatically defer to the unending chain of responsibility and don't give a damn about customers even if they did possess some kind of autonomous power. The seats are small and uncomfortable, the projectionists don't know how to make the movies look good, the sound is either too loud or too quiet, the floors are sticky, the concessions are expensive, the movies are limited to blockbusters only with little chance of indies, foreign films, or rereleases. It's hard to disagree with Kevin on this point, as any movie lover has surely experienced frustration at the theater chains that own the movies. He also expresses dissatisfaction at the pretension of most art films, gripes about the commercialism of once-reliable film festivals, sneers at the annoying obsessiveness of fanboys, and blames a kidneystone on a particularly bad movie. Since Murphy presents himself as a somewhat demanding layman rather than a film scholar, it's easier to relate to his criticisms and harder to take offense at his viewpoints, even if you don't particularly agree with him. The only thing that really irked me was his insistense on bashing Quentin Tarantino, one of the few gems of contemporary American cinema, at every possible opportunity.
The only real flaw of this book, the reason I give it four stars instead of five, is that it's not as funny as it was intended to be. I only laughed aloud two or three times (though admittedly, one of those times I couldn't stop once I'd started). While it's always entertaining, often insightful, and occasionally amusing, it is not a towering achievement of humorous literature. Murphy's style reads a bit like a low-rent Dave Barry. Despite his efforts, he lacks the ability to translate uproarious situations into uproarious writing, which makes the book a bit hard to take in large chunks.
Despite this, the book succeeds in enough other ways that I wholeheartedly endorse it to other movie lovers and cinema spectators. Murphy's love of film shines through on every page, even when he's complaining about it. A Year at the Movies is a fun, fast read that isn't terribly challenging but thought-provoking enough to be worthwhile, and his globetrotting is interesting enough for his observations of foreign cultures to give this all the charm of a travel book, without putting you to sleep. Enjoy, won't you?
Well-written and funny
Kevin Murphy, the heart and soul of MST3K as Tom Servo, writes with passion about movies. He makes a pact to see a movie a day for an entire year. He travels the world to see films, too, going to Australia and to the Cannes Film Festival. The fact that he sat through "Freddy Got Fingered" and "Joe Dirt" in the same week is reason enough for me to give the man props.
Not all jokes, and suprisingly intelligent
Unlike the books written by Michael Nelson, this former MST3K writter's offering is more art than humor. He uses the seemingly silly stunt of seeing a movie eery day for a year as a way of talking about film in general. He shows us how theatre goers reflect society in genral, and how much the rise of megaplexes has taken away something of the specialness of seeing films.
There are moments in this book where Kevin relats painful, personal stories about his exploits, and other moments when he uses this book as a pulpit to preach to us about our behavior as fans. At other moments, this becomes an interesting slice of history, chronicling what films were out in 2001, and which ones we should try and forget from that year.
Bravo! to the Manifesto from the Man who was Tom Servo!
Writer and performer of the rotund, ruddy robot Tom Servo on "Mystery Science Theatre 3000", Kevin Murphy spent 2001 travelling the globe, vowing to take in a movie a day, every day in some of the best- and worst- circumstances imaginable. Murphy doesn't so much review the films, but the experience: picture and sound and the film's quality are important to him, but so's the food and drink available, the company he keeps, the atmoshere and decor of the theatre, the service the staff provide and the behaviour of his fellow movie-goers.
Whether sitting through yet another miserable in-flight movie, smuggling Thanksgiving dinner into his nephew's first trip to the multiplex or schmoozing at the Cannes and Sundance festivals, Murphy is never less than passionate about cinema and committed to his mission. Even his health is at stake: pre-empting Morgan Spurlock by a wide margin, he vows to live on nothing but concession-stand food for a week!
The nicest surprise about the book is how different Murphy's authorial voice is from his colleague Michael J Nelson. Working cheek-by-jowl on MST3K for a decade, and obviously sharing the same sense of humour, I'd feared Murphy's book would come off a pale copy of Nelson's "Movie Megacheese" or "Mind Over Matters". In fact, Murphy is less wry and far saltier, subversive and overtly political than Nelson. The book is part travelogue, part journal, but mostly it's a manifesto, written by a man with clear ideas on how great the experience of cinema can be, and no doubt about who's spoling it.
It's often laugh-out-loud funny, as you'd expect (Murphy's description of time spent in a darkened theatre, being groped and sat on by passing patrons is hilarious), but also touching. Murphy was far from home and alone on September the 11th. His thoughts on the role movies can play in times of grief are powerful. Later, he wonders if there's still such a thing as a "date movie" in the 21st century. His efforts might leave him despairing of Hollywood, but reaffirm his love for his wife.
Highly recommended for anyone who believes that in this age of dvd, pay-per-view and broadband piracy, the best place to see movies remains the big-screen, popcorn in hand.
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