"My daddy's in a coma!"

"My daddy's in a coma!"

Aug 14

Had an amazing moviegoing experience Saturday night…in Orlando, FL.

If you’ve never been here, you may not realize the shocking revelation in the above statement. Orlando is a town built on tourism, and so its cultural offerings tend toward the uber-mainstream. They don’t really have movie theaters; they have only massive gigaplexes screening every mass-market slab of Hollywood pap that is available to them. Ten screens of Superman Returns, twelve of Talladega Nights, and so on.

Which means seeing an indie movie–a damn funny one–in an actually charming environment floored me. The theater in question is the Enzian, which is actually the ONLY theater screening arthouse-type flicks in Orlando, so it’s pretty easy to figure out where to get your Todd Solondz/Michael Gondry/Atom Egoyan/etc fix in Central Florida.

This is a true dinner theater; they serve meals and show movies. The only slight critique is the color palate for the decor, which is reminiscent of what someone thought would seem “artsy” in 1992. Lots of pastels.

Otherwise, this is really one of the finest places I’ve ever seen a flick. Sumptuous chairs, delicious food, exceptional (and unobtrusive!) service, just PRIMO.

The movie weren’t bad neither. Strangers With Candy should be on every geek’s viewing list, if only because it stars Stephen Colbert, who deserves status as some kind of Inhuman Geek God for being painfully funny AND an unrepentant fan of geeky stuff like Lord of the Rings.

Strangers With Candy is a prequel to the short-lived Comedy Central series of the same name, which starred Colbert, Paul Dinello, and the unbelievably hilarious Amy Sedaris in a weekly parody of after-school specials revolving around Jerri Blank, the fortysomething former “boozer, user, and loser” who decides to go back to high school after thirty-odd years in prison.

This comedy is not for everyone. It’s an occasionally absurdist mix of parody, satire, vulgarity, and flat-out offensiveness. Maybe Netflix the DVDs of the series if you have any question about your ability to enjoy.

If you think you can handle it, you will laugh till you hurt.

And that was my weekend.