Zathura: A Hugging Adventure

Last night I was in this weird half-sleep where I was drifting off to nightmares. You know when you dream you are in your room, in your bed, so it feels like you are awake, but everything is fucked up? It was scary. I would wake myself up, and then as soon as I relaxed I would go right back to nightmare town.

So, I had to do something. And the something I did was turn on the TV. And what was on the TV was the movie Zathura. And even though I was so so sleepy, and even though I have seen this movie before, and even though I am not actually a fan of Zathura, I ended up staying awake to watch it through to the end.

The nightmares stopped, which is good. But the nightmare that is Zathura lives on. Here’s why.

I had this (totally rational) panic this morning that maybe the movie wasn’t actually called Zathura and that I had made that up. So I just logged onto IMDB.com to check myself. (Wreckage of myself? Prevented.)

Once there, I clicked around, like you do when you are verifying the name of a movie you saw in the middle of the night, the viewing of which you have not told (and will never be required to tell) anyone about, even in passing, therefore rendering the checking of the name completely unnecessary. Through a series of clicks, I found the list of plot keywords for Zathura.

The plot keywords list is a reference tool, manually generated by someone(s) to describe elements of the movie’s central plot. For example, I might say this movie is about a “board game”.  Then if you were ever searching the database for movies about board games, you’d find this one. Make sense?

What does not make sense is almost the entire list of plot keywords for Zathura. Is the movie about “sibling rivalry”? Sure. I get that. I took college. You know what it isn’t about? “Hugging.”

“Hey, sweetheart, tell me something: you got any movies back there about hugging?”

You mean a story specifically about hugging? Like a particular kind of hugging?

“Just give me any movie in which hugging is central to the plot.”

I guess there technically is some hugging in the movie. But not enough to qualify this for the Hugging sub genre. Like, when the AFI releases it’s list of 100 Movies About Hugging, this is not going to make it in, AT ALL. Sure, I know I missed the beginning of the movie, and so maybe I missed or forgot about some really pivotal scene in which hugging is discussed or done at length. But I doubt it. Because I definitely saw the 30 seconds of the movie in which one kid decides to make macaroni and cheese and gets distracted. And as unimpressive and unimportant as it was to the story (the kid never even makes it!), “macaroni and cheese” makes it into the plot keyword list.

“What’s that movie where the kid tries to make macaroni and cheese, and then he doesn’t?”

Zathura. (Duh.)

Here’s what else shows up in the plot of Zathura (SPOILER ALERT): Gravity.

No, just gravity. I just wanted you to know that this movie contains gravity.

Also,

• hair dryer
• footprint
• sofa
• whispering
• frozen
• apology
• sandwich

You know what else has all those elements? LITERALLY EVERY MOVIE EVER MADE.

Okay, I’m sure you can find one movie where there isn’t any whispering, or none of the characters are ever BOUND BY THE LAWS OF GRAVITY. My point is, these words are supposed to help identify elements one might be searching for in a film, not random things that appear briefly with little to no impact on the story. What the fuck is “frozen” telling you? Who’s searching for a movie about “frozen”?

“So what’s that movie about?”

Frozen.

“What do you mean? Like the characters are frozen? Frozen in time, or like actually frozen in ice?”

Just frozen.

“Oh… Great, can’t wait to see it.”

My research didn’t take me to any other films on IMDB to see if their plot keywords were equally ridiculous. I’m sure some are, but I don’t care a whole lot either way. I am just happy to know that someone felt it was worth his or her time to enter plot keywords for the Jumanji spin-off, and that this list equals what he or she considers to be the central takeaways from the film.

And also that I found the list and felt that its lack of merit was important enough to blog about.

Sigh…

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