MAN CAVE: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas vs. Date Night

I just revisited two films that would seem to be on opposite ends of a cinematic spectrum, but perhaps have more in common than we think.

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MAN CAVE: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas vs. Date Night

POSTED: Tuesday, July 12, 2011, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: Man Cave

Man Cave is a testosterone-laden weekly feature that highlights the weekend haps of an everyday, pop-culture-loving Philly dude.

I just revisited two films that would seem to be on opposite ends of a cinematic spectrum, but perhaps have more in common than we think.

Terry Gilliam's Hunter S. Thompson classic starring Johnny Depp takes two men, uh, out of their element, we'll say. These severely questionable shade-balls cruise head first into the Las Vegas strip. A somewhat wistful Raul Duke (Depp) takes many fistfulls of drugs and ruminates on the recession of the hippie tide. Surrounded by a dynamo of modern bacchanal, he and his morbid jackass lawyer (Benicio Del Torro) horror at the loud, entertainment-fueled vortex of neo-America while they (very secondarily) tend to the journalism assignment which brought them there.

Date Night takes the two most suburban squares ever (Steve Carrell and Tina Fey) and plunges them into a crime-noir evening of running for their lives and solving mysteries. A more classical fish-out-of-water flick, Date Night is fueled on "here's how lame parents would fare in an evening of shootouts, subterfuge and conspiracy busting."

In many ways, these movies are photo-negatives of each other. Insane, beastly men infiltrating the main drag of capitalism vs. domestic 9-to-5ers stepping in the way of corrupt cops and gangsters. But both sets of characters are going through the same things: Wow, this is how the other half lives, and I want no part in it.

What cultural paradigm do you represent? If you are an bespectacled, Onion-reading Whole Foods-shopper, have you ever spent an evening taking in the scenery of a frat-house kegger? If you enjoy the acoustic singer-songwriters at Tin Angel, have you ever spent an evening people-watching over at the Troc's thrash-metal nights? Treat yourself to a "Rabbit Hole" night, and report back to Critical Mass, let us know how it went!

(ryan.carey@citypaper.net)

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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