My Cousin Vinny

There are three kinds of purchases one can make: intentional, impulsive, and irrational. The other day, I went to Best Buy with the intent of purchasing the Always Sunny Christmas special; this was an intentional purchase. While at Best Buy, I saw The Fountain, Snatch, and Black Hawk Down on sale for $4.99 each. These were all movies that I had always had some interest in buying or seeing, but did not intend to purchase when I had walked into Best Buy. These purchases, thus, were impulsive. And then I bought one more $4.99 DVD: My Cousin Vinny. This cannot be called anything but irrational. As my friend (who was with me at the time of the purchase) said, this movie is on Comedy Central all the time and, well, isn't even that good. But I had never seen it, had only vaguely heard of it, and "justified" the buy by saying, "but it's got Joe Pesci and the Karate Kid, and Marisa Tomei won an Oscar for her performance in it!" Fine. But, having never previously known much of anything about the movie at all, this was still an irrational buy. Now, the movie itself was alright. But only alright. Aside from two tiring miscommunication shticks at the beginning, 100% of the humor was derived from the "Yankee down in Dixie" cliche. Two Italian New Yorkers are falsely accused of a crime in Alabama and then two more Italian New Yorkers come down to try to bail them out of trouble. Culture clash! You get the picture. As far as the acting goes, Joe Pesci was funny, but mainly because of his over-the-top guinea-ness. Marisa Tomei was cute and all, but an Academy Award? I know the "best supporting actor" awards are kind of thrown about with little rhyme or reason, but this might be one of my all-time "really?" reactions to an Oscar-winning performance. She was way better in The Wrestler, which at least saw her nominated for the award. This movie was a six in my book - not "bad" by any measure, but very forgettable and average at best. Not bad for an irrational purchase, but then again, it's always bad when you make an irrational purchase.