The Basic Plot in the Form of a Haiku:
                            "Beating yourself up"
                            is no longer simply a
                            trite figure of speech.

My Basic Ramblings: I decided that I didn't want to see the movie, so I read all the spoilers.

Then I decided that I wanted to see the movie, so I read the book, figuring I could convince myself that I knew what would happen in the movie because I'd read the book and not because I'd read the spoilers.

So then I went to see the movie.

I refuse to get into the whole "is this movie encouraging men to tap into their primal urges and beat the crap out of each other/is this an anti-feminist movie/does this movie glorify violence or doesn't it, for Pete's sake?" argument, mostly because I hate getting involved in debates.   I will say, however, that this movie pretty much explains why I hate chick flicks.

I go to the movies to be transported, as it were, from my everyday life into worlds completely unlike my own.  It's film, people!  You can slow it down, speed it up!  Work with it!  Screw around with it!  Show me something that it would be physically impossible to see otherwise!  Do the thing where the action freezes and the camera pans around!  Freeze frame!  Blast my eardrums with music!   Break a few barriers!  Don't just show me a tired, cliched world of people griping about their relationship problems, Meeting Cute and waiting until the absolute last second to fall in love!  Dare to be different!  Live a little!

(ahem) I feel better now.

(This is not to say that all movies that transport one to an entirely different world are better than movies that stay local.  Script is important, too.  The Breakfast Club is a better movie than Batman & Robin.)

This movie swoops and swirls and blows up all over the place.  I absolutely adore the scene where the Narrator is walking through his apartment and the catalog descriptions pop up out of thin air.

When I went to see Natural Born Killers in college with a group of (male) friends, one of them said, upon exiting the theater, "I just want to kill someone right now."  These days, a statement like that would probably send everyone freaking.  Back then (this was 1994 or so), we just snickered and watched as he proposed marriage to the waitress at Denny's who made him a really good milkshake.  Fight Club had sort of the same reaction to me - for a brief, split second, I wanted to go beat the crap out of someone, but then I remembered (a) I'd lose; (b) I'd probably get beaten up instead, and (c) getting beat up would really, really hurt.

So I'm assuming once again, as I am wont to do, that y'all have seen the movie and won't mind if I throw lots of spoilers in the mix (I've noticed that many people have found my site looking for the spoiler to The Sixth Sense, so I aim to please.)

Everyone has their own little things they notice, upon looking back, that make them realize that the Narrator was really Tyler.  When Marla says "Who were you talking to?" when the Narrator knocks at the door, her reaction to the way the Narrator treats her, etc.  I have one that no one's noticed:  When the Narrator calls Tyler after his apartment blows up, he lets it ring several times, then hangs up.  Tyler calls right back, saying that he'd *69'd the phone and got the Narrator.  However, all the phones in the Paper Street house are rotary phones, which don't have * or # keys. (I should know.  Two of the phones in my house are old, old rotary phones.  If I need to use an automated service, I have to find one of our push-button phones.)  Speaking of rotary phones, anyone else notice 'em in The Matrix?

This is not to say that the movie is faultless.  I nearly cried when the Narrator and Tyler hit the bumpers of the black New Beetle, setting off the airbags.  (If it had been a yellow New Beetle, I really would have cried.)