Go See Cloverfield!

It’s important that you, and everyone you know, go see Cloverfield several times. It’s important for two reasons.

First of all, I love giant monster movies. If this one is successful, then there’s a slim chance that Hollywood will make more of these. I know, it would help if the monster were explicitly anti-war, but you can’t have everything. Maybe next time he could eat Susan Sarandon?

Secondly, did you know that there’s a direct correlation between the success of giant monster movies and the health of the US economy?

The King Kong remake in 2005 managed to pull us out of the economic slump that had hung around since the 9/11 attacks. The uplifting end of that film helped buck up our national spirits during the difficult Iraq War, only recently imperiled because of the subprime lending crisis.

The last big-time giant monster movie before that was 1998’s Godzilla, which kicked off the ‘net boom and finally cured the Asian Flu that had bedeviled the US economy since the mid-90s.

[Of course, we all know that because Godzilla sucked, the internet boom fizzled out with Enron’s bankruptcy a few years later. Did you know that it was so bad that Godzilla refused to have his name in the credits? It’s true: in the cast list it says “Godzilla - Alan Smithee.”]

Now, we can hope and pray that Cloverfield can pick us up out of the housing slump. If enough of us go see it, then it certainly will. And if Hollywood could just release one giant monster movie per year (a good one, too, not a sucky one!) we’d be on the path to eternal economic prosperity.

So I urge you to forward this to all your friends, and let giant monster movies run amok at the box office.

It’s for the children.