What is this weird feeling? Am I enjoying myself? Is this what joy is? It's been so long since I've last felt this intense unmistakable, unpolluted pure delight in what I'm doing and what im doing is reading a long ass review of a movie I haven't even seen and haven't planned on seeing. I could be doing something important with my time and the book promptly warns me that yes, I could and should be doing something else but then again everything else is so very unpleasantly entangled with nervousness, risks and dissapointments when this book is devoid of all that (as well as anything important really).
Ayoade is like a cab driver that drives you to a cinema, watches the movie with you commenting on everything happening on the screen and putting it in context of other things he knows or heard about. Then after the movie he drives you to his house, sits you cozily on a huge sofa and tells you about his childhood. You respectfully listen, have a few laughs here and there, he offers you some nice red nonalcoholic wine from a small fridge built into the sofa. While you are busy with the wine he shows you pictures of planes and his favorite plane model that he got at that place and you nod and feel that it's all good. You notice that Ayoade is actually pretty handsome and that you'd like to perhaps touch his hair a bit. He lets you and you enjoy fingering his fluffy hair while he continues his exotic tale gesticulating profusely (now it's about politics and how he once saw a bar fight). Then it's getting late, he politely offers you to stay the night in the guest room but you can't really stay because your wife is waiting at home. You exchange pleasantries for half an hour more for good measure and in the end he drives you home, tucks you in bed, tucks your wife, kisses you both on the forehead all while smiling so warmly, then kisses your children as well for good luck, throws away your garbage and leaves you at peace. Next day you feel as fresh and reinvigorated as never before. ( )

A book that had me giggling aloud in the waiting room of the Canadian Tire Automotive Repair, which says a lot as the waiting areas of these places usually create overwhelming despair. At the time I was watching some slightly-trained people staring into my car’s innards for some reason, and wondering what they were looking at there (I was in for winter tires and an oil change).
Car survived, but the anxiety I was feeling about having to sell my soul to get it back was alleviated by this very funny, very silly, take on Gwynneth Paltrow’s ‘classic’ movie.
Unfortunately this book means I shall never be able to read a pontificating movie review again without giggling. Much as Monty Python ruined British news shows for me for years, Ayoade’s voice will come through anything else I’ll read and his dry humour will make it impossible to take the review seriously.
I’m off to read more by this fellow- loved this. ( )

A very British book by a British author, very dry sense of humor, and yet quite funny. The book takes apart an incredibly dumb and also bad Gwyneth Paltrow movie- I know this describes most of her work. The movie is View From the Top. The book was quite entertaining as he weaves his own personal experiences and observations into the movie storyline. ( )

I intend to soak up anything Ayoade in the interest of becoming in any way possible more like him--that is preternaturally intellectually delectable. Amen. Though I had to put down the travel show he did after the fourth or fifth uncomfortable animal moment. (uncomfortable for me and the animal, that is.) If you hanker for the spectacle of a sly and vivacious pan of brains set loose to ravage a richly deserving "film"--a la Mst3k/Rifftrax--with the added splash of panache which educated Englishpersons are duty-bound to provide, then proceed forthwith and posthaste to this and I presume Mr. Ayoade's other books, friends! (There are a few little flashbacks to his childhood, to boot.) ( )

Before reading it, I watched the movie. It was painful. But it was soo worth it to fully enjoy this book.
Ayoade is brilliantly funny. I couldn't stop laughing. Now I am tempted to rewatch the movie just to appreciate it under a new light. ( )