The Only Thing I Liked About THE LONE RANGER…

…is that I saw it with my mother.

When I think back about the film, three things come to mind:

(1)   I knew that my mother used to watch The Lone Ranger on television in the 1950s after she and her older brother got home from school.  I did not know, however, that they were members of the Lone Ranger Club and each had a silver bullet.  That makes me smile; I’m glad to know this little detail.

(2)   Normally, I can’t stand it when someone talks during a movie, but my mother made several brief comments that contextualized the film perfectly from her perspective and informed my own.  Once she said, “That is not my Lone Ranger.  He is stupid.”  Another time, “What is wrong with Tonto?  He’s supposed to be the strong, silent type.”  And, regarding one of several episodes featuring the horse Silver, “This is weird.”

(3)   The problem is not that any one element of the film is terrible, it’s just that what comes together is – as one of my friends says frequently – a hot mess.  It’s good-looking enough but utterly foolish.

The Lone Ranger is two-and-a-half hours of empty calories, but I don’t want my time back because I saw the movie with my Mama. 

As for my mother, she didn’t like the film but reports that she is glad we went to see it because otherwise she would have wondered about it.  Sometimes that is enough of a reason to spend an afternoon at the cinema.