A Flight to Savannah: Part II

Every customer has a television to watch for free. And that's good. What's not so good, however, is making the customer pay  £3 or $5 for a set of earphones to listen to the sound. Now, what's the idea behind this? Why give a television for free but no headphones? That's just mean. It would be like the BBC charging a separate fee on top of their already extortionate licence fee for the volume as well.

It's a rip-off but of course we all dutifully buy our headphones. It is necessary to have a couple of good films to watch to pass the long hours. There is no other way of amusing yourself - you can't go for a walk or practice Pilates, after all. And reading for nine hours, non-stop, is simply too much.

So, headphones at the ready, I look through the in-flight magazine for something worth watching. Unfortunately this flight seems to be devoid of decent films. There is The Da Vinci Code, some daft thing with Clive Owen in and an Adam Sandler flick called Click. There is not even a flight channel to watch. This is frustrating. There is nothing better than watching the flight of the plane. It becomes quite soothing and addictive as the journey progresses.

I can't stand Adam Sandler but Click seems like the best option, although this may have something to do with lovely Kate Beckinsale being in it. I try to  turn to the correct channel only to find that my television does not actually work. One of the flight stewards comes over and tells me that he will re-set it.

The plane hits a period of turbulence and rocks about a bit. An announcement comes on the tannoy system. It says:  "The people currently standing in the aisle do so at their own risk." That, to me, sounds like a disguised message. What it really means is:  "F*** you." There are better ways to approach these matters. What happened to a simple, polite request for people to take their seats and put their belts on?

During all this fuss, my television has re-set itself and I am now ready to watch Click. It is awful. Sandler's performance is atrocious. The plot is awful and centres around the idea that Sandler is a career-obsessed husband and father who never has time to do what he should. As his working life increasingly takes precedence, he is presented with a remote control that can fast-forward any event in his life, thereby meaning that he can avoid having dinner with his parents when he has a large project on.

Now this is all well and good but my real gripe with the film lies not with its fantastical plot but with the fact that Sandler, so obsessed with his job, decides to use his fast-forwarding device to avoid having sex with his gorgeous wife. It is a little difficult to get my head around that. Kate Beckinsale is his wife. She is gorgeous. Hmm. Adam Sandler wants to go and do architecture drawings rather than go to bed with Ms Beckinsale. No. I'm still not getting it. It sounds unlikely. You'd think that Sandler would jump at the opportunity. When his acting career is over, he will be kicking himself that he rushed through that. It has to be up there with the cruellest of regrets that any man can take to his grave. It is at this point that I have to remind myself that the film is fictional, and therefore pondering such stupidities is at the very least irrelevant, and at worst a complete waste of time.