Cloverfield: A barf bag to go with your popcorn?

Saw "Cloverfield" yesterday with two fellow geeks from school.

A lot of fun. It’s an interesting if less charming update on the beloved metropolis-destroying monster film genre.

At least until you hurl due to the frenetically bouncing  camera angle. The premise of the movies is that the film is footage from the camcorder of an innocent bystander caught in the middle of a Godzilla-style disaster. The choice has the advantage of adding immediacy–a sense on the part of the viewer of being there–and has fateful consequences in a film that involves people running for their lives from man-eating critters.

The one thing I could’ve done without is the now de rigeur backdrop of hot, super-trendy college-age people.  This insistence on portraying the universe like a high school gets really, really tiresome. Someone needs to remind Hollywood that youngsters used to flock to movies back before the hideous aesthetic of "Beverly Hills 90201" took over American popular culture.