New Boston Creative Group

by Lisa Sisley on July 6, 2010

Ken (my saint-like husband; one “friend” pointed out to me that I certainly married up, and he’s right) and I went to see “Knight and Day” recently. Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise were good together, and Cruise brings the funny better than he gets credit for. However, the movie itself isn’t really blog-worthy, except for this: It made several mentions of Kansas without ONCE referencing Dorothy, ruby slippers, tornadoes or flying monkeys. Nobody with straw in their teeth. Nothing about flat terrain. Not a sunflower in sight.

Cruise and Diaz meet in the Wichita airport (purported; it was really filmed in Massachusetts) as they prepare to board. Diaz hauls a very heavy carry-on through the airport, and refuses to check it, saying something about the stuff in it being valuable. We then see her explaining to a TSA guy what the auto parts are that he’s holding up. She turns out to be a classic-car restoration expert.

On the plane, Cruise asks Diaz what brought her to Wichita. She says, “Kansas has a lot of really good scrap,” or something pretty close to that (I’ve only seen it once, people). I braced, waiting for the snark. Nothing. And there were other references throughout the movie along the lines of, “I wish I’d never gotten on that plane in Wichita,” delivered exactly as if the line was, “I wish I’d never gotten on that plane in Poughkeepsie,” or, “I wish I’d never gotten on that plane in Paris.”

The only irritant, from a Kansas-centric POV, was a scarecrow that hit the windshield as a plane skidded through a cornfield. I doubt that any real cornfield has sported a scarecrow since maybe 1920, but it was quick, and funny, rather “Airplane”-esque, so I’ll let this slide.

Anyway, if you want a harmless movie that doesn’t bag on our fair state, you could certainly do worse than “Knight and Day.” “Vacation” springs to mind….