“So was it worth it?”

                  “Worth it?”

                  “Five hours away – from me. At the movies! Our family time. When you know any movie will make its way to our bedroom soon enough.”

                  “Three hours.”

                  “Plus an hour to and fro.”

                  “Well, it had a dog as hero,” I scramble lamely. 

                  “And you don’t?” 

                  The foregoing did not occur. Henry is no scold. He delights in what he gets and what he doesn’t, heigh-ho, such is life. The reliability of his jocundity is central to his boundless appeal: love without its inevitable wrenching cost.

                  Curiosity carried us to The Odyssey. Why the fuss? Among widely varying verdicts– from wondrous and magical to tedious and banal – where would we light? And yes, loyal dog Argos is pivotal to the plot. 

                  My first writing job was reviewing off-Broadway theater for the then-prosperous Village Voice, Manhattan’s raffish “alternative weekly.” Too young for the assignment, it behooved me to sound old, authoritative, erudite. Asked what I thought of a show, I responded as crisply and quotably as possible. The snazzier my prose, the shinier my prospects.

                  These days I recoil from criticism. Critics must be know-it-alls, thumbs up or down, whereas the guy I encounter scribbling is all ifs, maybes, it depends. Is The Odyssey a good or bad movie? Well, if, maybe, it depends.

                  For sure, it’s a terrific action movie, if you like that sort of thing: spooky monsters, scary perils, desperate improbable contests pitting outnumbered hunks against leering lunks. I’m no fan of the genre, but if I derived my jollies from such vapidity, I might well be a Christopher Nolan groupie. He made three admired Batman movies: here is Batman in old Greek pseudo-duds.

                  Nolan, though, in selection and presentation of subject, aims for profundity, not just thrills and chills. Yes, he’ll please the pimple set to pay his bills, but he also means to go toe to toe with Homer, creating a magnum opus intended to endure. His Odysseus has action cred – and man, is Matt Damon buff for a fifty-five-year-old! – but he’s also a tormented modern, aghast at his impact on mankind. (In this he recalls Oppenheimer, another Nolan superhero.)

                  In the masterpiece department, Nolan and Damon have created – excuse my French – a clunking cliché. Smart as the smartest tech-bro, Odysseus suffers PTSD big-time. He battles an addiction problem. He’s an agonized utilitarian (“greatest good for the greatest number” or should heart overrule head?). Though he hangs out with pretty movie stars, this Odysseus is virtuously chaste, proto-feminist, and uxorious. He’s a great dad, natch, and needless to add, loves dogs, who love him back. (Henry and I agree that teary dog-love is the measure of a man.) My heart thawed at Odysseus’ dog reunion – but that was at minute 150 of 170 total, a long wait for a thaw.

                  Did I like the movie? Thumbs up or down!

                  For slam-bang stupefaction, A-plus-plus. One is too busy being pounded to ponder. I’ve no notion how Nolan achieves his effects – nor do I care. My world abounds in inscrutable technological wizardry, not least the machine on which these words are magically materializing. 

                  For insight into human complexity, my particular predilection, fuggedaboutit. Morally, this Odysseus felt more mannequin than man. His remorse about the violence he excels at is true neither to Homer nor today’s he-men. His tug-of-war with the gods is incomprehensible in a modern and nonsensical in an ancient. He showcased for me the shallowness, not the depth of our hour.

                  So was our time away worth it, Henry? It’s good to be home.