I usually don’t read Gene Weingarten, WaPo’s version of Dave Barry. I know there are plenty of people out there who find him funny. I’m sure that many of these people aren’t even related to him. However, the only thing I typically find about his prose is that it is consistently inconsistent. Sometimes it’s uproariously funny. Sometimes it’s horrifically bad. Most of the time it lands soundly in the tepid waters of “meh.”

However, this week’s column struck a particularly loud chord with me. Titled “Special defects: Gene gives movie technology a digital salute,” it’s all about Weingarten’s frustration over how Hollywood has seemingly abandoned decent storytelling for some flashy special effects and CGI Smurfs. Yep, that’s pretty much how I feel about a lot of these big-budget, “blow your mind,” effects-heavy movies. I think Weingarten summed it up perfectly with this line:

The problem is that when absolutely anything is possible, absolutely nothing is special.

It might not be funny, but it’s totally true.