Hop To It

Spend Easter — and April — in paradise at Margaritaville Lake Resort in Conroe

Following his official duties, the Easter Bunny is hopping on over to paradise for the month of April. He's headed to Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe to enjoy everything from brunch to crawfish and boats to concerts, and you'll want to meet him there.

Easter weekend fun, April 7-10
In addition to a sumptuous Southern brunch attended by the Easter Bunny himself (more on that below), you can find fresh spring fun all over the resort.

Keep an eye out for hidden Easter eggs and other treats, then pop into the petting zoo to ride a donkey, pet a miniature horse, and frolic with goats, bunnies, chicks, and ducks in a picturesque setting beside the lake.

With the kids out of school on Friday and Monday, it’s the perfect weekend to enjoy an extended family getaway. Save up to 35 percent off the resort's best rate when you book two or more days over the Easter weekend holiday.

Easter brunch, April 9
Every bunny is welcome at Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe for a fun and festive Easter brunch that's happening 10 am-3:30 pm.

Enjoy such holiday classics as rosemary lamb, slow-roasted pork, and a Southern-style grits bar with all fixings. See the full menu here.

Adults are $85, children ages 6-12 are $45, and kids 5 and under are free. You can also add on a Bloody Mary, mimosa, and Bellini bar for only $19.

Members receive 20 percent off, and there's complimentary valet at the Conference Center entrance.

Crawfish, Craft Beer & Wine Festival, April 15
Raise a glass — or a dozen! — to crawfish season. Your $25 admission includes 12 2 oz. pours from six different beers and two different wines.

Your festival entry ticket also includes live entertainment by Cedryl Ballou and the Zydeco Trendsetters, who are playing as part of the Conroe Crossroads Music Festival. This four-day live musical extravaganza runs April 13-16 and features shows at 40 venues throughout the area, including Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe.

The fresh crawfish boil is just an additional $14 per pound. Then, sip and stroll through the unique wares of the Margaritaville Market, featuring more than 20 artists, artisans, and designers showcasing the finest in jewelry, clothing, accessories, decor, and so much more.

It all goes down from 2-5 pm on the Palm Court and The Beach at Margaritaville.

Margaritaville On The Water Boat Show, April 21-23
Sail on in from 10 am-7 pm for Lake Conroe's premier live, in-the-water boat and watercraft show. Enjoy live music, food, and drinks while taking in the newest models from over 20 companies such as Veranda, Falcon, Centurion Supreme, Axis, and more.

In addition, there will be tents with more than 30 vendors offering boating, marine, and recreational items, from marine electronics and boat lifts to floating motorized miniature drink bars (can we get two?).

Even better, there's free admission and parking. Happy spring!

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Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe is an all-suite resort featuring 335 guest suites — including 32 lakefront cottages — on 186 lakefront acres and is the first Margaritaville Resort in Texas. Bars and restaurants feature signature Margaritaville dining concepts and there is an array of recreational activities: an 18-hole golf course, three-acre waterpark with a lazy river and outdoor pools, pickleball, tennis, swimming, boating, and fishing. Margaritaville’s popular full-service St. Somewhere Spa and a spacious Fins Up Fitness Center provide exceptional wellness options.

Photo courtesy of Margaritaville Lake Resort

The Margaritaville Market features more than 20 artists, artisans, and designers.

With 72,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor IACC-approved meeting space, the resort can host special events and meetings of every size. Located just an hour from Houston and about three hours from the major hubs of Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, the resort is within easy reach of over 19 million Texans.

holidays brunch nature promoted

Movie Review

New comedy I Want Your Sex saddles an all-star cast with a dull story

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut — Three Bewildered People in the Night — in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest — his first film in 12 years — he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention — and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.