Bridesmaids

I was never totally sold on this movie by the trailers. I thought they all sort of missed the mark. However, I think Kristin Wiig is a brilliant comic actress and Maya Rudolph and Melissa McCarthy are both great character actresses in search of a breakout. The reviews were pouring out adoration for the movie and producer and director team of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig was infinitely intriguing to me. I figured the trailers just had to be a very tame version of this R-Rated comedy. It was being mentioned as a female Hangover, of a female version of a Judd Apatow movie and who would not want to see that movie? I was excited at the prospect of all of these women coming together and creating something hilarious. After missing it opening weekend, I heard even more raves from co-workers and the general public coming out of the movie wiping away tears from laughing so hard.

Annie's(Wiig) life is not going exactly how she pictured. She is having sex with a guy who can barely stand her (he does not appear to be very good at sex either), her baking business went under and she is paying bills by selling jewelry. She has awful roommates and her only other living option is to live with her mother who goes to AA even though she has never had a drink. To top it off, her best childhood friend, Lillian(Rudolph) just got engaged and asked her to be the maid of honor. While Annie is excited for Lillian it only magnifies how off track her life is. It does not help that Lillian's life is easy street and Lillian has a friend, Helen (Rose Byrne) who has a ridiculous amount of money, is gorgeous and undermines all of Annie's ideas for the wedding party. The rest of the Bridesmaids also have their own ideas of what the bachelorette party and wedding shower should look like, and it is up to Annie to try and juggle it all.

Bridesmaids was so unbelievably disappointing. I laughed a lot in the first 25 or 30 minutes and then had a few sporadic laughs after that, but I found that most of the movie missed the mark. People around me seemed to be having a good time, but I was fidgety, bored and ready for the whole thing to be over long before its bloated 2hr run time was over. Wiig is a wonderful comic actress and she even handled the dramatic moments very well, but I am not sure this movie is worthy of her talents, or maybe I think she is meant to be a character comic actress, not a leading woman. All of the other actresses were fine too. Byrne did not drag the picture down even though she has nowhere near the comic background many of these women have and Melissa McCarthy was probably the only one who managed to be funny throughout, even though I did not get most of what everyone else was laughing at.

Also, Bridesmaids is more than a little bit depressing. I get that desperation and awkwardness make for humor all of the time, but this was just tough to watch at times. There is a scene where Annie and Helen go back and forth trying to outdo each other with speeches about Lillian and many people were laughing, but I was just left cringing because it reeked of depression from Annie. She knows her life sucks and that she may be losing her best friend and it was difficult to laugh at the pain. I like my raunchy comedies to get serious and not be afraid of emotion, but the general tone of this movie was to laugh at this woman's life spin so far out of control she has to move in with her mother. Of course, the character of Annie is not inherently likable either. There is this great cop character, Officer Rhodes(Chris O'Dowd) and Annie does everything she can to sabotage the possibility at happiness. It gets old pretty fast.

I have received the remark that I did not enjoy this movie because I have something against women who act the way we expect men to act in movies. This is false. Fart, poop and vomit jokes are not funny to me no matter who is farting, vomiting or pooping. The big gross out scene in this movie may make a lot of people laugh, but I was just left sitting there. I wanted so very much to be left with tears of laughter. I wanted my gut to hurt from laughing and instead I was just left wondering how much longer I had to sit and wait for the inevitable conclusion. I did laugh at the sex jokes. I actually appreciated jokes with women talking about sex, but not in that Sex and the City way. I really did want to love Bridesmaids, but it just did not go that way for me. I wish I could say there is a good movie somewhere in this mess, but I just do not think there is.

Something Borrowed

If you know me, one of my general movie going habits is to avoid Kate Hudson movies at all costs. She is grating, unfunny and not particularly attractive, in my opinion. However, when you put her in a movie with the adorable Ginnifer Goodwin and hilarious John Krasinski, I cannot be so harsh on my habit. I still probably would not have seen it if I had to pay for movies and did not have a girlfriend who wanted to see it. There is just something so annoying about everything Kate Hudson says and does. So, it is with my Anti Kate Hudson glasses on that I went into this movie.

Rachel(Goodwin) and Darcy(Hudson)are best friends and have been since childhood. Darcy is loud, flirtacioud and fashionable and Rachel is bookish, awkward and a pushover. Darcy is engaged to Dex(Colin Egglesfield), who was Rachel's good friend and crush from law school. The night of Rachel's 30th birthday, she and Dex have sex and after she admits she always had a crush on him. Dex becomes quickly confused as to what he wants. He thinks he loves Darcy, but he always wanted Rachel, so for a while he gets them both. he and Rachel start secretly dating, and Darcy remains oblivious. Rachel's other best friend Ethan(Krasinski) becomes her sounding board and he sometimes has to tell her what she does not want to hear.

It has been roughly a week since I watched Something Borrowed and I am still undecided what exactly I feel about it. The movie is undoubtedly funny. John Krasinski is just hilarious in every scene that features him and the script has some genuinely funny moments and situations. Goodwin and Hudson have pretty good chemistry and there is a wonderful moment involving them and a Salt N Pepa song that might be the highlight of the movie. Goodwin is her usual adorably self conscious self on screen and she really sells the drama of the story, especially in the big confession at the end. She is sexy in a subtle way and even though Hollywood keeps trying to sell her as more on the frumpy side, the girl is gorgeous.

However, there is something deeper going on in this movie that keeps me from really liking it. The premise of the movie is essentially a girl has sex with her best friend's fiance. Rachel's selfishness is constantly rewarded, Dex is an indecisive asshole and Darcy is an obnoxious brat who has nothing nice to say to anyone throughout the entire movie. These are the three people we are supposed to care about enough to watch them for nearly 2hrs, but I honestly did not like any of them. Hudson's Darcy is the kind of movie character that should have no friends and only in film does this kind of personality come across as charming to a group of people. Krasinski's character is the only one who can seem to call Darcy on her shit and he is the only one really worth caring about.

I do not need likable characters in my movies, but in what is supposed to be a kind of breezy ROMCOM, I should. I should care if the characters are happy and I honestly did not. In fact, I think the movie takes the easy way out in the climax. These characters do not deserve the Hollywood ending and in giving it to them, the movie cheats life. Granted, there are consequences and the consequences are long lasting, but in the end, we get the ending we all knew we were going to get at the end of the movie. The writer got lazy which is too bad because there are at least 3 inspired scenes where the writing really helped sell these characters. The scene involving the Salt N Pepa song has a really great feel to it and almost endears the Kate Hudson character to me. Then Ethan's confession is honest, sad and beautiful and of course, the big major confession from Goodwin is wonderful, but it is all spoiled by false moment after false moment.

When the lights came up, I felt incredibly mixed emotions for the film. I was super annoyed by the ending and by the actions or lack of actions by the characters, but I also laughed a lot during the movie, especially at two side plots involving Ethan's one night stand and this super douchey guy Darcy tries to set up Rachel with. So what I have decided is that I loved everything about the movie that was not directly related to the main story. I love Goodwin, but as likable as she is, her character is too much of a pushover and by the time she grows a backbone, it is too late, I was over it. Hudson actually looked hot a few times in this movie, which is a rare thing for me to say, but she did not help make Darcy any more likable. I would have rather seen a movie built around the supporting characters!

Final Grade: C+

THOR

Hopefully I remember how it is I do this review thing. THOR seemed like an odd choice for a stand alone character movie in the Marvel and Avengers universe. Not to say that any of these marvel movies are based in a sense of reality, but would audiences be willing to go to another world for this Superhero stuff? They cast basically a no name and hired Kenneth Branagh to direct and I just did not think it was going to work. Would it be too silly to have a dude with a spinning hammer as the hero? I was curious about it and found myself way more excited than I would have thought at the end of Ironman 2 when they showed Thor's hammer. Clearly they had me hooked! The trailers were good, but not great, but I had read some good things about the 20 minutes shown at ShoWest. Plus, there is this whole big plan with Marvel and this entire world being connected meant it would be wise to watch it. Oh who am I kidding, it is a Superhero movie, of course I was going to see it!

Thor(Chris Helmsworth) is a powerful but arrogant warrior in a realm of Gods where magic and science are one in the same. His father (Anthony Hopkins) is a powerful king and is all set to pass the kingdom to Thor, but Thor's childish arrogance starts a war and he is banished to Earth where he meets up with a trio of American Scientists. Thor's power has been taken from him and he believes if he can get his hammer back, he can get his power back. With the help of the trio (Natalie Portman, Stellen Skarsgard and Kat Dennings) Thor tries to fight through the secret government agency known as SHIELD, but as he reaches his hammer, he cannot pull it out of the ground. Back in his home world, Thor's brother, Loki(Tom Hiddleston), sets off a chain reaction to kill their father, take over their world and maybe, just maybe destroy everything.

Thor is an origin story, but not in the same way as most Superhero origin stories. Thor has always been a bit of different kind of comic. It is a very straight forward story and is told in a very straight forward way, to the point where it almost feels like a series of short films tied into one film. This is not a bad thing as I found Thor to be quite an excellent movie. My biggest fear was that they would take the material far too seriously, but the first 15 minutes of Thor on Earth are very funny and set a good tone for a summer movie. The action is a little too frenzied at the beginning, but as the movie settles in the action gets a lot easier to follow. Branagh has too many tight shots of the action, which he did not need because all of the effects looks great. I wanted him to pull the camera back and let us get a more broad scope of what was going on in the action sequences, but he does give us plenty of action. The pacing is excellent and while there is a serious amount of exposition, the story does not get bogged down in it, mostly because Portman and Helmsworth are so great together.

Chris Helmsworth is going to make hundreds of girls and gay guys drool throughout the movie, but beyond being chiseled like a statue, he makes a very great Thor. he has the right mix of arrogance, playfulness and strength to pull of a pretty oddball character. He handles the action flawlessly and there is never a time when I questioned whether he could do all of these insane action stunts. He also handles the Earth stuff very well. His chemistry with Portman was a pleasant surprise for me. Portman is her usual solid self. She clearly was having a great time with all of this big summer blockbuster stuff and it helped bring a sense of levity to the movie. Skarsgard is great as well. I expected it to be a throw away role, but the way he played it made the character incredibly important. Hiddleston, as Loki, was another pleasant surprise. It is good he was so great because we have not seen the last Loki in the Marvel universe of movies. Hopkins was the only disappointing aspect in the movie to me. He was clearly just phoning this in and I know he had issues with Branagh, so that may have had something to do with it.

Superhero movies are becoming almost overdone and people wondered if maybe Thor was signalling the end of the genre, but Thor is a breath of fresh air. With flying spinning hammers punching through crazy Ice Monsters(best action sequence in my opinion), a great cameo from another Avenger, great comedy and a solid cast, Thor borders on being truly epic. The world created is gorgeous and some of the shots of Thor's home world are stunning. I feel like Branagh and company did a very good job of making Thor workable to the general public. It is easy to have audiences embrace Spiderman, or Robert Downey Jr as Ironman and it will probably be easy to ask audience to cheer for Captain America, but it was tougher to make Thor accessible and this movie more than accomplishes that. This movie makes me hope Thor has a major part of The Avengers. It also makes me hope Portman will have at least a cameo in The Avengers.