The Hangover 2

The Hangover took the world by storm. It starred 3 not-that-famous guys, it rehashed Dude. Where's my car's plot and went on to become the highest grossing R Rated comedy of all time and I believe the third or fourth top grossing R Rated movie of all time. It was hilarious, but not super raunchy, so it had that mass appeal. Something about the chemistry of those three, mixed with a baby, a tiger, Mike Tyson and some serious memory loss resonated with the public. I loved it, as well. It has physical comedy, ridiculous situations, really funny lines and a genuinely interesting story. The Hangover could have been recut as a mystery film very easily. There was no way a sequel was not going to happen. Hollywood knows how to cash in on money making properties better than anything. The teaser trailer hinted at nothing but a very dirty Bangkok. The trailer looked like a complete retread of The Hangover and that actually suited me perfectly. With INSANE box office numbers in the opening weekend, it is clear The Hangover 2 will lead to a Hangover 3, but is it funny?

Opening with another messed up phone call about how they lost someone, Phil(Bradley Cooper), Stu(Ed Helms) and Alan(Zack Galifinakis) are at it again. There is a wedding, this time Stu is getting married to a ridiculously hot Asian girl(Jaime Chung) and as Stu has not forgotten what happened the last time this crew threw a bachelor party, he refuses to have one. Instead, Stu, Phil, Alan, Doug(Justin Bartha) and Stu's soon to be brother-in-law, Teddy(Mason Lee) grab one beer and have some marshmallows. Next thing they know, the Wolfpack is in a dingy motel room with Chow, a finger without a body and no memory. Thus repeats the pattern. The guys empty their pockets, go to a strip club, a tattoo parlor, a monk monastery, hook up with a chain smoking, drug dealing monkey. They get mixed up in the Russian mob, an Armenian arms dealer and Paul Giamatti. Oh, the person they lost is Teddy.

If you are looking for variety, go somewhere else. The Hangover 2 follows the comic, mystery and ridiculous beats from The Hangover exactly. In fact, the movie plays more like a remake than a sequel, but that is just fine with me. This is a ride I am willing to take as often as they offer it. It is just a flat out funny time. Cooper, Helms and Galifinakis make such a great comic team and they are all very much game for whatever director Todd Phillips throws at them and it makes for such an awesome adventure. I love the reactions from the characters as shit just gets crazier and crazier. yes, it is absolute stupid that this nonsense keeps happening to these same three guys, but that is a big part of what makes the second film work. These guys cannot believe this shit is happening either.

Helms is, of course, on the receiving end of most of the wildest stuff. I almost wish the face tattoo had not been revealed in the trailer, because it would be such a great reveal, but that pales in comparison for the raunchiest, funniest, nastiest thing that happens in this movie. That is what The Hangover 2 has going for it. It's raunch is actually hilarious, unlike Bridesmaids. Cooper still plays Phil as the ultimate Go-With-the-Flow attitude that helped bring levity to The Hangover and Helms is even better this time around as Stu. He is so perfectly over the top in how much he cannot believe what has happened to him. In fact, the movie goes to a petty dark place momentarily with Stu and in the third one, I hope they come back to it. Galifinakis makes Alan the right mixture of asshole and helpless child which is becoming his specialty.

I loved the flashback with the guys as kids doing the debauchery. It was a nice touch and the photos at the end are even more insane than the last time and I really liked that Doug was still around. This movie seemed less focused on the mystery and more on the insanity of what these guys do when they get black out nuts and that was fine because the kid playing Teddy did not matter much to me. I got the point of him, but I think the stakes did not matter as much to me this time. The cameo at the end is great, even though I totally should have seen it coming and really, the only negative thing I can say about this movie was that I did not come out of it with as many quotable lines. It is probably not going to be as memorable as the Hangover.

Final Grade: A-

P.S. This movie makes me want to avoid Bangkok at all costs, whereas The Hangover made me want to fly to Vegas as soon as the movie was over.

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.

Red

Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren in the same movie lends itself to a lot of jokes about retirement homes, or at the very least bad old person jokes. The fact of the matter is, all four of these actors have a lot left in the tank, and honestly, Malkovich seems to just be having more fun as he gets older. While, I am not familiar with the source material, it is tailor made for Bruce Willis. If ever there was an old man who we had to believe could still beat people up while keeping his wits about him, it is Willis. If you want an all out action dude, go to Stallone, but if you need an old dude to kick ass, crack wise and be smart, Bruce Willis is your man. You need Freeman because he does the wily veteran thing so well and since every movie needs eye candy, we have Helen Mirren, sexy sexy Helen Mirren.

Frank Moses(Willis) has a secret. He is getting his social security checks, but he is ripping them up so he can call the office and tell the lady he is not getting them. He does this because he has a crush on the call operator, Sarah Ross(Mary Louise Parker) and he does not know how else to talk to her. Now that is not really his big secret, his big secret is that he used to be an American spy and now someone is coming after him with murderous intent. In order to find out how, Moses enlists the help of his old friends, Joe(Freeman), Marvin(Malkovich) and Victoria(Mirren). Joe is good with plans, Marvin has information and Victoria is a weapons goddess. Moses is not sure what is happening, but soon he is put in touch with the notes of a recently killed reporter and learns that in the 1980s the vice president went crazy with killing in the army and Moses and his crew may have been privy to that information. However, these old timers also have a ruthless Secret Service agent on their tail. William Cooper(the wonderful Karl Urban) is smart, savvy and brutal, but he also has ethics and to him, Moses is the man behind a bunch of serious crimes.

This year has seen more than its fair share of action comedies and a majority of them have failed more than they have succeeded. Red succeeds more than it fails, but not by the best of margins. The pacing is totally wonky, the constant freeze frames that are "wink wink, nudge nudge" moments of "HEY THIS IS A COMIC BOOK MOVIE" but it is also so much fun and the action is very much top notch. Willis and Co are clearly having a blast as the old people still shooting guns, punching people out and running from the bad guys. Malkovich has perfected this crazy guy routine that Christopher Walken used to have on lock, Willis looks more invested in a movie than he has in years, Freeman cannot wipe the giant smile off of his face and no one has ever looked like they were having more fun shooting a Gatling Gun than Helen Mirren. Mary Louise Parker is merely along for the ride but even she is having a blast playing this girl who is in for the ride of her life and finds herself very turned on by a guy in action.

the script has some nice jokes and a few great gags, but I think, on the page it probably is a bit lackluster. It is one of those movies fully brought out by the cast and because they have all bought into the movie, the movie gets a nice boost. Red starts strong, and finishes incredibly strong, but it lags big time in the middle. I think the film was hoping introducing the crazy Malkovich character half way through would allow them to slow the movie down without losing the punch, but it nearly derails the movie, not because Malkovich does not work, but because they put it all on him and do not keep the forward momentum going. As the group tries to figure out the plot, the movie lingers in this limbo between action and comedy, but neither gets much to do. I did enjoy the little action sequence at the airport, including the absolutely ridiculous climax to that scene, but other than that, the movie loses its way.

Luckily Red gets back on track and in a major way. The climatic action sequence is absolutely phenomenal. It gives us wonderful stunts, seriously awesome gun play, a little emotion, sexy Helen Mirren and then, while the twist is not much of a twist, it gives us a satisfying conclusion. It is a well paced, well thought out and excellently executed conclusion to an up and down film. It is such a good action sequence that it pushed the movie into that realm of succeeding more than failing. Red does not set the genre on fire, nor will I really remember much of it in a few months, but it was an entertaining distraction and it is fun to watch a group of people having such a good damn time at work.

Final Grade: C+

Easy A

I remember first hearing about this movie thinking "A modern day, teenage version of The Scarlett Letter sounds painful!" When I read what the movie was actually going to be, I was a bit more interested and when they cast the lovely, charming and hilarious Emma Stone as the lead, I was very much more excited. Ever since Superbad, I have felt Emma Stone was a star in waiting. She outshone Anna Farris in House bunny and I have just been anticipating the moment she got the chance to break out. She is sexy, but in a way that hits you differently. She comes off as approachable, and whip smart, but sexy. She is a very version of Ellen Page and it is kind of fitting that this is her break out role, because in a lot of ways, Easy A comes off as a sexier version of Juno. And your enjoyment of this movie might depend on if you want a sexier, little more mainstream version of Juno.

Olive(Stone) is a girl telling us a story through a webcam. She lets the audience know "There are two sides to every story and this is mine, the right one." Olive was once par tof the faceless masses at her high school. She spent her weekends in her room lip-syncing to "Pocketful of Sunshine" and she gets straight A's and never causes a stir. She has a sexy, slutty best friend, Rhiannon(Aly Michalka) who bugs Olive to tell her the story of the date Olive said she had. Olive made the whole thing up, but soon the rumor went around that Olive was kind of slutty. She lived up the notoriety. She kind of gets off on the infamy. However, things start to spiral for her when she fake has sex with a gay guy to help his reputation. Soon she has losers of all types paying her in gift cards to fake have sex with her. The Christian group on campus, led by Marianne starts to make her life hell and instead of fessing up to the stuff, Olive decides to wear it proudly. As she is studying The Scarlett Letter in English class, Olive decides to stitch a giant red A on her entire new slutty wardrobe.

I am not sure I can do the movie justice in terms of the story, but I think I did a pretty good job. What matters most is that Easy A is flat out hilarious! Emma Stone is absolutely wonderful in every aspect of the film. She is funny, vulnerable and makes it sort of believable that this ridiculous story could happen. She is the entire movie, so it really hinges on her performances. She reacts well to her fellow students and to the adults that pepper the movie as well. Thomas Hayden Church as her English teacher, Lisa Kudrow as the counselor, Malcolm McDowell as the principal and the absolutely delightful couple of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's parents all offer something to better the film. Amanda Bynes does great work as the Christian leader and Penn Badgley shows up as the potential love interest for Olive and is not at all afraid to get goofy.

Easy A offers a lot to things that came before it. yes, it clearly is influenced by The Scarlett Letter, but as a work of post-modern film, it also owes worlds to the movies of John Hughes and it acknowledges it by explicitly referencing them and showing clips from them. In fact, the film is, at times, a Ferris Bueller style fairy tale, and it nods to Ferris Bueller with a shower scene Mohawk and later it shows a clip from the movie. Olive, as a narrator is interesting because she admits from the beginning there are two sides to the story and to be honest, the story is outrageous and if you stop to think about where the story goes you might forget to just sit back and enjoy the show.

Tucci and Clarkson, as these hippie style parents get the most laughs, and are clearly inspired by Juno. The film is also hyper literate and very very smart. The dialogue is quick witted, Olive talks like an adult and the film is very knowing in how unlike real life it is, but it also lovingly mocks 1980s movies, while giving us the closest thing to a John Hughes movie as we can probably get these days. Everything in this film is coated with a great sense of humor and self awareness that even when it spins out of control, and it does spin out of control, you can forgive it because it is so genuinely hilarious. I love the reference to Mark Twain's Huck Finn and the callback to it towards the end of the film and I love how smart it is in general.

I laughed my way through the whole movie and for a comedy that is all you really need, but I also think Emma Stone is going to break out in this movie, the way Reese Witherspoon did in Legally Blonde, or Lindsay Lohan did in Mean Girls. Comparisons to Mean Girls abound in reviews all over the place, but I actually think movie is funnier and even zanier than Mean Girls. It gets just as unrealistic, and they are both offering a different kind of commentary on high school but this does it better. The English teacher has a few great rants, especially one on Facebook and how teenagers think everything they say is the most important and pressing issue in the world. Yes, Easy A is having its cake and eating it too, but when it is this much fun, I am perfectly okay with it.

Final Grade: A-

Going the Distance

I cannot really put my finger on why I wanted to see this movie, but I really wanted to see it. I felt like there was a chance it would be surprisingly funny, or genuinely sweet or something. It was like there was something beneath the trailer that was pulling me into the film. I am not particularly fond of Drew Barrymore and buying Justin Long as a romantic lead proved difficult in He's Just not that into you, so I really have no idea why I being drawn to it. A friend saw it and loved it, so that kind of solidified my need to check this flick out. With the summer movie season coming to an end and no real great comedies birthed out of the season, would this movie give me the kind of laughs I had craved? Or at least the warm romantic side of my being satisfied?

Erin(Barrymore) is a 31yr old summer intern in a dying field(newspaper reporting) She is in New York for the summer, but Stanford's Grad program awaits her. Garrett is a man unable to truly commit to a girl and is also working in a dying field(music A&R). The two meet one night, get incredibly drunk and have a great time together. They have such a good time, they decide to spend the rest of summer, 6 weeks, together, with the knowledge whatever they are doing will end when Erin goes back west. At the end of the 6 weeks, neither wants it to end, so they decide to give a long distance relationship a try. Both people have relatively non-supportive friends and family, and the time difference and expensive plane tickets complicate matters, but they really love each other. Erin tries to find Newspaper work in New York and Garrett tries to find music work in San Francisco, but when Erin gets a job opportunity at a paper in San Francisco, tough decisions have to be made.

If I were to tell you that Going the Distance is the funniest movie I have seen all year, you probably would think I was kidding, right? Well I am not kidding, it is flat out the funniest movie I have seen all year. It is raunchy, hilarious, kind of sweet and just flat out a great movie. The trailers are misleading like crazy. I did not know this was rated R, but it is a hard R with great dirty jokes that are clearly inspired from the Judd Apatow school of film making, but here the girls ge to play as well. Barrymore and Christina Applegate, as Barrymore's sister, have this great conversation about how they hate when a guy looks up while going down on a girl, which Barrymore acts out, to surprisingly hilarious results. Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day play Garrett's best friends and every time either one is on screen, hilarity will ensue. Day has great subtle comic timing and Sudeikis's loud bold humor blends perfectly with that. There are moments where the guys are just sitting at a bar having these hilarious conversations or asking ridiculous questions, or discussing how Day never sees baby pigeons anywhere.

Aside from the great conversations, there are entire scenes where funny things keep building. In the trailer you get a glimpse of the scene where Justin Long is fake tanning, but that scene builds a lot more into the next scene where there is table sex going on, which you also get a glimpse of in the trailer, but the scene keeps going and getting more absurd and bleeds into more scenes and just keeps getting funnier. Jim Gaffigan provides Gaffigan style humor to Erin's brother-in-law and that is always appreciated. Long and Barrymore are no slouches in the comedy department either. While they are the "straight man" roles, they get plenty of funny stuff to do.

The romantic part of the movie is nice as well. The 6 week montage is a little labored, but I believed the rest of it and I believed the challenges of the long distance thing, but also believed these two loved each other and wanted to make it work. I like that the movie did not take the easiest way out possible. I think the climax was inevitable and the resolving event also pretty inevitable, but they went about it in a different way than I was expecting, which is nice. I know Barrymore and Long are a couple in real life, and that is nice, but their on screen chemistry does, at times, come off as too friendly. This is not necessarily a bad thing because it really helps the first 25 minutes, but I guess I was hoping for a bit more heat.

Going the Distance is a surprisingly hilarious and at times, shocking movie that can easily enjoyed by both men and women. The first 25 minutes are absolutely laugh out loud funny and as the movie settles in it offers plenty of other funny moments. I was disappointed by a lot of the comedy thrown at me this summer, but this makes up for it in many ways. Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis deserve to enjoy the breakout success Zack Galifinakis enjoyed after The Hangover last year and I hope to see them in a lot more movies in the near future. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

I have been trying to figure out how to best tackle reviewing this movie from the moment the movie ended. For the last 10 days this movie has swirling around in the brain and marinating in my brain folds letting me soak it all in. Part action movie, part coming of age story, part comedy, part geekgasm, it is difficult to figure out how to classify it and how to talk/write about it. The movie is turning out to be a commercial failure, which, while not shocking, is absolutely disheartening, but I am not sure it was meant to be a hit. Every so often a movie comes out that I think is ahead of the times in which it was created. Scott Pilgrim is that kind of movie. People are written it off as too hipster, or too knowing, but I think that is point. I think it is so hipster, because the only way to properly mock the hipster attitude is to embrace it fully and turn it on its head. Who better for the job than Michael Cera and Edgar Wright? Okay, maybe I am getting a little ahead of myself. Let me rewind/unwind a bit and go from the start.

Scott Pilgrim(Cera) is an underachieving 20-something that spends his days playing in a band called the Sex Bob-Ombs and he is dating a high school girl, Knives(Ellen Wong) much to the mockery of his band mates, roommate (Kieren Culkin) and sister(Anna Kendrick). That all changes when he meet Ramona(Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and instantly falls in love. He has a date with Romona and the two share a bed for the night, but Scott did not break up with Knives first. However, Knives is about to be the least of his problems. In order to date Romona, Scott is going to have to do battle with and defeat her 7 evil exes. Through his battles, Scott will learn a lot about himself, about his resolve and about the people around him. Will the young man who has spent his life doing as little as possible man up and defeat the evil exes, or will the whole thing just get to be too much?

If the story is very straight forward, the way it is told is not. The movie uses elements of musicals, serious action movies, sci-fi, anime, video games, sitcoms, and a host of other avenues to get the story to the audience. It is impossible to classify the narrative framework and I could spend hours analyzing why certain things were done the way they were. I have to admit, I am ignorant to the source material as I have never read the Graphic Novel on which this is based. However, I understand perfectly, the kind of movie this is. This is the ultimate in post-post-modern genre bending film making. Edgar Wright, the genius director behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, has elevated his game and in doing so creating a movie I believe will come to be a defining film of a generation. The film is an mishmash of nerdiness, but also intrinsically cool. There are visual gags that callback to 8 bit Nintendo and each battle plays like a level of a video game, but intercut into the video game visuals is a stunningly vulnerable story.

This blending of visual with the story, make Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World play the kind of coming of Age tale high school students clamour for. Scott Pilgrim is a young man who is searching for more than just a girl, he is searching for meaning, he is searching for a way to feel something in a world that has grown cold and too ironic to understand how to feel anything. He fights a hipster Vegan with special powers(Brandon Routh), he does battle with an action star(Chris Evans) who is so detached from the world, his stunt doubles do most of his fighting. The music is also important, because in this iPod world in which we live, music is how people express themselves and this movie even uses music to be a battle, when a battle of the bands turns into a BATTLE of the bands.

Each fight is very different from the last which was welcome and the action is hard hitting, visually stunning, wonderfully choreographed and also absolutely hilarious in parts. To see Michael Cera as an action star is astonishing in its own right, but to see him do it well is just giggle inducing and I think that helps the movie. Cera is so...vanilla, that we become the character. He is so void of personality that he can become whoever we want him to be. We want him to succeed because he is us. The movie does a lot right, from all of the quick edits that can take us to 4 different locations in a matter of seconds, to the nonchalant way the movie deals with homosexuality. Scott actually shares a bed with his gay roommate and the boyfriends of his gay roommate and not a big deal is made of it.

The way relationships are dealt with is also very interesting. Romantic relationships are not treated with a great deal of respect, as these characters almost buy into the idea that we are in a post-relationship world. The gay roommate steals Scott's sister's boyfriend, Scott once had a fling with his drummer and now he treats her like it did not happen. He semi-cheated on Knives, and does not really pay the consequences at first. It is the stuff of classic Young Adult novels. It becomes a movie that could be paired with works of literature in a classroom setting, but it comes with all of these colorful bells and musical whistles that it becomes a study of both style and substance.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World might be the best movie I have seen at combining genres this side of a Tarantino flick. It has wit, heart, soul and flare, with great catchphrases to keep people reciting it, but it is so much more. I went in expecting a fun movie that would make me nostalgic for my old Nintendo and I was expecting a few cool action scenes enhanced by the video game bells and whistles, but I was not expecting for the movie to hit me the way it did. I did not expect the metaphors to be so fleshed out and the symbolism to be so effective. When the 1UP icon came up in the right hand corner, I thought it was clever, but I never expected it to be some meaningful. By the time Jason Schwartzman shows up, the movie is already amazing, but his performance and the scene in which he appears raises the movie even more.

I know I am missing things, and I know this review probably got a bit self indulgent, but it is my blog and I can write what I want. If this movie does not end up in my top 10 for the end of the year that will mean this was an insane final few months of the year.

Final Grade: A+

The Other Guys

It seems like a Will Ferrell has become a summer staple, the way an Adam Sandler movie is. We can be guaranteed a movie from this guy to infest our summer movie season and normally I skip them. I have no need for Will Ferrell in a starring role in a movie and I certainly have no need for a Ferrell movie directed by Adam McKay. This pairing just does not work for me. Yet there were things in the trailer that appealed to me. First off, Mark Wahlberg doing a comic version of his persona is always funny. People say this is his first real comedy attempt, but I promise, his role as himself on Entourage is always hilarious. Next, you have The Rock and Sam Jackson playing very arrogant versions of their perceived personas. Next, the movie had the look of a throwback buddy cop action movie. It almost felt like The Beastie Boys video for "Sabotage" in a way. With all of those in the plus column I decided to waive my policy on seeing Will Ferrell movies. Was I fooled or would I be rewarded?

When New York city needs heroes who will take up the call? With a void in in the NYPD which team of cops will step up and fill the void left by the hero cops? That is the basic question asked by our narrator(Ice-T, yes Ice-T). After a shooting gone horribly wrong, Detective Terry Hoitz(Wahlberg) has been assigned to be partners with a paper pusher, Allen Gamble(Ferrell) and it is stifling his mojo. Hoitz was a detective on the rise and now he is stuck to a desk. He is looking for a way out and he will get it even if it means kidnapping his partner. Looking for any reason to do cop work, Hoitz humors Gamble on a quest to arrest David Ershon(Steve Coogan)for not having the right building permits. Ershon is a big shot finance guy but he has people after him and soon Hoitz and Gamble find themselves being shot at, beaten up and having buildings around them blown up. Hoitz is excited by this, but Gamble wants to play things safe. In college Gamble got out of hand as a pimp and now he tries to quell the demons inside of him. But New York needs to put a stop to a Ponzi scheme and needs people who are not afraid to stand up to evil forces that lurk around the shadows of the city.

Every so often The Other Guys veers into Will Ferrell insanity and it is in those moments where the movie fails, but otherwise, it is actually a pretty solid film. Wahlberg is excellent as the tightly wound, overly frustrated Terry Hoitz. His whiny, angry performance is the perfect balance to Ferrell's ridiculous antics. Wahlberg's reactions to Eva Mendes being Ferrell's wife are picture perfect, the ballet he does is wonderful and every time his voices gets to that high pitched whine, I could not help but laugh. There is no doubt Wahlberg can handle the action scenes in the movie, but he pulls off the comedy flawlessly. Ferrell has good chemistry with Wahlberg and there are times I found him to be quite funny, especially in the first 30 minutes or so when he is remaining calm to Wahlberg's threats. However, as the movie went on, Ferrell got more and more Ferrell and the movie indulges him too much. The back story of him being a pimp in college is totally distracting and obnoxious. The jokes between he and Eva Mendes just do not work, and it is not the fault of the delivery, it is just a horrible bit.

Having Ice-T narrate the movie is brilliant and The Rock and Sam Jackson, in what amount to glorified cameos, are wonderful and the way they exit the movie is totally ridiculous, hilarious and unexpected. Kudos to the two men for being willing to take these parts. It elevates the first 15 minutes greatly. Rob Riggle and Damon Wayans Jr. have supporting roles and Riggle is his usual half funny/half terrible self and Wayans Jr. lands enough of his jokes to think he could succeed in Hollywood, but probably on television. Michael Keaton continues his good year with a hilarious supporting turn as the captain of the precinct who has a part time job at Bed, Bath and Beyond. His constant unintentional references to TLC songs make for a great running bit, even though the movie squanders the opportunity to play "Waterfalls" at a better time than they actually do. Steve Coogan is an actor who plenty like, but I have yet to fully see his appeal. He does smarmy and weaselly pretty well in this movie, though. SO he does his job.

On the other side of this movie is the action and the commentary on the action. Ferrell's Gamble leads the duo through a few car chases and comments that he learned to drive that way via Grand Theft Auto. It is an old joke, but it actually lands pretty well because of the kind of chase that was choreographed. Also, the reactions from both cops when a building explodes near them is even funnier in the movie than it is in the trailer and it does offer a nice commentary about how ridiculous it is when characters in movies walk away unscathed from explosions. I absolutely loved the gun fights, the Heat like one in the street and the awesome slow motion one that we see glimpses of in the trailer. Wahlberg's presence really helps sell the action and the movie needs to have the action look good because the entire look of the movie is a throwback.

The Other Guys hits a lot more than it misses and I really did have a nostalgic sense throughout the entire movie. The way the film is almost washed out to look retro helps and the music has a very throwback feel most of the time and that really helps sell the film for me. Ice-T's narration also gives the movie the sense of an exploitation film that felt very organic. I hated the Will Ferrellness of chunks, but when he is reeled in, I enjoyed his buttoned up performance and I hope Wahlberg continues to explore this comic side of his tough guy persona. In a summer with pretty weak comedies, The Other Guys scores as a wonderful comic action piece and a total surprise for me.

Final Grade: B

Dinner for Schmucks

I am not the biggest Jay Roach fan. He directed those horribly over rated Meet the Parents movies and was a producer on Bruno and Borat. However, he also directed the 3 Austin Powers movies and the wonderful HBO movie Recount. This leads me to believe that he has nothing to do with my liking or disliking of a movie. I hate Ben Stiller typically and I like Mike Myers typically. It would make sense I hate Meet the Parents and love Austin Powers. With that reasoning Dinner for Schmucks appeared to be a winner for me. I love Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell makes the most out of even the worst scripts. The original trailer was horrid though. It did not make me laugh at all, but the revamped second trailer looked funnier and my concerns were mostly quelled.

Tim(Rudd) is a man who is living a bit above his means. He loves his girlfriend, but when he proposes to her, she needs more time and Tim is not sure he is good enough for her, so he goes after a promotion at work. He is this close to getting the promotion, but he has hit a snag. His boss and the people on the 7th floor (where Tim wants to be) have a gathering once a month where each person has to bring an idiot and the biggest idiot wins a trophy, but the idiots all think they were invited because they are uniquely talented. Enter Barry(Carrell). Barry is the kind of person who only exists in the movies. He takes dead, stuffed rodents and creates these dioramas out of them. he has created The Last Supper, The Mona Lisa and various other works of art. At his house he has a giant landscape of these stuff rodents. Tim knows Barry would be perfect for this dinner, but Tim's girlfriend is dead set against the idea and makes Tim question whether he should. Through a series of very contrived happenstances, Tim and Barry end up spending the entire day together as Tim wonders if his girlfriend is cheating on him with an artist she is curating for. The Artist, Kieran(Jemaine Clement) sort of eases Tim's fears, but Tim has to decide what is more important to him, his job or his girlfriend.

Paul Rudd is hands down the most likable actor working. You just want everything to work for him. Here he is working very hard to make Tim a little bit not likable, but it is so hard to even believe Tim is anything but a good guy. Rudd's Tim has a quality to him that gives him more of an edge than I would have thought, but he is still a basically nice guy. Rudd is very funny as the straight man in most movies, but here he almost has to work overtime to play the straight man because everything else going on round him is so damn wacky. Even he has to resort to the wackiness in a moment of physical hilarity involving some serious back pain. The problem is, you can see him working hard. Rudd is at his best when the jokes, the looks and the attitude come naturally. The script for this movie is, at times, so awful, you can see the sweat forming as Rudd tries to mine the funny out of the source material.

In fact, that is my biggest issue with the whole movie. You can see everyone working. Steve Carrell, Paul Rudd, Zack Galifinakis and Jemaine Clement are all extremely funny people, so for them to get laughs out of me is not a difficult task, and they accomplish it often, especially Clement's brilliantly spacey performance as a performance artist in love with his own animal sexuality. However, you get the feeling that after every take each man was exhausted from trying so hard to make the movie funny. Galifinakis particularly is working very hard. The role is not written in a very funny. It is mostly just mean, but Zack is working overtime to make it funny. It helps that he is playing off of Carrell, who can find the funny in the most unfunny of places. Carrell has made a career out of playing lovable losers and this is no exception, but there is some depth, some sadness and some real pain thrown into this role. There is also some very real joy in watching Carrell light up as Barry starts talking about his creations.

The movie has plenty of misses though. Every scene involving Lucy Punch as a crazy ex-fling of Tim's falls flat in a massive way. The jokes and the physical comedy are just so out there that I cannot buy them. They do not get laughs, they just get looks of bewilderment. I am not sure if the movie needs to have a 2 hour running time, as it starts to burn off the good will with roughly 20 minutes left and because of the hefty running time, by the time we actually get to the dinner I was kind of worn out. The dinner is not as funny as one would hope with the crazy collection of characters, but that embodies the spirit of the movie. They just throw the wackiest stuff possible at you and hope you find it funny. You get a blind fencer, a woman who claims to be a medium for dead animals, a ventriloquist, Carrell and Galifinakis. It is a kitchen sink scenario big time.

Dinner for Schmucks could have been an absolute disaster if done by any other set of actors probably. Somehow the people involved in this make it work. I laughed more than I thought I would and yes, I did roll my eyes more than I thought I would as well. You do get some wonderful comic moments and I do not want to take away from those gems, but you also have to sit through a ton of unfunny stuff. Jay Roach is probably lucky he got this group of men involved because otherwise, it might have turned out to be just as bad as Meet the Parents.

Final Grade: C

Get him to the Greek

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of my favorite comedies of the last few years. It was kind of unexpectedly brilliant and honest. Plus it featured a Dracula musical with puppets. It is tough to beat that. When I heard they were spinning off Russell Brand's Aldous Snow character, I was concerned, but with Nicolas Stoller (The Director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall) at the helm and writing it, I thought it could work. I also think Jonah Hill has the potential to be a very funny actor, although, I think he needs to work in the darker realms of comedy to realize this potential. Yet, when the trailer came out, I was severely underwhelmed. It just did not look that funny. Trailers can be misleading, but the biggest crime a comedy trailer can commit is to not make me laugh. What is the point of going to see the movie if 150 seconds of footage do not make me laugh. When the reviews came out and were pretty positive, I did not get my hopes up, but I was certainly a little more interested in seeing it. Were the critics right?

Aldous Snow(Brand) was the world's last rock star. He was hedonistic, arrogant and knew how party, but he sobered up. He was the biggest star in the world until he tried to solve the problem of genocide in Africa with a horribly racist song and album. His girlfriend(Rose Byrne) of seven sober years dumped him and Snow did a nosedive right back into the partying lifestyle, becoming less and less known for his music. With the music business in the tank, Music Executive, Sergio Roma(Diddy) is looking for the idea that will jump start his hurting label. Enter Aaron Green(Jonah Hill) with an idea to get Aldous Snow to put on a show at The Greek to celebrate 10 years since he last played there and made a live album from it that turned out to be the biggest selling live album ever. Roma decides to let Green run point on the project and Green has 72 hours to get Snow from London to Los Angeles. It will not be an easy task, as Snow prefers drugs, alcohol and women to anything else and Green is not exactly a force to be reckoned with. There is also a side plot involving Green and his girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss) and how they cannot seem to get on the same page and even maybe break up.

For the first 75 minutes Get him to the Greek is a hilarious movie. It moves quickly, the jokes are fast and funny and the action keeps moving. We get all of the drugs, girls and alcohol a throwback rock star deserves and Diddy straight up kills the movie with his over the top persona, not unlike his actual persona. His lines are delivered with this reckless abandon and it works for me. Hill prefers a more subtle, quiet approach and his quiet demeanor mixed with Brand's outlandish personality creates a nice little balance of comic styles. Brand also does a little bit of acting that really works, especially as he orders Hill to get him drugs. You can see the recovering addict digging into his own life. The girls are sexy, the music is funny whne it is supposed to be funny and the soundtrack under the film is excellent and probably pretty expensive. The Las Vegas sequence is inspired comic genius with this wonderful physical comedy infused with just these ridiculous sight gags about petting the furry walls and this super drug called "Jeffrey."

However, once the movie actually gets to Los Angeles it just kind of dies. I honestly do not care about Snow's quest to get his girlfriend back and then the movie takes a totally weird and uncomfortable turn with an almost threesome between Aaron, his girlfriend and Snow. I am not sure if Stoller just ran out of ideas for his movie and threw together a long, unfunny and awkward climatic set piece spanning nearly 30 minutes, but it was pretty obnoxious. Not only does it stop being funny, but the pacing totally slows down. The movie just comes to a stand still and even the very last scene, which is pretty funny cannot bring the movie around fully. It is really disappointing because the movie builds up a lot of good will in that first section, but quickly destroys it all.

Russell Brand may never really get beyond this persona and Jonah Hill really needs to play in the darker realm of comedy, but the movie does offer plenty of good laughs. Diddy shines which surprised me and Stoller's loose directing style allows for some inspired moments, like Hill's drug trip with little Diddy heads popping up and each other. It reminded me of Stoller and Jason Segal's daring idea to use puppets to sing a ridiculous Dracula musical. I think Stoller has better things ahead of him, he just needs to figure out how to reel himself in when his ending start to spin out of control.

Final Grade: C

Sex and the City 2

I come at this movie having seen every single episode of the show and the first movie. I also come at this movie having enjoyed a good portion of the series and got so into the first movie, it is almost embarrassing. So, I am not one of those guys who is just out to hate the entire idea of this movie. I am invested in the characters and this ridiculous world. That being said, this movie never looked very good. The trailers were awful and when the reviews came in and they were just terrible, I second guessed my desire. However, I was more curious what the fans had to say and when the girls I know also told me the movie was pretty bad, I became less interested. Well, if not for $5.00 Tuesdays, I probably would not have gone to see it, but I did see it and was it as bad as everyone said? Read on to find out.

Carrie(Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha(Kim Cattrell), Charlotte(Kristen Davis) and Miranda(Cynthia Nixon) are back and we are reintroduced to the ladies as they make their way to pick up wedding gifts for Stanford's wedding. The wedding is the movie's first big set piece, and what a gay old time it is. However, not all is well in the world of these four ladies. Carrie and Big(Chris Noth) are in a relationship stalemate, Charlotte's new baby cries nonstop, Miranda's new boss hates her and Samantha is going through menopause. The girls still get together to complain and trade really bad puns, and Carrie still narrates. When Big proposes putting a television in the bedroom, Carrie begins to wonder if this can work. In the middle of all of this, Samantha gets the opportunity to take the girls away on an all expenses vacation to The Middle East. While there, Carrie runs into Aidan(Jon Corbett) and begins to wonder some more. Charlotte and Miranda bond over the troubles of motherhood and Samantha does everything she possibly can to offend an entire nation of people all while spouting the worst puns ever. "Lawrence of my labia" Really??

While the first Sex and the City movie put some people off by being too serious, Sex and the City 2 is not serious enough. The movie is a mix of awful scenes, throw away social commentary, disrespect and bad jokes. The Samantha character, who showed some growth towards the end of the series and regressed a bit in the first movie, is beyond obnoxious here. It is not about her portrayal of feminine sexuality, it is just the one note characterization of it. Samantha was at her best when she was trying to be in a relationship. Of course, the blatantly offensive nature of a majority of her scenes did not help. I get that in America we do not have a lot of tolerance for countries with such drastic different standards, but a lot of the jokes made at the expense of the Muslim culture gets uncomfortable. That is not even mentioning the god awful Karaoke "I am Woman" moment.

Part of the joy of Sex and the City is reveling in the excess of it all. We knew from the beginning that Carrie, as a syndicated columnist, could never afford all of those shoes and clothes, but it was an escape for the audience. However, as the recession gets worse and worse, you would think we would need more of that escape, the problem is, that escape comes with far too much whining. Miranda hates her nice paying job and is complaining all of the time despite having a paycheck and a family that loves her. Charlotte has a beautiful family, does not have to work and has a nanny on top of that, and still she complains. No, money does not make life automatically better and it is stupid to assume rich people live nothing but happy lives, but it is tough to get an audience behind all the whining when it is done in such expensive clothes and in these exotic locations.

There are a few nice moments, and it is always nice to see Aidan back, since he was always my favorite Carrie boyfriend. One of those nice moments, came during a rare sincere moment. As Miranda and Charlotte enjoy their time in The Middle East, They also take a moment to really talk about how hard it is to be a mom. It is a moment of complaining, yes, but it feels honest. It feels real. It is done with humor and class, but also brutal honesty of what it is like to be a mother. If the movie had felt as real as this more of the time, maybe it would have been easier to take the whining. When we see Aidan, yes, it is ridiculous. How in the world could these two people end up in this exact moment at the same time and to be honest his two scenes seem put in the movie just to serve a purpose of pushing Carrie and to Big, but it was still nice to see him and on a shallow level, that scene was about the only time I have ever really found Sarah Jessica Parker attractive.

Sex and the City 2 is such an unmitigated disaster, it is hard to even care if these stories continue. The movie is poorly directed, horribly scripted and badly acted, but even worse than all of that, it just is not entertaining. It is at least 30 minutes too long and when it reaches the inevitable finish, I was too exhausted to care anymore. Sure, the clothes are nice to look at, and the hotel in which they stay is gorgeous beyond belief, with a private elevator and everything, but ultimately, what is the point if it does not come with entertainment value? There are people more intelligent than I that have written about how offensive the movie is, but to be honest, offensive things in entertainment do not bother me. In fact, if done well, I can appreciate a little offensiveness to point out something ridiculous. However, what I cannot forgive is the lack of entertainment value. It is almost offensive to me that anyone thought this movie was worth making in the way it was made.

Final grade: F

Date Night

The pairing of NBC stars Steve Carrell and Tina Fey seems like a no brainer. Pairing them as a married couple is funny because their respective characters on their respective television shows are unlucky in love and thinking of Michael Scott and Liz Lemon dating makes me giggle at how awkward that date would be. Fey is all the rage right now and Carrell is always in style with his awkward white guy persona. I remember when I first heard about Date Night, I thought it sounded like a great idea. When I heard that James Franco, Mila Kunis and Mark Wahlberg were going to have minor roles, I got even more interested. However, when the trailers started trickling out, my excitement did not stay so high. I still wanted to see it, but it was no longer a must see, which is why it took me so long to finally get to the theater to see it.

Phil and Claire Foster(Carrell and Fey) are a married couple stuck in the routine of married life. They are not unhappy exactly, just bored. They never have sex and even their date nights have become routine. When some friends of theirs confide that they are getting a divorce because they realized they were just roommates now, Phil and Clare both start to worry individually that their own marriage is heading that way. So, Claire decides for the next date night, she was going to dress up a bit more. Phil follows suit and promises Claire dinner in the city. They are trying to shake their routine, remind themselves that they are still in love. Phil decides part of his shake up is to take someone else's reservation at a restaurant. When he does that, he sets off a chain of events that the Fosters will never forget. They are approached by two men who turn out to have guns and mistake the Fosters for thieves. Phil and Claire escape, but now they are being hunted by gun wielding maniacs who turn out to be cops, so the Fosters cannot turn to the cops. Instead they turn to a private security guy that Claire knows. Holbrooke(Wahlberg) helps how he can, but he does it shirtless and intimidates Phil. Phil and Claire go off to find the real thieves in an attempt to get the stolen property, return it and go back to their real lives, but more madness ensues!

Carrell and Fey make a very good team. They are giving to each other in comic moments and I completely buy them as a married couple. They are appealing together and they both have a nice easy charm on the big screen and these characters, while awkward, are not as painfully awkward as their television counterparts. The comedy is not as smart as one would expect from a movie in which Tina Fey is the star, but she does a pretty good job of slumming it for laughs. She looks great and is totally game for anything, including dressing up like a stripper and joining Carrell in his usual "Awkward White Guy" dance that he must utilize in everything he does, apparently. The mundane tasks of marriage come across pretty easily, but we never get the idea that this is a couple on the verge of divorce. We can see that these two love each other, they are just stagnant and what better way to break free from that then being chased all over New York city by two gun toting cops who are really bad guys trying to keep a mob boss in business?

Because this is a broad actionish comedy, there are comical set pieces, and the most effective is a lengthy car chase where the car the Fosters runs into a cab and they get stuck together, but they are on a chase from the cops, so the two interlocking cars drive together. It is hard to explain the comedy of this scene, but it is by far the most effective piece of comedy in the movie. It is laugh out loud funny and it works as an action scene as well, which is definitely nice. The stripper scene is also funny, but it is not anything new, really. We have seen Carrell do this a million times, but I will say Carrell and Fey doing the robot while trying to grind on each other was pretty funny. Every scene with Wahlberg hits very well. Wahlberg plays against his usual aggressive type and it works opposite Carrell's blustery anger at Wahlberg's shirtless chest. They also get a really good "F" word in there, which if you know me, I look for in the PG-13 movie.

The cop angle is annoying and wastes a valuable actress, Taraji P. Henson. The story does take a little too long to get where it going and not all of the comedy works for me. The first interaction between the Fosters and the two gun toting cops is supposed to come off as somewhat comical, but I found it to completely miss the mark and the one scene with James Franco and Mila Kunis did not work for me. I love both of them, but they were trying so hard to be funny that it came off rather painful, which is too bad because I was looking forward to it. I did like the running gag of people being disgusted with the Fosters taking a reservation, but even that kind of bombed in the scene with Franco and Kunis.

Date Night is a very safe, nice action comedy that does not ruffle any feathers. I believe Carrell and Fey have a much better movie in their combined future, perhaps one with a much harder edge. I feel like we have only experienced a pretty tame Fey and if given the opportunity, she could really do some R rated damage and we know Carrell is good in the edgier setting. There is definitely enough comedy that works to satisfy enough people, but I guess I was hoping for more from this particular duo. The supporting cast suggested something better as well, but Wahlberg shows a nice flare for comedy and makes me anticipate his summer comedy The Other Guys a little bit more.

Final Grade: C+

Death at a Funeral

in 2007 a British movie came out called Death at a Funeral. It was a well received comedy and in my circle of movie friends, it was called one of the best comedies of that year. I saw it and was incredibly underwhelmed. Apparently, someone thought all the movie needed was an African-American cast and BAM! comic gold. So, in 2010 we have an American remake, with African American actors being directed by the once interesting Neil LaBute. To be perfectly honest, there would have never been a way I would have seen this if I had had to pay for it. I love Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence and think this cast could make a fantastic movie, but this did not look like it was going to be that movie. Also, the original screenwriter came back, just armed with a lot more F-bombs. Not sure why that is, but I guess he wanted to keep his point of view, just adding a splash of color.

Many families only ever get together for a funeral and this is one of those families. Aaron(Rock) is the eldest son and the responsible and he has been in charge of his father's funeral. He is an uptight, hard working man who is constantly overlooked because his younger brother, Ryan(Lawrence) is a successful writer and his much more charismatic. Ryan is flighty and he and Aaron do not see eye to eye. The funeral has all kinds of crazy things that happen including, but not limited to, the boyfriend(James Marsden) of a niece(Zoe Saldana) accidentally taking some acid laced acid and going all kinds of crazy, a cranky uncle pooing on someones hand and face, and the main thing, a white midget(Peter Dinklage) trying to extort money to not show pictures of him and the dead father engaging in some gay sex. You also have Luke Wilson's fat scary face as a family friend who wants to make Zoe Saldana his girlfriend, even though they only had one night of drunken sex and she does not want him.

In what amounts to a pretty straight remake, Death at a Funeral offers some laughs, but it does not do anything in my mind to make me understand why it was made. Rock, Lawrence, Tracy Morgan, Dinklage, Danny Glover, Marsden and Colombus Short are all capable of being together in a great movie, but this is not it. Rock is not much of an actor, but he can be hilarious when you let him out of the box, but here he is handcuffed in a role that requires him to act too much. Lawrence is less handcuffed, but his role just is not very funny. I saw the movie on Friday night and it is Monday and I am struggling to remember anything funny the guy said. Tracy Morgan is his usual on and off self. He can say some seriously funny stuff, but he can also miss big time and this movie is no different for him.

the slapstick is where the comedy actually works. I liked Marsden, even if it comes off a little too over the top, but his drug induced antics are certainly the highlight of the movie. He commits wholeheartedly to the role and it shows. The stuff with Dinklage is pretty funny because Dinklage is another guy who just commits to the movie. He is reprising his role from the original and it seems funnier here. I am not sure if it is the fact that the family is black this time around, but it might be. When he goes into his drugged out shtick, it works pretty well, because Dinklage always looks so distinguished and to see him jumping around licking things is funny.

There is nothing in this movie that is very original, but it was an alright distraction. When it was over, I was already forgetting things that happened. Zoe Saldana and Colombus Short are totally wasted and that bothers me because I believe Short has some serious talent and I guess I have to hope The Losers makes him a more bankable star. I am not sure why this movie exists, or why Neil LaBute agreed to direct it since there is nothing particularly interesting in the script or on the screen. I will say this though, Peter Dinklage on screen is always a good thing, so any time there is a movie role for him, I am ultimately okay with it.

Final Grade: C-

The Men who Stare at Goats

Yes, it might be one of the dumbest titled movies, ever, but it actually fits the movie perfectly. With a cast like George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey, is it possible to lose? Of course, that is a silly question because great casts are wasted on movies all of the time, but there was something about how this looked, that made it seem like a can't miss. The actors seems tailor made for these roles. They played to the strengths of the individuals, well except McGregor's American Accent, but in a way, it is charming for a movie like this. I feel like the last part of 200 belongs to Clooney with this, Up in the Air and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. He has a nice trifecta, and this was the first of the 3 to see release. I was pretty stoked.

Bob Wilton(McGregor) is a low level reporter for a little paper in Michigan and he gets sent to interview a man who believes he has super powers. Wilton does not really believe the story this man tells, which is that The Military, in the 1980s, trained a whole force of psychic soldiers to get rid of the need for weapons and killing. Wilton kind of files it away, but when he gets a divorce, he decides he needs adventure and goes off to Iraq to cover the war for his paper. he is attempting to show his ex-wife that he is important. Things do not exactly go his way at first, but soon he meets Lyn Cassady(Clooney), who the man in Michigan told Bob about. Quickly, Cassady lays out the whole thing for Wilton. it turns out, yes The Military did spend the 1980s creating psychic soldiers. They could see things as they were happening. They could see the future, they were in touch with the spiritual. Cassady tells Wilton he is on a mission and that Wilton is to go with him because of a drawing Wilton made, that looked like Cassady's tattoo. It must be fate.

The movie operates in two time periods. We get the current stuff with Wilton and Cassady, but Cassady is also relaying the story of the psychic soldiers' beginnings, so the movie takes detours to the late 1970s and the 1980s. Founded by Bill Djanjo(Bridges), the psychic unit does not operate like anyone else. They dance (one of the funniest scenes), and they are completely separate from the rest of the Military. Everything was going well until Larry Hooper(Spacey) comes along and tries to change things. he usurps Djanjo's authority and believes that these psychic soldiers can use their powers to kill. To prove this, Hooper orders Cassady to kill a goat with his mind. Cassady does it and that is where he felt things started to go all wrong. He used "The Force" for evil and went to the dark side. yes, there are numerous Star Trek references throughout.

Balancing the pure silly with a message is tough and The Men who Stare at Goats does not always hit the mark. Oh it is hilarious. Clooney with long hair dancing around, or staring at goats, or any number of goofy 1980s stuff is classic and Jeff Bridges is in total "The Dude" mode with his line delivery and his entire body. Those two play really well off of each other. Other jokes involve Clooney's character cooking dinner on a solar panel, but it gets dark before he finishes and Ewan has all kinds of funny Jedi lines that only work because, well he was Obi-Won. Kevin Spacey is perfectly snarky throughout and then he gets the big laughs towards the end of the film. Clooney and McGregor have a lot of fun playing off of each other and in the "road trip" style section of the film, they get a lot of laughs, especially after they have been captured and Clooney is trying to explain how being a psychic soldier works he has McGregor attack him.

The problem with The Men who Stare at Goats, is that it runs out of gas. I feel like the movie began without a climax or ending in mind and they kind of made it up as they went along. The big finale takes place with all of the main characters meeting back up for the first time in 20 years or so and Clooney's character feels like he is dying from cancer, Bridges' is a drunk and Spacey is Bridges' boss. The climax involves a massive helping of L.S.D. and has a Timothy Leery joke (seriously?!?!). I think there are people who probably found it to be pretty hilarious, but other than Spacey's L.S.D inspired trip, I did not find any of it particularly funny. I think I was just kind of over the whole thing at this point in the movie.

The Men who Stare at Goats provided me with plenty of laughs for the first hour, but as it kept going, I just got over it all. The performances are all good and everyone is clearly having a grand ole time in this liberal minded war movie and that is always fun to see, but I think I was hoping for something a little more. I like the silly humor, but I guess I was hoping for something more biting, or something that fully embraced the silly without try for some sort of anti-violence message. I guess the movie just tried too hard to be two things at one time and because of it, they both suffered a bit too much in the end.

Final Grade: C+

Couples retreat

There comes a point in an actor's career where he can "write his own ticket." When he or she has a production company, or starts writing or directing, this person can fully decide on what to do. Different actors do different things with this power. Some take on smaller passion projects, some go for the glory and do something mammoth. Some, like all of those involved in the Ocean's movies, take the time to go on vacation under the guise of making a movie. Enter Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. Vaughn has a production company, Favreau has new clout off Ironman and the two men once wrote a screenplay for a excellent little movie called Swingers. So, what should these two men do now? Obviously they decided to write a movie that put them in paradise! Oh also they get to married to the likes of Malin Ackerman and Kristen Davis. Not a bad gig if you can get it, right?

Jason(Jason Bateman) and Cynthia(Kristen Bell) are a couple on the verge of a divorce. They still love each other but they cannot have kids and the stress and pressure have pushed them to the brink. In a last ditch effort to save their marriage, they want to go to this island for couples who are trying to fix their relationships. They cannot afford it on their own, so they have to convince their other couple friends to go with them. After some cajoling, the other couples agree to go, but only because they think they can do just the fun stuff. Of course, when they get there, they find out they have to do it all, including couple's therapy. Dave(Vaughn) and Ronnie(Ackerman) don't think they need therapy but as soon as they get in, they start to have problems. Joey(Favreau) and Lucy(Davis) are married but hate each other and are only together for their daughter. They both cheat whenever possible, so this weekend is just torture for them and Shane(Faison Love) and Trudy(Kali Hawk) are a mismatched couple. She is 23 yrs old and he is 40 and they just fight all of the time. The paradise island offers all sorts of conflicts to go with the gorgeous back drop and for about an hour we watch these couples do their best to get angry, stay angry and ruin their trip.

Couples Retreat offers enough laughs to sustain the picture until the third act when the far too cheesy stuff comes into play, but it does not overwhelm an audience with laughter. It is funny, but in a far too polite way most of the time. I kind of felt like I was constantly waiting for the midnight show to start and see these characters really cut loose because I know these actors have it in them. Bateman is constricted the most by the material and the character. it almost felt as if he was suffocating under the sweater vests and prim speech. Vaughn and Favreau get most of the jokes, but having heard them so much funnier, this just felt tame. Who wants to see the two guys from Swingers be tame? No one, that is who. When one of the funniest gags in your movie is a little kid peeing in a toilet in home depot type store, you know something has gone wrong. That is not to say that scene isn't hilarious because it is and Vaughn's reaction to the goings on is priceless, but these guys wrote Swingers!

For their part, everyone does alright. Malin Ackerman's best line did not make it into the movie, but is in the trailer, so that was a downer but she is mostly believable as a woman married to Vince Vaughn. She manages to tone down her sexy model looks and just look like a hot mom. Kristen Davis gets to be the feistiest of the women and she looks smoking hot. I am not sure if it is because I have been watching Sex and the City lately and am used to seeing her all buttoned up, but Davis' body is slamming and she is not shy about showing off the curves. Kristen Bell is a lot like Bateman in that she is constricted by the prim and proper character she is playing. She lets loose towards the end, but she is capable of so much more, in my opinion. Faison Love and Kali Hawk probably get the most laughs because of how different they are. He is a seriously overweight man and she is a smoking hot college girl. She can be a bit annoying with the octave of her voice, but she is actually pretty funny.

As is often the case with these movies, there are some secondary characters that get to be quirky, like a too handsy yoga instructor, Jean Reno as the love guru character and a Butler like character they all call Mr. Belvedere. Also, there are four different therapists, one played by Ken Jeong and another by John Michael Higgins who are both recognizable from bit parts in other comedies. None of these side characters is particularly funny, but they do get in some chuckles. The Mr. Belvedere character does get to be involved in what is probably the movie's one great scene involving Guitar Hero. Battling it out to "Lonely is the Night" Vaughn and Belvedere engage in some epic Guitar Hero playing. The scene is shown in split scene, multiple split screens, jump cuts and some other craziness and the facial expressions are very funny. It is the highest energy moment in the movie and made me wish the rest of the movie rose to the occasion.

There is some good comedy here, but I think watching these actors on vacation would have made a funnier movie. There was just too much talent to put out something only moderately funny. The scenery is gorgeous and it is shot impressively, but I am not sure they took enough advantage of the surroundings until the movie was almost over. Often time this movie felt like it could have taken place anywhere in the world and that is probably the true crime. If you are hoping the movie will take a sharp turn anywhere at all, be prepared to be disappointed as the movie wraps up in a strictly by the numbers way.

Final Grade: C

Zombieland

Among Zombie movie fans there is an eternal conversation of fast zombies vs. slow zombies. George A. Romero purists will cry foul at the 28 Days Later faster moving zombies and fans of the faster zombies will say that slow zombies just do not create a scary enough effect anymore in a world with automatic weapons. I tend to not get in the middle of such conversations because to me, a zombie is a zombie is a zombie. Flesh eating undead creatures are scary, whether they run or lumber slowly. However, the zombie movie is kind of, pardon the pun, dead. Resident Evil movies are kind of the closest thing we get to zombie movies and well, those movies have just spun out of control. Well, when the slasher flick died, Wes Craven created a series of slasher flicks meant to scare and point fun at slasher flicks. It rejuvenated the genre (whether that is good or not can be debated). So, it makes sense that the same would be done to the zombie flick. In comes Zombieland. I know, I know, Shaun of the Dead, but Shaun of the Dead was not so much a good zombie movie as it was a funny movie. The difference is subtle, but it is important.

Columbus(Jesse Eisenberg) is a young neurotic man who happens to be one of a very few human survivors of a zombie epidemic. He has survived because of his list of survival tips. He is kind enough to share his list with us, in a series of voice over narrations as he takes us on his road trip with him. His tips include "Limber up" "Always check the backseat" and most importantly "Don't be a hero." These tips have helped him survive which is remarkable because he is nothing special and does not seem adept at killing zombies. Enter, Tallahassee(Woody Harrelson), a good old boy with lots of weapons and a serious hankering for Twinkies, who happens to be a great zombie killer. Columbus and Tallahassee make an odd team, but they work well together and soon they are joined by the sister team of Little Rock(Abagail Breslin) and Wichita(Emma Stone) who con the guys a few times before they decide to join forces and head out to Los Angeles because there is a rumor that an amusement park out there is untouched by zombies.

In what should be considered a hybrid of road trip/buddy comedy/zombie/video game style movies, Zombieland is ferociously funny, disgustingly gory and absolutely spectacular. Jesse Eisenberg's rules of surviving a zombie Apocalypse are akin to Jaime Kennedy's rules for surviving a horror movie and Zombieland takes many cues from poking some fun at the zombie genre. However, Zombies are not prominently featured in this movie. They appear exactly when they need to appear, but they are certainly not the main characters. What we get are 4 very real feeling characters not quite sure why they are holding on, but doing everything they can to hold on to life. Columbus believes he has survived alone for so long because he never felt close to anyone anyway. He lived life as a loner before the zombies took over and so there was no real change. Tallahassee is harboring ill feelings towards the zombies because they took the one thing he loved, so his venom is understandable. The conning sisters still have each other and with the help of a well placed flashback, we find out they have always just relied on each other.

In fact, all of the flashbacks are well placed, especially Jesse Eisenberg's. It is funny, depressing and surprisingly scary. The movie is not after scaring us very much, but it does have a few nice surprises up it's sleeve. The zombies are of the fast moving variety, but they are not intelligent creatures and are easily killable in a variety of ways, which Tallahassee has some fun with. He does not appear to like to use the same weapon twice and we get some crowd pleasing sequences with him doing some serious killing. He is also prone to some freak outs, just to keep him sane and in a wonderfully cheery scene, the entire gang destroys some property to blow off steam.

When the movie makes it to Los Angeles, things really get good. First, the group decides to take up residence in a famous actor's house, which provides the movie, with what might be one of the best cameos I have ever seen in a movie. Half the critics have ruined it and you can find it on Zombieland's IMDB page, but I will not ruin it for anyone who wants to enjoy the surprise. This cameo is funny, not just because it is a cameo, but because it is perfectly placed and perfectly used and does not end in a way you might think it would. From there we get two nice touching moments from the different pairs of people, all of which prepare us for an amazing climax.

The title Zombieland is meant to conjure up images of a country overrun by zombies and the voice over narration calls America Zombieland repeatedly, but adding the word "land" to the end of something also conjures up images of Disneyland, or at the very least an amusement park where there are games about killing zombies. First time director Ruben Fleischer obviously understood what the screen writers were doing with the name and the climax because he sets up a climax for the ages. Set in an amusement park that still runs, somehow, Woody Harrelson goes on half a dozen rides in order to kill the zombies lurking on the rides in what amounts to a free for all zombie killing roller coaster. It is shot beautifully and the action moves at such a break neck pace that you cannot help but get sucked in. Then, in order to bring the point home more, Jesse Eisenberg gets chased into a haunted house in the amusement park.

Zombieland packs serious comedy chops of the physical variety and in the lines, but especially with the use of block lettering reminding us of the rules. Woody Harrelson is having about as much fun as a person can possibly have making a movie and he plays very well off of Eisenberg. Emma Stone is truly a sexy young actress making interesting movie choices and is sure to be a geek goddess if she keeps making choices like this. Abagail Breslin plays perfectly against type and is having as much as I have seen her have in quite some time. These four actors have helped create a zombie infested land that seem like it could be kind of fun to live in. The gore and splatter level should satisfy the horror nuts, but this movie is meant to be pure unadulterated Post-Modern fun and it succeeds on every level. This is a movie sure to entertain me for years to come.

Final Grade: A

On a side note, how sexy does Emma Stone look holding a chainsaw? mmmmm

Jennifer's Body

I was trying to figure out how to start this. Typically I fill my opening paragraph with my expectations, or some kind of background information of the movie, but I don't really have any of that here. I think people think this is the kind of movie I am drawn to because of the hotness factor, as if I am shallow. Well, it makes sense, I love Into the Blue specifically because Jessica Alba spends the entire movie in a bikini, but this movie is different. It is written by Diablo Cody who has such a unique writing voice and I respect that. Sure, having Megan Fox in the movie does not hurt, but the movie had more going for it than just Megan Fox. I feel like I need to make that clear. Okay, now that I have, onto it.

Jennifer(Fox) and Needy(Amanda Seyfried) have been best friends since the day they met as children in the sandbox. Jennifer is hot and incredibly insecure and Needy is, well needy, and kow-tows to Jennifer's wishes. One night Jennifer and Needy go to a local bar to see a band because Jennifer wants to bang the lead singer. The band, fronted by Adam Brody are not what they appear and one song intot he concert the bar goes up in flames and most of the people in it die, luckily Jennifer and Needy escape, but Jennifer decides to go with the band in their van. Later that night, Jennifer shows up at Needy's house covered in blood, acting creepy and eventually vomiting up some kind of black tar stuff. The next day, though, Jennifer is acting normal, well, until she murders and eats parts of a higgh school football player. The band was trying to sacrifice a virgin to Satan in order to be as famous as Maroon 5, but Jennifer is no virgin, she is not even a backdoor virgin, according to her. So, the band got world famous, but a demon now inhabits Jennifer and she needs to feed on boys to keep up her strength. Needy realizes what is going on but cannot figure out how to stop her, without sounding crazy. Of course, it all comes to a head at the prom, featuring a live performance from Adam Brody's band.

Diablo Cody is always going to be kind of a mixed bag. Juno had a lot of great things in it, but it also had things that were too cute, quirky or precious, like the hamburger phone. Jennifer's Body does not have any quirky props, but some of the dialog, is, as is common for Cody, too cute, or nonsensical. I did not like the word "jealous" being turned into "jello" and then used like "you are so like lemon and lime jello." I did however, love the line "Tits are like smart bombs, point them in the right direction and shit gets real." So goes Diablo Cody's writing style. She is still looking for the perfect blend of cute and too cute.The first half hour of Jennifer's Body feature all the Diablo Cody infused dialog you would expect, so some of it is really funny and some of it just comes off and uninspired and awkward, especially out of Megan Fox's mouth. However, once the first half hour is done, the movie's dialog evens out for the most part. There are still moments of bad one-liners, especially during the climax, but overall I was not distracted by it.

Megan Fox playing a girl who uses her body to eat men, might be hitting something too on the nose, but it works. Fox is walking sex, she is a metaphorical man eater and then she becomes a literal man eater. Kudos to the casting department. Fox is clearly having fun vamping up, or playing totally into the fantasies guys have of her. She starts the movie in a cheerleading outfit; she skinny dips, talks about anal sex, and wears skimpy pink and yellow outfits. Fox is not the world's best actress, but she is perfect in this role. I am not sure anyone else would have been able to make this movie and been so beleivable as a girl who uses sex to get power. She handles the Codyisms pretty well, as soon as you realize it is not Juno. She also is not afraid to get dirty, spending a good amount of time covered in blood and puking out black tar and blood. Perhaps that does not seem like a big deal, but a girl who looks liek Megan Fox obviously does not ever half to be willing to look the least bit ugly.

Amanda Seyfried is probably the stand out though. She is not uglied up, as much as she is just made to be homely. Her eyes still sparkle, her curls are still adorable and she is still smart and pretty, just in an amish kind of way. She gets to be properly helpless and then bad ass, as the main girl ina horror movie is supposed to be. The movie is told from her point of view and we get the voice over narration that will probably be a staple of Diablo Cody scripted movies. She handles the dialog very well and interacts perfectly with both Fox and the guy playing her boyfriend. She is believable as a nerd, but also believable as a girl who has simply had enough.

Jennifer's Body was mismanaged from the marketing side, with the trailers making it out to be a straight horror film, but it is not. it is funny, campy and charming in many ways and the horror aspects are pretty minimal. There are three legitimatly horror movie scenes and they are effective, but they are not the main part of the film. I loved the scene with Needy and Jennifer when Jennifer first shows up with the blood. It mixes the humor, horror and gore the best and the climatic scene which somehow takes place in an abandoned pool house is also pretty effective in terms of a horror film. theere are no "jumps" in my opinion, but these scenes work as effective scenes in a horror movie.

It is clear Diablo Cody did not set out to write a straight up horror movie and she does not blend genres as smoothly as one might hope and some of it might be the director was unsure of how to handle the movie. I do not know why it doesn't always click, but I know that for the most part I was entertained. Much has been made of the girl-on-girl kiss and as mainstream girl-on-girl kisses go, it is hot. It is not so over the top, but it is not timid either and then it ends perfectly with Amanda Seyfried's character blurting out "What the fuck in happening!" which is exactly what the audience is thinking since it seems to just randomly appear. The kiss, I am sure, speaks to the complex nature of female friendships where the girls are not considered equals. Needy is thought of to be in love with Jennifer and Jennifer is known to just like sex, so them going for a little kissing does not seem entirely out of place in the movie, just in that scene, which may be the point.

Jennifer's Body satsifies on most levels. It is a nice vehicle to show off Megan Fox's sex appeal and shows she can carry a movie (even though at the box office, she did not). It is funny, clever and interesting, even if it is a bit too clever in parts. It offers some gore, some horror, two hot girls kissing and mostly it just entertains. The movie did not hit at the box office, but I would not be surprised if it finds an audeince somewhere down the line. It is meant to be a campy B style movie and I think people just were expecteding something else, which is too bad. I think they are missing out.

Final Grade: B

The Informant!

Much has been made of Steven Soderbergh's career. He is almost a chameleon with the movies he makes. he makes big budget crime capers(The Ocean's movies), then makes Epic 4 hour long marathons (Che) and then follows that up with a fly on the wall look at a high class hooker who is played by a real porn star. Soderbergh turns a lot of people off because his films have a tendency to be pretentious and Soderbergh doe snot apologize for it. His movies, no matter how grand scale they are, are personal. He always serves as his own cinematographer, as if he cannot imagine having his vision seen from anyone else's perspective. The guy makes the kinds of movies he wants to make without letting box office or critical acclaim or panning dictate his films. He is a very admirable director. I do not always enjoy his movies, but I always respect the experience and I always do my best to catch all of his movies.

In 1995 Mark Whitacre(Matt Damon) went to jail for 9 years and the rest of the bosses in his company went to jail for 3 years. This might not seem like a big deal, but Whitacre was a whistleblower on the company and worked with the F.B.I for 3 years to bring down the company, ADM for price fixing. So how does the informant end up going to jail for longer than the people on whom he dropped the dime? Well, that is presumably made this a movie worth making. Whitacre works for a corn manufacturer and in 1992 his company is trying out some new things, but nothing is working and it turns out that someone within the plant is poisoning the tests. A man in Japan will tell Whitacre who it is for a fee. This gets the F.B.I involved (the agents are played by Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) and soon Whitacre is confessing to The F.B.I that ADM has been conspiring with rival companies to fix prices of all of their products. Whitacre turns informant and starts wearing a wire to all meetings and in a few years The F.B.I has a strong enough case to start arresting the corporate guys. However, this is really only the beginning of the story.

Matt Damon put on some serious weight, and grew an obnoxious moustache for the role of Mark Whitacre and it pays off big time. Damon's whiteacre is perfectly unassuming, which is what makes the reveal that Whitacre had been embezzling millions of dollars, such a great one. Whitacre went away for more time because he lied to The F.B.I, the Government, hell he lied to everyone. No one would have expected it because he looks nothing like a mastermind. In fact, the movie is full of stream of consciousness inner monologues (voiceovers) that really make Whitacre come off as kind of a simple idiot. He is obviously not an idiot, but the inner monologue actually reveals something much deeper, and Soderbergh brilliantly weaves the whole thing together in the end.

The underlying question running through my mind during the entire movie was "why am I bored?" Damon is phenomenal, the writing is really funny, especially the inner monologue thoughts about polar bears and wondering whether we all have a sentence that if we say it, it will kill us, but I was bored. The movie is set in the early 90s obviously, but Soderbergh has gone out of his way to make it look like the 1970s, why? I do not know, but it bothered me a bit. Also, the strong presence of stand up comedians in small roles was distracting: Joel McHale, Tom Papa, Patton Oswalt, Paul S. Tompkins, and the Smothers Brothers all popped up in small roles, which was just weird for me. I know Soderbergh said he cast them all because he likes the comic energy, but Oswalt as a Government lawyer just did nothing for me.

The Informant! is written and acted as a comedy, and it has laugh out loud moments, but the joke is never made truly clear. Or at least, who the joke is on is never made clear. It never all out fails on any level, but something about it is just boring. Maybe it is the basic story that bored me, but I was checking my watch a lot. It also goes on a little too long considering the climax ends and the movie goes for another almost 15 or 20 minutes. Damon is getting a little Oscar buzz for his role, but since The Oscars never go for comedies, I doubt he will end up in the running, even though he does excellent work. He is nuanced, funny, interesting and ultimately very very sad.

Soderbergh has once again made a movie his way and it is hard to find fault with the man for making a movie on his terms. My guess is that this movie could have easily been a more serious thriller, but Soderbergh thought of it as a more comedic romp and he succeeds in ringing the funny, but I wonder if some of the funny came at the determent of the overall story. The supporting cast does not have much to do, but Scott Bakula does some good work as a kind of frazzled F.B.I agent but it is all overshadowed by this kind of boring storytelling.

Final Grade: C+

Extract

Mike Judge has serious cult status. He created Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill. He wrote and directed Office Space. Hell, even Idiocracy has somewhat of a cult following now. The problem is, I do not like any of that stuff. I know it is some kind of Sacrilegious thing to not like Office Space, but I don't. So what would possess me to his latest especially when it is being promoted as Mike Judge's return to the office. Well, a great cast including Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Mila Kunis, Ben Affleck and the always reliable J.K Simmons. A great cast can some what overcome deficiencies. Plus, it actually looked funny.

In the extract business, things are not looking up for Joel(Bateman). He owns the extract business, but he is desperate to sell it. When he was in college he found a secret for food extract that he turned into a business, which has turned into a headache. On top of all the work problems, his wife, Suzie(Wiig) refuses to have sex with him. He tries to find comfort with his best friend Dean(Affleck), but Dean only offers him drugs for comfort. Then, a new girl starts working at the plant. This girl, Cindy(Kunis) appears to be interested in food extract and she appears to want Joel. But Cindy is also working an angle; she is also seeing Step(Clifton Collins Jr.), a guy who may be suing the extract company for millions due to a freak accident that left him with one testicle. Joel is at his wits end, but he wants to sleep with Cindy, but he wants to feel no guilt, so he hires a gigolo, Brad(Dustin Milligan) to seduce his wife to relieve the guilt of wanting to sleep with Cindy. While all of this is going on General Mills shows interest in buying the company and the employees are trying to figure out a way to get a cut. And to top it all off, Joel has to deal with the most annoying neighbor ever, Nathan(David Koechner).

If the plot for Extract seems very sitcom-y, it is. Every plot could have come out of a sitcom, or a cable sitcom. A guy hires another guy to sleep with his wife, but it goes to well. A girl is a kleptomaniac, but the Mexican guy gets blamed for it. Blah Blah Blah. However, no one finds the funny nuance of quiet desperation like Jason Bateman. Arrested Development started it and he has been riding the wave ever since. His sarcasm is not as biting in this because Judge is a weak writer, but Bateman does his best and he plays well off of everyone. J.K Simmons plays Bateman's business partner and he does a yeoman's job as usual. Ben Affleck practically walks away with the movie with his long hair, bad facial hair and constant drug pushing. He is having fun and it shows. Dunstin Milligan as the idiot gigolo might get the most laughs, or maybe it is Bateman's reactions to him that get the laughs and Koechner's annoying neighbor is perfect down to the plaid shorts.

So, you have all these great characters doing their best with a hit and miss script and a story that unfolds just too perfectly. That leaves you with a movie where a bunch of people try their best, but you just wish it was all in a better movie. Mike Judge is known for key insight to a specific group of people whether it be burnout teens, office workers or just an idiot society, but he is too all over the place in this movie. The focus is off, the point of view is skewed. The opening scene focuses on Cindy, but she is never really explained. I mean, I get opening on a scene of the oh-so-sexy Mila Kunis flirting with a couple of guys, but this chronic thief is never given a motive, really. We get she likes money, but does she need it? Does she just feed off of the thrill? Did she miss hugs as a child?

I felt like the laughs in this movie were wasted in the first half and watching the second half was more like something you have to do, than something you want to do. The idea of a guy getting one testicle shot off is funny for a few seconds, but in a excruciatingly unfunny scene involving Gene Simmons, Yes that Gene Simmons, that testicle joke goes and goes and goes. The stuff with the Kristen Wiig is pretty much a waste. She is one of the funniest women out there right now and she is not given much to do until the end and then she unloads nicely. She does look surprisingly good in a bikini, though. Bateman is carrying the weight of the movie and he is solid, but it is hard to overcome all of the shortcomings in the script and the directing.

Final Grade:C-