Blog Archives
MacGuber (2010)
Far far worse than I was expecting, this is what happens when you expand a 30-second Saturday Night Live sketch to a full-blown movie. MacGruber, a one-joke parody of MacGyver, becomes a one-joke movie. It’s about an inept special agent who has to save the world from a criminal madman (Val Kilmer, why?). The flimsy plot would be acceptable if the movie had any sort of comedic momentum, but the jokes are sloppy and uninspired, often confusing naughtiness with humor. Just because something is brash or raunchy or shocking doesn’t necessarily mean it’s funny. Will Forte, as the title agent, tries too hard with material that doesn’t work hard enough. Villains with naughty sounding names? Sight gags a plenty? This movie makes the Austin Powers franchise look cutting edge. There isn’t enough focus for this to work as parody. MacGruber feels like what a bunch of 12-year-old boys would throw together if left unattended for a weekend with their parent’s credit card. The sketch was never meant to last over a minute by design, so you can expect what 87 more dreary minutes would produce.
Nate’s Grade: D
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Grown Ups (2010)
Adam Sandler keeps his friends from the unemployment line with this lowbrow, middle-aged themed, yet still entirely juvenile, comedy, Grown Ups. The movie is really a giant fetid waste of potential. It’s Sandler and his old Saturday Night Live buddies (David Spade, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock, and Kevin James obviously filling the Chris Farley spot) chumming it up and decrying the foibles of being 40. They don’t get the kids today, nostalgically reflect on their summer camp days, and try to recreate some of that old magic with a combined family get-together. Each man falls into a rigid type and will learn some half-hearted, disingenuous form of a life lesson by film’s end. The entire dimwitted plot is as stunted as the male characters. These guys just pal around and it’s termed a movie. The female characters are all one-note: figures of lust, saintly significant others who never get to be in on the joke, shrews, or Schneider’s older wife who is a constant butt of some mean-spirited jokes. The actors do have an amiable chemistry that allows the film to coast for some time before the whole affair just becomes wearisome. These guys have played these types for many many movies, and so everyone just operates on autopilot. The heavy slapstick momentarily distracts from the truth that Grown Ups is an unfunny, crass attempt by Sandler to get audiences to pay for his class reunion. The fact that this junk won the Best Comedy Award from the People’s Choice Awards illustrates the limitations of democracy.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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Shrek the Fourth (2010)
By taking a page, or even the entire script from It’s a Wonderful Life, Shrek tackles a mid-life crises and wonders how life would be if he had never saved his lovely wife Fiona from her tower (hint: it sucks). He wants his life back and makes a deal with the devious Rumplestiltskin. Except Shrek wakes up in a world where he was never born. While generally better than the third feature, this is still a noticeable step below the first two Shrek features. The tiresome plot device feels more like material for a lazy direct-to-video sequel rather than the (supposed) final chapter to the series. The film wants to be reflective and tap into our inventory of attachment to these characters, but time and again the movie doesn’t go far beyond the “don’t know what you got until it’s gone” cliché. Gags still feel too safe, the energy feels too loose, and the overall feel of Shrek 4 is casual. The novelty is gone. This is a rather middling trip to that big happily ever after. The story, with its reflexive moralizing, just makes the whole film feel slight; Rumplestiltskin is a villain of wasted potential, the characters feel poorly incorporated, and the general time-travel concept implies that the filmmakers have run out of stories to tell. As expected, Shrek 4 looks great, but that’s the only thing great about this once vaulted fractured fairy tale franchise. If this is the final chapter, then let it go with some fading sense of dignity.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)
There’s a moment late in Joan River’s somewhat biographical doc where she’s telling a random offensive joke at a comedy club, this time about Helen Keller. An irate audience member pipes up, “I have a deaf son,” and chastises the 75-year-old comic of legend for the offense. She goes into a defensive position and argues that it is the point of comedy to make life bearable, even the horrors and pains that we know no other means to suffer through. This awkward moment of clarity sums up Rivers’ life fairly well: tenacious, volatile, and genuine. She turns pain into inspiration. She’s fought long and hard to get where she is in the comedy world and she will have to be dragged away kicking and screaming. When fans compliment her on being influential, Rivers tiffs that she’s still influential and isn’t ceding her spotlight for any young female comics. The documentary follows Rivers on a upswing in her career, notably winning a 2009 edition of Celebrity Apprentice. But this woman will work any gig no matter how small. She fears that if she stops she’ll be forgotten. Part determination and part desperation, this standard documentary showcases the abrasive and dynamic personality of Joan Rivers (you even get to see that famously refined face without makeup).
Nate’s Grade: B
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Furry Vengeance (2010)
The title alone alerts you that this will not be a pleasant journey. It’s 92 abusive minutes of watching a doughy Brendan Fraser act like he is being tortured by a conspiracy of woodland wildlife. Fraser is a land developer who wants to raze a forest to make way for houses, and nature doesn’t take too kindly. Raccoons, squirrels, birds, bears, and even wild turkeys all take their turn tormenting Fraser. The slapstick is at Looney Tune levels of manic absurdity. Even worse is the ham-fisted environmental message that still manages to be cloying, preachy, and completely naive. This lame eco message may actually encourage people to chop down trees out of sheer spite. After an hour of animals trying to kill him, suddenly Fraser realizes that the forest is their home too. For their furry families. Everyone has the same facial expression of barely concealed embarrassment. Even Fraser deserves better than this family film purgatory he seems to be stuck in while he waits for a phone call confirming another dumb Mummy movie. Furry Vengeance has the rank odor of failure from every frame, and yet the movie hits a new low when the end credits come around. Just when you think you’ve been given your freedom back, the cast breaks out into an end credit rap with snippets of movie parodies from “Furry TV.” It makes no sense except to add one last moment to hold your head in shame.
Nate’s Grade: D
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Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010)
Obviously this movie is bad. A sequel to a lukewarm family film from nine years ago, the chances were slim that Cats and Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore would have ever worked. They don’t even have the temerity to have the subtitle read “Pussy Galore” for fear that repeating the most famous Bond girl name might cause parents discomfort. It’s a live-action talking-animal movie that posits that cats and dogs have been fighting an ages-old feud and they all have secret lairs and technology at their service despite lacking opposable thumbs. Really, premise alone you’re already lowering the standards, and with standards firmly and securely lowered, you may even laugh once or twice (that’s probably about it). It depends on how susceptible to puns you are because that is the primary joke vehicle. The film makes an attempt to throw animals into a Bond-styled action thriller with, pardon me, shaggy results. The character animation is poor, the dialogue feels like it was stitched from one groan-worthy pun after another, and yet Cats and Dogs 2 doesn’t offend with its sheer badness. Premise alone, you sort of watch the thing in a vegetative state.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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Due Date (2010)
Due Date feels less a wholesale rip-off of 1987’s Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and more of a full-blown film inspired by the one sequence where Steve Martin unleashes a profane tirade at an airport clerk. It has two talented actors (Robert Downey Jr., Zack Galifiankas) in situations that should come across as funny, but the movie only gets so many laughs. The road trip angle has been done to death but the mismatched pairing of Downey, acerbic anger, and Galifianakas, continued goofball man-child, should have compensated for any stale genre formula leftovers. I think Due Date, under the direction of Todd Phillips (The Hangover, Old School), really just doesn’t know what to do with all its misplaced mean-spirited rage. So we end up with kids getting punched, people being beaten by disabled veterans, multiple cars crashing in spectacular fashion, public masturbation with dogs, people enduring great injury, and somehow the characters bond through all the adversity, even though neither changes at all. The comedy setups are all fairly transparent and can only deliver medium-sized payoffs; when a man’s ashes are kept in a coffee can, you know it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable occurs. For better or worse, this is a two-man operation; the supporting actors are all wasted, particularly Downey’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang co-star Michelle Monaghan (Eagle Eye) as Downey’s pregnant wife. She isn’t even given one funny thing to say or do the whole movie. Due Date is a comedy that will make you laugh sporadically but it should have performed better. It’s a mid-level comedy with medium-level payoffs that ultimately prove to be underwhelming given the upper-level talent involved.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Leap Year (2010)
It’s not funny. It has more clichés than imaginable. The very premise that a woman has to travel all the way to Ireland to be “allowed” to propose to her long-time boyfriend is bizarre and borderline offensive. And yet, the unmistakably lowball chick flick is watchable thanks to the charms of leads Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. The two actors pretend like they’re in a different, better movie, and the illusion lasts just long enough for the film to come to its typical happy ending before you sit back and say, “Hey, that was pure junk.” Ireland is treated yet again as this quaint place of hospitality and magic, like it’s some postcard wonderland. Granted, the scenery is beautiful, and director Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie, Shopgirl) is quite taken with his shooting locations, highlighting the natural beauty of the Emerald Isles. With all the attention on the scenery, and not so much the plot, you realize that everyone signed up for this movie as a means of having a paid vacation. And I can’t blame them or hate their movie, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it either.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Machete (2010)
Based on a fake Grindhouse trailer comes a tasty Tex-Mex exploitation film that manages to be an incendiary political statement wrapped in the flour tortilla of silly, bloody, and redeemably entertaining B-movie schlock. Only occasionally will the pacing slack, and co-director Robert Rodriguez’s film actually desires to become another trashy B-movie rather than sending them up with a wink, which was also an issue with his half of Grindhouse. All credit must go to the towering lead played by 66-year-old tough guy Danny Trejo. The man is unmistakable with an appearance like he was carved out of wood. His stoic, humorless main character (“Machete don’t text”) that becomes a superhuman enforcer for the rights of illegal immigrants. Machete satirizes xenophobic politics and race-baiting politicians (“If we don’t do something, Texas will become Mexico… again”) with aplomb, notably thanks to Robert DeNiro’s slimy state senator. The film slices up opponents of immigration as outsized zealots abusing immigrants for cheap labor and railing against them for cheap political points. I actually read that some conservative pundits were concerned that Machete would incite a race war, as if any movie had that kind of power today. The reason this movie works and The Expendables doesn’t is all tone. Machete never tries to be a straight movie from the opening seconds. Stuffed with over-the-top violence, slapstick comedy, bodacious babes (Michelle Rodriguez with an eye-patch has never looked more yummy), and Steven Seagal and his hair plugs as a Mexican drug lord, Machete is trashy fun but exceedingly trashy and exceedingly fun.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Cop Out (2010)
As an avid Kevin Smith fan, it pains me to say this but Cop Out might be one of the least funny movies of the year. Sure it made me chuckle here and there, but mostly I sat staring slack-jawed, yawning, and wondering how this movie went so completely wrong. Smith is known without exception as a talent behind the typewriter, not the camera. He’s an ingeniously crass playwright in a filmmaker’s body. To hire Smith solely as director/visual storyteller is like hiring Picasso to mow your lawn — not the best use of his talents. To Smith’s credit, the film has a much stronger visual pulse than anything he’s ever committed to celluloid before, however, it still only looks like a marginal, mediocre Hollywood movie. Is that considered a success? The movie wants to parody the buddy cop action films of the 1980s. One of the more amusing additions is that Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun) fashions a brand new 80s style synth and guitar styled score. It’s the best and funniest part of the movie. Cop Out spends an inordinate amount of time and attention to a tortuous plot that nobody should care about. Another miscalculation is that the tone never really settles and often Smith and company attempt a light touch when it comes to parody, which makes the film just look like an incompetent retread of 80s action movies. Just because we’re familiar with stuff doesn’t mean it can be funny without comment. The movie looks even shabbier in comparison with Will Ferrell’s similarly aimed The Other Guys, a far more winning and funnier venture. I wanted to laugh; I strained to find something to appreciate, which was especially hard as the movie tilts more toward action in the final 20 minutes. The slack pacing, lame dialogue, poor chemistry between lead cops Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan (who just comes off as an unfunny idiot with a loudspeaker for a mouth), disjointed tonality, and ill-conceived comic setups (car chase in a cemetery leads to? nothing? Morgan chases a suspect while he wears a cell phone costume … *crickets*) all take their toll and make me seriously question what drew the interest of so many, otherwise, talented people. Smith got hours of stories after shooting a small role alongside Willis for Die Hard 4. I hope Smith can justify this load with a few more hours of entertaining and juvenile stories for his road shows and podcasts. If that sounds like a faint attempt to find a silver lining for what is otherwise a tremendously botched comedy, then let it be seen as such.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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