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Piranha 3D (2010)
Truly missing out on seeing Piranha (as its home release now calls it) in 3-D will be one of my life’s greatest disappointments. This boobs-and-blood-soaked ode to 80s exploitation horror has its tongue firmly clenched in cheek. This is a gleeful gorefest that plays many of its absurd elements for laughs while squeezing in gratuitous nudity at every turn. There’s an underwater lesbian synchronized swimming sequence that I’m utterly certain would have been the greatest thing to witness in the third dimension. Regardless, this Jaws rip-off (Richard Dreyfuss even shows up in the opening dressed identically to his character and named “Matt”!) plays like an ironic parody of the genre while still satiating its red meat-hungry target audience of teenage boys. To this point, it succeeds admirably. It is crass beyond belief and delivers exactly what it promises. Watching actors like Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Christopher Lloyd, and Jerry O’Connell ham it up alongside some fairly cheesy special effects critters, you never feel the waft of desperation. The movie ends too abruptly for my tastes, leaving too much open and unresolved for presumable sequels. As my friend Eric Muller said: “We watched a 3D movie in 2D that was really 1D.” While the movie is entirely one-dimensional in scope, that lone dimension is a blast. I know where I’m going to be when the rumored Piranha sequel is released. And this time, I’m seeing the campy carnage in 3D.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Baby on Board (2009)
This is such a loathsome comedy that you feel the actors compelling you to put them out of their collective misery. It?s Heather Graham’s second pregnancy comedy in two years, except in 2008’s Miss Conception she wanted to get pregnant. Has Graham become the new face of the ticking biological clock? Graham is a perfume exec who gets in the family way. And how do we reveal this big news? By extended farts and projectile vomit. Stay classy. Instead of approaching an impending baby seriously, the film uses the pregnancy as an inane romantic comedy wedge. Graham’s hubby (Jerry O’Connell) doesn’t think it?s his because he “double bags it.” She thinks he’s a cheater. Their misunderstandings are predicated on the idea that nobody ever stops to say anything that might clear the air. This stuff is beyond sitcom level contrivance. Then the film becomes a battle of the sexes debacle as neither side wants to give in and leave the home, so we?re treated to a montage that zooms through EIGHT MONTHS of pregnancy. This is a comedy with no real feel for pacing, tone, setup, or context. The actors crank it up like they’re bouncing around in a farce, when this is really just a witlessly vulgar Knocked Up knock-off. The director (by the guy who made a movie trying to go on a date with Drew Barrymore) doesn’t so much deliver the jokes as pronounce them dead. This is a vacuum of funny with awful jokes, awful acting, awful attempts at being bawdy, and an even worse sentimental transformation at the end. This is without a doubt one of the most disastrous, abominable comedies of late and should have been terminated at the early script stage. Watch the trailer and spare yourself the agony. Even the trailer can’t help but indulge in a fart joke. The trailer, for god’s sake.
Nate?s Grade: D-
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Obsessed (2009)
When it comes to derivative, generic, formula-laden movies, usually you can predict every step of the plot with great accuracy from the trailer. Obsessed may be the first movie I could predict every moment based just from seeing the poster. This poor man’s Fatal Attraction follows a surprise-free trip to the end credits. Idris Elba is a family man who is harassed and stalked by his increasingly psychotic temp/temptress (Ali Larter). The movie doesn’t even have the temerity to have its lead cheat on his wife. There?s an interracial angle that is never really dealt with, meaning that the lone plot detail separating Obsessed from its peers is also swept under the rug. Everything here is borrowed from better movies with more style, substance, and heat. Larter doesn’t work as an antagonist or a figure of lust. She acts like a disinterested and icy when she should be flirty and smoldering. The plot quickly gets ludicrous as Larter’s repeated seduction attempts get brazen and confrontational. It strains credibility that Elba would keep trying to keep things under wraps. This girl needs to be referred to the police. Alas, I suppose these stalker thrillers wouldn’t be as interesting if people reacted realistically to psychotic behavior. Beyonce Knowles is the angry wife who gets to exact vengeance during the movie?s all-out, hair-pulling climactic catfight. But it’s a long slog until that catfight.
Nate’s Grade; C
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Mission to Mars (2000)
Mission to Mars begins with a team of astronauts making the first manned mission to the red planet. Unfortunately things go… um, bad, and thus with no knowledge of any survivors and the six month time period it takes to travel to Mars, NASA sends out a rescue mission. More things go bad.
The setting is supposed to be 2020 but everything looks exactly like 1980. In the future there seems to be heavy reliance on product placement. From Dr. Pepper, to M&Ms, to having the damn Mars buggy plastered with Penzoil and Kawasaki. Are these astronauts Earth’s interstellar door-to-door salesmen? I was half expecting them to nix the American flag and firmly plant one for Nike. Maybe the future’s just this way because they drink from square beer.
Director Brian DePalma unleashes fantastic special effect after another, but they can only sugarcoat the bitter taste Mars leaves in your mouth. Mission to Mars is tragically slow paced, full of interchangeable and indiscernible characters, and begging for some kind of insight. Don Cheadle and Gary Sinise prove that no matter how great an actor you are, when you’re given cheesy sci-fi dialogue, it’s still cheesy.
The fault lies with the more than three screenwriters and DePalma himself. Plain and simple, DePalma has lost his touch. His good days (The Untouchables) are clearly behind him on his new downward slide. Mars in any other director’s hands would no doubt be different — and that’s no bad thing. DePalma’s style of appropriations rips off the earlier, better, and more insightful 2001 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Mars is surprisingly and sadly devoid of any tension or suspense. The suspense was likely killed in the efforts to portray an “accurate and realistic NASA manned planetary exploration.” Yet the scientific inaccuracies in this “accurate” portrayal are far too numerous to mention – let alone remember all of them. You cannot have tension during a problematic situation when the score is blaring church organs.
One can suspend belief and enjoy movies but Mars is a listless journey toward sentimental other-worldly beings that just want a hug. Can we have them destroying our cities again? Pretty please.
Nate’s Grade: C
nathanzoebl 
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