Last stop, all off folks. This week I finish off my retrospective of movies that I've viewed over the past few days, one generally tied to some sort of major marketing, insane buzz or general chatter. Today we touch on comedies! Over the past few weeks I've watched NUMEROUS comedies, and sad to say that most of them were just not funny at all. Since there are quite a few here, I'm going to just go with small blurbs about each one.
Land Of The Lost: Terrible. It wasn't even that the movie was bad, I mean it was bad, but it was just boring. I didn't laugh once. The plot was weak, but again when you are trying to make a movie out of a 70's Sid and Marty Krofft show, you don't have much to go on. My two biggest grips with the film were first while I never watched the original show, I knew that Rick, Will and Holly were a family, a father and his two kids. In this iteration, Rick was a fumbling scientest, Holly falls in love with him (shes some college age woman?) and Will is a redneck who loves fireworks. Not related at all, pretty lame. The second thing that bothered me is once again Will Ferrel was playing Will Ferrel. There was nothing new about his character. Hey I'll scream a bunch in an angry voice, I'll make dumb comments so on and so on. It was weak. Danny McBride (who I really like) just played the same guy he did in Tropic Thunder. The only saving grace was the beautiful Anna Friel whose performance even fell short (go watch Pushing Daises). Over all bad movie.
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard: From the outside this movie looked like it could be good. With a decent cast and a glimmer of comedy gold, I had hopes for this one. They were quickly squashed about 15 minutes into the movie. Another flat comedy that just was trying to hard. I'm sparing plot descriptions for length here but basically its about a super car salesmen played by Jeremy Piven and his team of sales people. Basically the reason this movie sucked is that it pushed the "random" envelope to much, it was trying to be a new Anchorman. Anchorman is probably my all time favorite comedy, with its super random moments(News team street gangs WTF?) and the idiocy of people("They say 60% of the time, it works every time.") being the main reason for this. Surprising enough the only part of the movie that made me laugh was Will Ferrel in a small cameo. The Goods tried doing the whole random moment, people saying and doing absurd things way to much with a weak plot to stand on and in my book, didn't sell me shit.
Adventureland: I put this in the comedy post, since it's billed everywhere as a comedy, but my god this movie was so a drama in my book. Yes, it had parts that could make you laugh if you were so inclined to do, but I never was. If you had told me off the bat this was a drama about kids growing up in the 80's or something, I might have had more interest and enjoyed it more. What we got was a bunch of commericals and trailers picking out what I guess "they" (whoever "they" are) thought were the funniest parts, mainly consisting of Bill Hader saying something that people would find funny. As dramatic movies go, it was decent, as comedies go, it was bad. Ryan Reynolds was ok, for once he didn't play himself, Jesse Eisenberg was decent but as my roommate put last night "a poor mans Michael Cera." So true, this dude does skinny, nerdy and awkward pretty well, and what makes me question the movie is that it's directed by the guy who did Superbad, staring Cera. Was that role originally intended for him? Either way, dullsville.
500 Days Of Summer: Finally starting to get to the good stuff. This one is short, not much to say really. It was a good romantic comedy, I truly enjoyed it. I love Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was really good in the movie. The simple fact that he can play Cobra Commander in one movie, and the play the lead in a romantic comedy is pretty cool. The story wasn't mind blowing, boy meets girl, falls in love, girl doesn't feel the same, and we have our plot. What I liked about the movie is that it doesn't take a linear path recounting the 500 days. We start in the 400's and then skip around to see how the relation developed and fell apart. Normally I would hate it, but in this case, it worked so well for the movie. Again if were defining things in comedy standards, it wasn't laugh out loud every minute of the movie, but there were a few parts that made me laugh and smile. I definitely recommend seeing this one when you can.
Zombieland: I loved this goddamn movie so much. When I first read about it I thought "ok awesome another comedic take on the whole zombie genre!" Shaun of the Dead is by far in my top 10 favorite movies of all time, and they did so much to establish the whole zom-com thing that I knew I had to see this movie. What was nice is that it didn't look like Zombieland was TRYING to be Shaun either, it looked like it wanted to establish its own place. Woody Harrelson was actually fantastic in this movie, he hit his points perfectly while still being able to be more than a one dimension character. Jesse Eisenberg worked in this movie, unlike Adventureland. His quirky, shy, spaz act worked wonderful for the character. Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin were awesome. Again as for zombie movies go, it's not to heavy on the gore and zombie stuff, which I actually liked despite the movie being called Zombieland. It was more about how these four people learn to live and survive in a world over run by zombies. I hope they do as planned and make a whole bunch more sequels in the Zombieland universe. My biggest complaint, the movie was only 1h24mins, way to short. Overall this movie falls into my Top 10 of '09 movies for sure, watch it cause it's awesome.
The Boat That Rocked (aka Pirate Radio): I posted this on my facebook in a conversation with a friend, for the US release of the movie they changed the name to "Pirate Radio" and it bothered me. The movie is a British ensemble cast (save for Philip Seymour Hoffman) about rebel DJ's broadcasting rock music in the late 60's that was not well favored on regular British radio airwaves. As I said before, my suspect for the name change, America has an obsession with pirates and since the three Pirate movies are well liked over here, I assume the higher ups decided that noone would want to see a movie called The Boat that Rocked, we should rename it Pirate Radio because people love pirates! Whatever, I watched it under the banner of The Boat that Rocked, and really enjoyed it. The movie is really about the music since nothing really happens other than the DJ's play music and hang out while British government tries to can them. I'm not a fan of the music in the movie, I'm not a fan of Brit pop from that time period. Before I get flamed to Hell and back, I respect what a lot of those bands did for music, they just aren't my style or what I enjoy listening to. All that aside, the movie was great. An amazing cast, a good director and parts that made me laugh out loud. I really enjoy the whole British movie scene, and hope to see more movies make their way over here.
The Hangover: And finally we come to the end. I choose to end this with Hangover because these three posts were all about hype, and by far The Hangover garnered the most hype over the summer for being the "comedy of the year" from many people. The first time my girlfriend and I watched the movie, we laughed a lot, it was funny. I like Todd Phillips as a director, I really liked his other movies which include Old School and Road Trip. So when we finished the movie we were just like "eh it was good, but not as good as everyone made it out to be." I went on to watch the movie again at another point, and again and it began to grow on me. The movie was unapologetic. They made fun of everything and everyone, but did it without going overboard like The Goods did. Having watched the movie a few times now, I've grown to love the movie, and I can't wait for the supposed sequel that is being worked on. Most people have had a night of drinking (granted in their case there was other factors...) when they wake up and just think what the hell happened to me, and where Dude, Where's My Car failed hardcore in terms of the whole lets retrace our steps, The Hangover did perfectly.
With that we come to a close on our three part look at what hype can do for a movie, good and bad. I still have a bunch of movies in the bank to check out, so expect some more reviews, maybe in a more timely manner, but as you all know this is a gamers blog, and to be totally honest, when I get home from work, I'm playing Modern Warfare 2 and just pass over writing in this damn thing. What can you do?
As always, thanks for reading!
- Nerdsbeware out
I haven't seen Zombieland yet but I wanted to. I'll have to throw that on my Netflix queue. As far as The Hangover goes, the hype probably really screwed it for you. I didn't really have any expectations for it before I watched it and as a result I thought it was pretty damn funny but I definitely know how movies can be a let down when everyone tells you for weeks beforehand how awesome it is.
ReplyDeleteYea, I mean Now I love the movie and think its hilarous, but at first it was just like, I've seen funnier...Same with Avatar, like I said in the other review. It was good, but not THAT good, I don't get it, am I missing something? That's why this summer blew for movies, everything was such a big deal and half of it was junk.
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