Tag: Comedy

I forgot Extract had so many people in it. Oh man.

I had never heard of this movie before randomly walking by it. But hey, a giant picture of Jason Bateman‘s head on the cover, you take notice.

But then you see that it is a movie by Mike Judge and you watch that shit as soon as you can.

Especially when you find out a major character has some crazy facial hair.

Jason Bateman plays the owner and and founder of a flavor extract company. Clearly the amount of jobs left to have for movies is running dry. Either way, he is kind of successful and living it up. But he isn’t having sex with his wife, Kristen Wiig anymore. Which overall sucks I guess.

But not as much as losing a testicle! Which happens to a worker Clifton Collins Jr., who always felt underappreciated, and well, lost a nut on the job. He doesn’t even want to sue because he likes the company too much. But. He. Lost. A. Nut. Enter Mila Kunis, a con-artist, who doesn’t mind using her body to get that monies (not like a prostitute, but kind of). She gets a job in the factory, steals some stuff, and convinces him to sue for damages using the ambulance chasing lawyer, Gene Simmons.

She also tries to get it on with Bateman, but he doesn’t want to cheat on his wife. His bartending friend, Ben Affleck, tries to convince him to hire a prostitute to seduce his wife, so if she cheats on him, he can cheat on her. He also gets a bit drugged, so agrees and they hire Dustin Milligan.

Pretty fucked up yeah. But Mila is a good con artist in this movie. Eventually everything is found out, and appropriate actions are taken. Just kidding. David Koechner is also in thi movie as a rather annoying and talkative neighbor.

And by the end, someone may die, like all good movies.

Affleck gets to play a hipster Jesus as well.

I think this movie is very polarizing. Either you love it or hate it. So of course I say fuck that, and give it a 2. But I totally get it.

I liked the originality of it. I liked some aspects.

But at the same time there was very disappointing parts. Seemed to be missing something that I am used to having from Mike Judge. And it is hard to put a finger on it.

Usually that would be a 1 rating, but I somehow also enjoyed the ending. But still. Not the quality I’d expect overall? Very weird feelings with this movie.

So give it a shot, or not. Whatever

For some reason, I thought Fired Up! came out around 2005 or something. Maybe all the times I thought I saw that it was on tv, was really just commercials for it. I guess.

Either way, a chee-

Oh fuck, I was confusing it with Stick It! My bad.

Yeah, I guess I just had no idea when this movie came out at all. Huh. Oh well, yay cheerleading movies.

Which also happen to be very similar to teen sex comedies, if it wasn’t for the PG-13 rating.

But first Eric Christian Olsen is 35 years old, and 32 when this movie came out. What the hell man. Stop playing high school students. One of his more famous roles as a high school student was in Not Another Teen Movie, 11 years ago, when he was 24. I know they usually get 20 somethings, but damn man. Get out of the high school funk.

Him and Nicholas D’Agosto (only 29 when the movie came out) are successful football players at school. And after this upcoming summer, they will be seniors (yeahh not even seniors!). They are not looking forward to football camp, 2 weeks in El Paso, Texas, after it was changed from Miami. They also like finding vulnerable women and one night standing them. That too. But hey, as long as no one gets hurt.

But once they find out about Cheerleading camp, a 3 week fest with over 300 women they will never meet again in their life, they plan to fake join the cheerleading squad to bang the weeks away. After two weeks, they will leave them and go to the post football camp house party, and all will be wonderful. Thanks to the help of Poppy (Juliette Goglia), the younger sister mobster like character, they convince the cheer captain Sarah Roemer to let them join, even though she is certain they only want to do it to bang chicks. They could use guys on their team, especially ones who can flip and shit.

In the two weeks they succeed at their goal, but also D’Agostino falls for Roemer. Too bad she has an ultra douchy boyfriend (David Walton). Eric has made it his goal to bang one of the instructors, Danneel Ackles, who is married to the first male cheerleader to ever make it to Nationals, John Michael Higgins, camp headmaster.

Obvious plot points are obvious. They want to help them beat the evil Panthers squad who are jerks, they get the womens, they stay on as cheerleaders instead of football players. It also has Margo Harshman as a potentially insane cheerleader, and I haven’t seen her in anything since Even Stevens.

It’s amazing how the main cast members on the team tend to stand together, and never talk to the other team members.

While watching this movie, I can’t say I was surprised by any direction the plot went. Very straight forward and obvious movie.

But damn it, it was funny. Maybe because it was PG-13 and couldn’t have “naked women” being the selling point of the movie, they were left to resort to humor to try and make it decent, and I think it worked. If I had the ability to retain movie quotes like I used too, I’d be quoting a lot of this everywhere I go.

Obviously its not the greatest movie ever made, but it gets the job done.

Definitely another movie I bought, just on the cover.

Sunshine Cleaning shows two women, carrying…the title of the movie, behind some caution tape.

Oooh, how mysterious. And possibly illegal? Here’s hoping for some dead bodies.

Oooh, definitely going to have some dead bodies.

Amy Adams is a single mother working as a maid in a cleaning service. But hey, at least she has a job. Her sister, Emily Blunt, is a slacker and fails at a lot of things she does.

Only real job is that she gets to occasionally babysit Amy’s son (Jason Spevack), while Amy goes to her “class”. And by class, we of course mean having sex with her former high school sweetheart, Steve Zahn. He is a cop and married with kids, but hey, affairs are fun. And he will totally probably leave his wife for her someday, right?

Yeahhh…

Well thanks to her inside connection, she hears that crime scene cleaning can be a pretty nice business, monetarily speaking. She is going to need new money for her kids private schooling, since he has a lot of behavioral problems at public and is getting kicked. But until then, the grandpa, Alan Arkin, will be able to look after him and teach him real world smarts.

Enlisting her sister as an employee, and figuring out the right paper work, they open up Sunshine Cleaning! You know, to clean up dead people blood and stuff. They also get the help of Clifton Collins Jr., a one armed man with a cleaning supplies shop. The film however makes the main characters recollect a lot on their own mothers suicide, and go on their own miniature journeys to self discovery.

Emily Blunt also starts a lesbian relationship with Mary Lynn Rajskub…because she saw her in a picture at one of the houses they were cleaning. Yeah, definitely weird.

Needless to say their methods improved throughout the movie.

This film was definitely a lot more dramatic and sobering than I had thought. With such a colorful and sunny cover, it all kinds of come out of no where. There are some amusing moments, mostly between the grandfather and the son. Well, the grandfather and everyone really. Alan Arkin is the hidden star of this film, and is a nice surprise to watch.

I personally didn’t like a lot of the moments with Emily Blunt’s character, not because she is a screw up, but just…weird slow motion falling and sad time parts. There was this weird montage moment in the middle that just felt way overly dramatic and kind of stupid. In my mind at least.

The ending was a good one though, and most of the characters ended up pretty well. Some plot lines I don’t think they answered as well as they should have though.

I can say that I honestly only watched Lymelife because I saw Alec Baldwin on the cover. Of course he was wearing a suit too.

Because that is all Alec Baldwin has to do nowadays.

Well its a suit of clothing at least, right?

This movie is more about a little rich~ kid named Scott (Rory Culkin). They used to live in Queens, but have moved out to Long Island, and are kind of big on real estate. Also this is the 70s.

Apparently Lyme disease may have just started recently, or it doesn’t have a real cure or something. Can mess you up for years. One of their neighbors (Timothy Hutton) got a deer tick while hunting two years ago, and has never been the same. Kind of sick a lot. His wife (Cynthia Nixon) has to bring home the bacon on her own, and makes it all kind of weird on their daughter (Emma Roberts).

Scott kind of has a thing for her too, but she is way more popular than him. Speaking of having a thing for people, Scott’s dad (Baldwin) is having an affair with her mom. Yay! The mom doesn’t enjoy being married to a sick guy. Scott’s mom (Jill Hennessy) knows something is up, but she just seems crazy to Scott. It isn’t until Scott’s brother returns temporarily from the army (Kieran Culkin. Yes real life younger brothers to Macaulay) for her birthday does Scott realize the truth about his father.

This causes a lot of family strife amongst both groups. Even more bad things happen when they find out Mr. “I am diseased” father hasn’t been going to his job interviews, mostly enjoying the whole “stay at home and do nothing aspect” of his life. Doesn’t mean he takes kindly to cheating. Factoring in all of the parents issues makes Scotts little crush seem insignificant. Doesn’t mean he was going to stop crushing, just puts it in perspective for him.

The end of the movie is full of betrayal, families rekindling and others splitting, new love, and maybe a gunshot or two.

See them bundled? It’s because they don’t want ticks. And its cold. And they might have just had sex.

I should have told the plot in a more straightforward way. My bad. But this movie was pretty intense.

The last five minutes I was scared. A lot of comparisons are made in regards to this movie and American Beauty, but they are pretty different. I guess they kind of both talk about the American Dream and sex with a neighbor (kind of neighbor). But one is a mid life crisis, and the other is a teenage boy. Who’s dad may be going through a midlife crisis. Either way, affairs are bad, and having people with guns mad at you is bad. So in those last five minutes when I was scared, it still wasn’t that predictable.

And most importantly, I wasn’t left without an answer. The plot lines were all finished. I wouldn’t say in a nice neat little package, because of some of the implications afterwards, but definitely felt like a full movie which was good.

I thought a lot of the acting was great, especially from Hutton, Baldwin, and Nixon. Rory would later want to bang Emma in Scream 4, because all of those people are in the same movies for some reason.

Haha! Funny People! A movie about people who are funny!

That is the assumption at least. I will let you know I’ve heard tons of bad things about this movie. Most of my friends hated it. But damn it, I loved 50/50 (which could just be the better version of this movie, not sure). I also thought It’s Kind Of A Funny Story was supposed to be similar to those two (it isn’t) but I loved it as well. So damn it, I am going to watch Funny People and see what the hell happens.

Although this is a scene from the movie, it is definitely way out of context.

Alright lets get the basics.

Seth Rogen wants to be a stand up comic, but isn’t good at it. He has some good material, but bad delivery. Also maybe too many fart jokes. He lives with Jonah Hill, who is more successful and improv like, and Jason Schwartzman, who is staring in some kids sitcom about a cool teacher. Making those ‘big’ bucks.

Adam Sandler plays a big celebrity star. He has done a lot of shitty movies, and used to just be a stand up comic guy too. Turns out he is probably going to die, to a rare disease, kind of shattering his world view. I mean, fuck. He didn’t see that coming. He doesn’t even have really any friends. Needless to say he is kind of depressed, and bombs at a comedy club, where Seth Rogen is quick to make fun of him for his act for cheap laughs.

Sandler freaking out hires Seth to write some jokes for him, and also pseudo take him under his wing for a little bit. Opportunity of a life time for him, at the end of Sandlers. He also is one of the first to know, and helps him out during it when he gets sick. Sandler slept around a lot, so he regrets having that one “slip away”, in Leslie Mann, who is now married to an Australian journalist, Eric Bana, with two kids. Rogen’s problems are just his inability to talk to women, and having a three month plan to try and score with Aubrey Plaza, a neighbor of his.

This movie does NOT end with Sandler’s death. Because the movie is more so about the trial he is on working, and having a new shot a life, after he had thought it was over. Can he fix the wrongs in his life, and get out of his celebrity funk?

Har har har! Funny people!

I think one of the biggest complaints about this movie is the length. Almost 2.5 hours long, it is very unexpected for a movie of its type. The unrated version is about 10 minutes longer (and I can’t tell which I watched. I wanted the Unrated one, but the Blu-Ray menu was confusing!). Apparently it only adds more stand up parts, which I found amusing.

Maybe another complaint is in terms of direction. I really thought it was going to end with Sandler dying. I read the back of the box afterward, and it pretty much begins with “a man getting his second shot at life”. Oh yeah, definitely made that clear with words, just not the previews. So only half of it was him dying, the second half being alive and figuring out what to do now.

Definitely an interesting way to take it, and something I didn’t see happening. I thought the movie felt very real, and I enjoyed it though. It could have definitely been better overall, and not as unforgettable as other Apatow movies. I am sure I will watch it again, just farther in the future, as it is a pretty long time commitment, but I thought it did a good job overall.

Again, a movie with a thousand tags. But I will explain it very simply for you so that is all makes sense. The plot of Away We Go it turns out is pretty damn simple to understand. More time for analysis (if I choose). Hooray!

It’s about love. And finding your love’s vagina.

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are an unmarried couple, but guess what, they are having a baby. She doesn’t want to get married, but still truly believes they will be together forever. They had moved to be closer to John’s parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) to have some sort of relative in the babies life, since her parents are dead.

But when she is 6 months in, they find out they are moving to Belgium. For two years. Making their living arrangements kind of pointless. Afraid that their lives are fucked up and bad, they agree to go on a mini vacation to different parts of the country to visit their other family memmbers and friends, to see if they would be good places to live.

First to Arizona, to see Maya’s old boss and her husband / family (Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan) who seem to be drunk a lot, and not too happy with life, and her sister. Then to Madison, for a job interview, where they also meet John’s cousin and husband (Maggie Gyllenhaal and Josh Hamilton), who are way too extreme on the hippy side.

Then to Montreal, to visit their mutual friends (Melanie Lynskey and Chris Messina), who have adopted many children, due to the unfortunate nature of Melanie’s ability to have a child (multiple miscarriages). Finally, a trip to Miami, to visit John’s brother (Paul Schneider) and help him out of a bad situation.

The whole time they are traveling they are dealing with their own problems, and wondering about their own inadequacies. And by both of them, I mean Maya. Because John is way too swell of a person, and optimistic, he is constantly making things better, all while looking like a hipster.

Exhibit A.

Their final destination choice I will let remain a mystery. Because fuck you, that’s why.

I thought the movie was pretty enjoyable. I laughed a lot more than I expected, thinking it would be a lot more heavily drama-nated. But man, there was many great scenes, and it all felt incredibly real. Hopefully their love in this fictional universe of the movie carries on after the birth and throughout their whole life. You are given a nice feeling that they have found true peace and happiness with their decisions, and everything will work out for the best.

Also, a lot of vagina talk.

Another Biased review? Probably.

I actually thought Goon would be pretty stupid though. (Another thought that biased this review). But I mean, its a hockey movie. Of course I am going to watch it. It is “based on true events” too, apparently, or at least the life of Doug Smith. For those that don’t know, a “Goon” on a hockey team is a player who doesn’t play much, is there to protect the star players, and fight when necessary. Often considered to be the worst kind of role, and one that is being mostly phased out by players who can actually skate and score.

Also it comes with the possibility for injuries.

Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is a bouncer, and not a very smart man. His family is, and his brother is gay! But at a local hockey game, when him and his friend (Jay Baruchel, radio talk show host) are harassing a guy who just went to the penalty box, the guy gets mad and comes into the audience to fight back. When Glatt punches him out, he makes local headlines, and even gets a call from the minor team coach (Kim Coates) to come for a tryout.

Because he can kick some ass, and not feel too much pain, he gets a spot. Skating can come later. After all, the team at that point is 1-9 in the season. So why not? Well his first game he kicks some guys ass. Then the next game. But he makes some mistakes like not returning to the bench and letting the other team score. But he is trying hard and a nice guy.

On the team they also have veteran captain who is only good for pre game speeches (Richard Clarkin), the talented should be NHLer who got concussed and has never been the same (Marc-Andre Grondin). Eventually Glatt learns to skate and play better, becoming the heart of his team as they try and make the playoffs.

Also theres the plot of him finding “True love” with Alison Pill, who sleeps around a lot and is terrible for him, but he really likes. Not to mention the actual “tough guy” in their sport, who is retiring soon, and he probably will have to fight in the last game of the season, Ross Rhea (Liev Schrieber).

You don’t want to fuck with someone with that sort of facial hair.

Turns out, I really loved this movie. It was funny when it needed to be. But even more so it was kind of sweet, and mostly intense.

Every time he was on the ice, something crazy was going to happen. Whether it be a fight, a bad play, an unlikely goal, what have you. There was a good chance SOMEONE was about to be in a lot of pain, most notably the last two games he played in the movie. I cringed and yelled at what occurred, even covering my face, but I was loving it at the same time.

Sean William Scott is used to playing various levels of the “idiot” role, and I first noted that they weren’t at all identical in the movie American Loser. Well this is definitely another layer of that. Because this character is no where close to being an asshole, and it is easy to see how most people would love to just know a person like him, loyal and shit. Willing to punch someone else in the face for you. Almost like a bit of Forrest Gump, if you know, Forrest Gump was just a bit more violent.

I didn’t mean to watch this movie today, but when I was halfway to work I realized I didn’t bring any of the three I had meant to watch. So I had a quick “Oh no! Boredom!” moment, but thankfully I do have access to someone’s netflix. I went randomly through my list of movies I own that I didn’t watch and Flakes was on instant stream.

Problem solved. But if I was cooler, I’d have found a movie I don’t own and haven’t seen. My bad!

But as it stands, my ability to slack is over my ability to be efficient.

Speaking of slackers, this is another movie about a slacker. I feel like that’s all I watch now. Neal (Aaron Stanford) is going no where with life. He has a hot girlfriend in Zooey Deschanel though. But he is the manager and main worker at a store called Flakes, which is like a bar, but instead of alcohol they server cereal, all day every day. Such a wide selection too, and some rare cereals. Can add fruit if you want, and change up the milk kind. Pretty rad idea. But not the biggest money maker.

But when some suit (Keir O’Donnell) opens up a shop next door, with a similar name and same concept, just MORE, it could mean trouble. Especially since thanks to fights and not hiring Zooey, she goes to work with the new store. After all, if she can shut down the origial Flakes, her boyfriend can finally stop wasting all his time, and finish his damn album.

The movie is basically the battle of the cereal shops, in New Orleans. Christopher Lloyd plays the seemingly crazy owner of the business, and Frank Wood a very dedicated customer who also can find hard to find / discontinued cereals.

MOAR CEREAL

For whatever reason, I found this movie quite enjoyable. Not the most compelling tale at all, something probably done many times before, and even a bit too slow paced, but I thought it all worked given the circumstances. My plotline sets it up for a different type of movie. Sure they battle at the beginning. Business tactics, but mostly apathy and assume their side will win. Well the wrong side wins about halfway through the movie, leaving our “heroes” jobless from their own pseudo-creation.

So we get to see them try other jobs and going to their conquerors, and seeing if a lack of Flakes really changes their outlook at all.

Sometimes you need a story that has a happy ending, even if it comes through unconventional ways.

Barry Munday is not played by Jason Sudeikis.

No he is played by Patrick Wilson.

That is the first thing I noticed about the film. Just saying, the cover made it look very Sudeikis-ish. But thats all my fault anyways.

Remember. Patrick Wilson, not Jason Sudeikis.

Clearly I didn’t look hard enough. At all.

Barry Munday is some sort of pervert. He loves sex and the ladies, has a girlfriend, but cheats on her. Doesn’t like her anyways. So he hits on women constantly. Unfortunately, when he hits on one (maybe too young) girl in a movie theater (played by Mae Whitman, from Parenthood), the dad walkins in with a trumpet, all mad, and smashes his testicles.

Now all of his desires he once had in his life are gone. He can still have sex, sure, he isn’t packing any bullets, and it all seems a bit more pointless now. Worse is he has no idea how to tell anyone. But then he gets a letter from a lawyer, saying a woman he slept with months ago is now pregnant, and he is the father.

But he doesn’t remember ever sleeping with her. Ginger (Judy Greer) is an unfortunate looking woman, but overcome with the realization that he can no longer continue the Munday line, he realizes this birth is a miracle, and he has to change his lifestyle around to match the new circumstances.

But he also has to deal with her angry father (Malcolm McDowell\), her slutty sister (Chloe Sevigny), and help his boss land a big new deal (Billy Dee Williams).

Sexy time!

So wait a minute. Patrick Wilson played a sex crazed slacker, who lost hits nuts, and tries to become a family man with his last chance at a child? I still don’t get why that isn’t Jason Sudeikis.

Definitely not a normal laugh out loud comedy, a more awkward based one, but still decent. Somehow I found it heartfelt, you know, despite being such a horrible concept. Definitely hard to explain. I enjoyed it, but you know, didn’t love it.

I did find Greer’s character annoying. But again, that was the goal. She was just a sheltered individual, who was now pregnant. Hated that shit.

You have to be in a very specific mood to watch this movie. A nice chill mood.

Here is something I won’t do with The Sitter. I won’t complain about it being similar to Adventures In Babysitting. That seems to be a big complaint. After all, there cannot be more than two movies about babysitting in a 20some year span. That would be crazy. Just like there is only one cop show every 20 years.

Can’t even compare their directors, as The Sitter was directed by the guy who did Pineapple Express, so he is already established. The guy who directed Adventures In Babysitting was doing his first movie ever, and only went on to direct some Harry Potters, Home Alone, Rent, and Percy Jackson. Holy shit, that guy is awesome.

I guess it makes sense that his name is Chris Columbus too, given his ground breaking movies.

Jonah Hill is a bum. Well, kind of. He lives with his mom, after kind of taking a break from college, and has no job or anything going on. He’d rather sit around all day than do anything productive. Or you know, hang out with his “girlfriend”, Ari Graynor, who lets him go down on her! And that is about all they do. Shit.

But when his mom’s future love life is in jeopardy because her friends can’t find a sitter, he reluctantly volunteers. Afterall, he just has to sit in the house and get paid. Just three kids too. The oldest, Slater (Max Records), seems to be bad socially, the daughter, Blithe (Landry Bender), who is going through some wanna be celebrity party phase, and their adopted son, Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), who sets off firecrackers and has a bad attitude.

But his girlfriend calls up, asking him to come out and party, and bring her some cocaine (for her friend, not her), and then they can have real sex! Well, time to grab the kids and go! Anything dealing with drugs is probably bad, so when he tries to get the stuff from her friend Karl (Sam Rockwell, who yes, dances in this movie) things go from bad to worse.

Race relations, people with guns, diamond stealing, bathrooms exploding, Bat Mitzvah crashing, and you know, meeting old friends in the form of an old college buddy who just wants to hang out and watch a cool geologic storm with him (hint, true love, played by Kylie Bunbury).

This is also the last movie to feature “Fat Jonah Hill”.

There is a rumor that formerly fat people can’t be funny. That isn’t true, we found that out with 21 Jump Street. But it should be noted that fat people aren’t always funny. This movie being a big example of it.

Was there some funny moments? Sure, but they were few and far between. It was also entirely predictable, and well, just lame. Sequences of the movie didn’t even make sense, one notable part involving a pull over from the police. They didn’t even try to explain that event later in the movie, was just stupid.

Most of the humor derives around Jonah Hill cursing at or around kids, and them possibly doing it back. Hell, even Sam Rockwell’s character wasn’t that funny. I think the best character was the gay roller blading assistant. Name is maybe Julio. Maybe.