Tag: Family

Fuck this movie. Just, get it out of the way. During The Nut Job I predicted Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return would end up being the second worst animated movie of 2014. I was wrong. At this point, I don’t see how there could be anything worst than this trash of a film throughout the rest of the year. No way. No way at all.

It was so many levels of shitty, I don’t think I can properly spend time explaining it all, so I made a short play to try and explain it all.

Here are most of the characters. Not of the play, but of the shitstorm movie.

Executive 1: Alright, we need a sure fire hit for the company. We got about $70 million in budget, and we want to cover ALL demographics. We want the nostalgia, we want the kids, we want songs, we want jokes, we want it all.

Executive 2: We gotta get that Glee girl involved. She is relatively free with the dead boyfriend news being almost a year old now.

E1: Yeah, get her to be the lead!

E2: How bout we do another Wizard of Oz movie? That one last year was pretty well received, and they didn’t try at all!

E1: Brilliant! Who doesn’t love the Scarecrow and Tin Man and Lion! We can make a sequel. Bring everyone back!

E2: But sir! We are out of villains! All the witches are dead!

E1: Shit, we can’t just have them having fun and going on an adventure. We need excitement!

E2: Well, we could get Ralph, our idea man…

E1: Ralph? That man is a wild card, shit, just saying his name three times tends to get him involved.

(Just then, Ralph busts in the boardroom door, pen and paper in his hands).

RtWC: FUCK THIS! WILD CARDS DON’T NEED TO WAIT THREE TIMES! HERE IS OUR MOVIE.

BOOM. FIRST OFF, DOROTHY’S HOUSE GOT FUCKED UP BY A TORNADO. LET’S MAKE THE VILLAIN BE AN APPRAISER WHO KICKS HER OUT OF THE HOUSE. ALSO, LET’S CHANGE THE LOOK OF HER AUNT AND UNCLE. HER AUNT HAS TO BE YOUNGER, HER UNCLE NOW BALDER. IT WILL WORK.

E1: Yeah people probably won’t remember the look of the outside non Oz characters.

RtWC: ALRIGHT. LET’S GET HER BACK TO OZ. WE NEED TO UP THE NOSTALGIA. FIRST THING WE SEE ARE HER FRIENDS, ALL FREAKY AFTER THEIR NEW BRAIN HEART AND SHIT. ALSO, FLYING MONKEYS. WE NEED MORE OF THEM.

LET’S SAY THE WITCH HAD A BROTHER. BUT HE IS A JESTER, BECAUSE THE WITCH IS A BITCH. HE IS EVIL NOW BECAUSE OF THIS STUFF. WHY NOT. HE IS ALSO OUR COMIC RELIEF. FUCKING JESTERS.

ANYWAYS, SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG, DOROTHY WILL HAVE TO MEET NEW PEOPLE.

LIKE A FAT OWL THAT CAN’T FLY AND IS SMART. AND A MAN MADE OUT OF MARSHMELLOWS. A PORCELAIN DOLL. THEY HAD THOSE LAST MOVIE, LET’S DO MORE OF THEM.

E2: Is the Jester going to have a stupid death like the witch?

RtWC: I DON’T KNOW, LET’S NOT WORRY ABOUT THE END TIL WE START FILMING. HERE ARE SOME PLOT POINTS. ANGRY APPLE TREES? BRING THEM BACK, BUT THIS TIME LET ONE OF THEM KILL HIMSELF FOR DOROTHY.

THEY ARE GONNA TREAT HER LIKE ROYALTY EVERYWHERE SHE GOES. IN FACT, LET THE FACT THAT SHE IS DOROTHY SOLVE 95% OF HER PROBLEMS! THE PORCELAIN DOLL? LET’S HAVE A TIME WHERE SHE BREAKS APART AND EVERYONE THINKS SHE IS DEAD.

E1: Now now, looking into your other notes, I see have written down here that the doll breaks a bunch of porcelain suitors, who then go on talking and living lives, just need to be glued back together to walk again. Why would anyone think she is dead?

RtWC: BECAUSE WE WILL INEXPLICABLY MAKE HER NOT TALK AND JUST LIE THERE POST CRACK, DESPITE HAVING HER WHOLE HEAD GOOD WHICH SHOULD IMMEDIATELY ALLOW HER TO DISPEL ANY OF THOSE THOUGHTS.

E2: Are any of these new friends going to serve a purpose to her journey?

RtWC: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THAT’S JUST FOR MORE MERCHANDISING! I WANT POINTLESS CHARACTERS AND TIE-INS. I WANT FAKE DRAMATICS. I WANT EVERYTHING TO HAVE AN EASY SOLUTION AND THERE BE NO REAL THREAT TO OUR CHARACTERS.

LISTEN, ALL WE NEED IS AT LEAST ONE REALLY BIG NAME, SAY PATRICK STEWART OR MARTIN SHORT. THEN WE CAN FILL SIDE CHARACTERS WITH OLDER, NOT AS FAMOUS PEOPLE. LIKE DAN AYKROYD, JAMES BELUSHI, KELSEY GRAMMER, OLIVER PLATT AND HUGH DANCY. THEN GET SOME “FRESH FACES,” LIKE BERNADETTE PETERS AND MEGAN HILTY. WE MAKE THEM SING AND DANCE, AND CAN DO IT ALL FOR PROBABLY $20 MIL WITH OUR ANIMATION QUALITY.

E1: Hey, we have $70 million on the table! Where would the other $50 million go?

(The three men look at each other, smile, and agree to greenlight the movie).

Anyways, that was probably terrible. But it was still more entertaining than this trash. I didn’t even begin to touch what didn’t make sense with this movie. Just. Fuck.

0 out of 4.

The Nut Job has the honor of being the first animated movie of 2014, which also means it is both the worst and best animated movie of 2014 so far.

Bask in that position while you can, The Nut Job, because your time on top will fall. It will cascade downward into oblivion, becoming worse and worse as the year goes on, until May. At that point, Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return comes out, so it will take the last spot so that you will have some shoulders to climb on. There you will be the second worst until July, in which we see Planes: Fire & Rescue. Whether or not you end up better than the “third worst animated film of the year” is left up to debate. But as of right now, thinks are not looking good.

Seriously, those things on the right look like beavers without the tails?

Surly (Will Arnett) is a purple squirrel, and thank everything he isn’t fucking named Squirrel. I mean, it’s still close to it, but its not Squirrel. Hate lazy family films like that. He lives in the cities park, but he is on his own, with his mouse friend Buddy. He doesn’t believe in collecting food for winter with the rest of the animals. No he wants nuts for himself.

Well, after a freak accident, involving a flying nut cart, the park’s food supply gets burned up in a fire. They blame it on him, despite it not really being his fault either. So the leader of the park, Raccoon (Liam Neeson) wants to avoid a trial and holds a vote for banishment of Surly from the park forever. Also, what in the fuck. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Raccoon named Raccoon? Fuck that.

So Surly has a bad time in the city, but he runs into the holy grail of buildings. A nut shop, with nuts! He could live there forever! But he can’t do it alone. Thankfully, due to the food storage, Raccoon has sent out Andie (Katherine Heigl) and Grayson (Brendan Fraser), the Park Hero, to find more food, and they will help! Also there they bring in a mole, named mother fucking Mole (voiced by mother fucking Jeff Dunham, ugh), and some beaver or something. Definitely bigger rodents.

So yeah, breaking into a nut shop, like a classic bank heist movie. But while this is happening, the “owners” of the nut shop are actually working on robbing the bank across the street by digging under the streets. Mob boss, typical story, everything going nuts. Also, Maya Rudolph voices a dog named Precious.

There is so much wrong with this movie, I don’t know where to begin.

Alright, first, the animation. It isn’t the best quality of CGI in any sense. It has its moments, but mostly it feels like a very strange…video game feel to it? Like they had no heart in the animation and it was something that they had just lying around. I don’t even know how to describe it. It never felt great to me though.

The puns. I like puns. But there are only two groupings of puns here. Referring to things as “nuts!” over and over again. And the Mob Boss talking about how much he hates “rats.” They can be clever, but they both get overused to the point where it doesn’t matter anymore.

The idea of the plot is a good one, but it barely followed any part of the traditional heist movie format. All of the plot is through miscommunication and people being dicks to each other. I am a bit happy to hear Fraser say “Shut the FRONT DOOR” in a PG movie though. That was a bit surprising.

Movie is full of random other bullshit that I noticed. For instance, the bank is across the street from the park. We learn that early on, because that is why the nut cart is there, for surveillance. But also, the nut shop is across the street from the front of the bank too. Some how. What? Fuck you. Makes even less sense when they show the people going on a long journey to stumble upon it, when it should be visible from the park.

More inaccuracies. A dam gets blown up that leads to the city. Explosions, cracked walls, big danger. Doesn’t affect the city at all. The water goes in two directions, one down a lazy river to the park, the other goes down a HUGEEE waterfall where we assume people/animals died. Surly goes down the dangerous waterfall, yet somehow that brings him…back to the park also. Geographically inconsistant.

They have major plot points that are either obvious, or used in terrible unclever ways (re: everything related to the dog whistle).

It was a mess of a movie.

As a side note, people who forgive a movie for being lame might say “Hey, it’s a kids movie, you are being too hard on it!” Kids movie should not be an excuse for poor quality. Pixar proved that a long time ago. Unfortunately, the theater was packed when I saw this. Many families. So many kids. Rarely did any of them laugh. Yeah, a shitty kids movies that kids don’t even enjoy.

0 out of 4.

Walking With Dinosaurs gets the benefit of being the last big animated movie of 2013. It also is one of the worst.

It was made in part by the good folks of BBC Earth, because of the TV show from 1999, Walking With Dinosaurs. It was a state of the art TV show, CGI mixed with real world scenery, and made people like Dinosaurs again.

This. This was a piece of shit.

“She likes my hole!” Actual line of dialogue.

First surprise of the movie, is that there is a live action sequence involved at the beginning and end. Uncle Zack (Karl Urban) is taking his niece (Angourie Rice) and nephew (Charlie Rowe) to an archaeological dig area (as he is an archaeologist) to show them cool stuff! But thew nephew is too COOL for fossils now. What’s the point? Who cares about this dinosaur stuff?

Well, a raven does. Which totally morphs into a bird from 70 million years ago, Alex (John Leguizamo). Apparently that gorgosaurus tooth has a story, and we are going to hear it, damn it.

This is a story about Patchi (Justin Long), the runt of the litter of a group of Pachyrhinosaurus. Yes, his parents named him after the species, they apparently aren’t creative. Even if the dad is the head of the heard, and they name other children better, like the brother, Scowler (Skyler Stone). Huh, they gave him a very villainous name. Interesting.

Well, Patchi gets a hole in his…head flap thing, so he stands out even more for the viewer. Good friends with the bird Alex. They go on migrations, back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. That seems to be all that is going on for a dinosaur like him. Just moving. And eating. Eventually his brother is in fact a dick, and bad things happen. Parents die. They don’t give too many fucks. But Patchi! Patchi is smart! And he wants to win the affections of a girl, Juniper (Tiya Sircar).

Oh boy, I hope everything works well?

Ah, vomited up food. Better than this movie.

Hey, you might be wondering. What the fuck does any of that have to do with a gorgosaurus tooth? Well yeah. Patchi grows a pair at some point, and head puts the t-rex looking mother fucker, who loses some teeth. We get a long complicated story full of poop jokes and un witty banter, when arguably, if they were actually going to tell a story about the gorgosaurus tooth, they would tell it from his point of view. Not 75 minutes of some other coming of age Patchi story that had nothing to do with gorgorsaurus teeth.

But that isn’t the only issue, no way. Only four of the dinosaur/birds get voices, the four listed. Apparently no one else can talk, as everyone else grunts and nothing else, no conversation at all.

The talking itself did not come from the characters mouths. It was just an awkward voice over, where the characters talked, but their mouths didn’t match or even attempt to math. So it was some sort of telepathic communication I guess.

One of the cool aspects was when the movie literally paused, to give us the name of a new dinosaur, what the name meant, and what it ate. It was interesting. Early on, it did it a lot real quick, like five times. Then it basically stopped and didn’t do it anymore. I have no idea why.

The dialogue was horrid. Everything felt cringeworthy. The story was not at all special. It cared a little bit about scientific accuracy, but not enough to give us feathers on the gorgosaurus.

I need to say gorgosaurus again.

Either way. By far, one of the worst movies of the year, and a complete waste of time.

0 out of 4.

I will admit, when I first saw the trailer for Free Birds, I chuckled at a few spots. The nameless government entities making a pun and laughing throughout the trailer was great. A movie about a dumb animal trying to save the world with other dumb animals might lead to a lot of just tongue in cheek situations or rampant fourth wall breaking or who knows what. The possibilities are limitless.

But they also are including time travel, a known killer of many movies, if they define a version that doesn’t make much sense. None of this “its a kids movie!” bullshit either. No, the story has to be somewhat coherent, or else shit is going down.

“Down like a Tom covered in poults.”
“Hey, that’s not a joke, witty, or remotely funny.”
“It would be if we were dealing with chickens, not turkeys!”

Reggie (Owen Wilson) is a freak. He is a smarter than your average turkey, which isn’t hard, because turkeys are dumb. But he is too smart, and refuses to eat and get fattened up for Thanksgiving, which causes the flock to throw him out. Luckily for him, he gets pardoned by the President, which apparently means he can sit around all day, not worry about getting eaten, and just watch TV and eat pizza.

Well, his new awesome reality comes crashing down when Jake (Woody Harrelson) takes him from his home! Oh no! Another Turkey, not some random dude named Jake.

He wants to infiltrate a secret base in Camp David where there is apparently a time machine. He wants to use that time machine to travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving, to take turkeys off the menu. Err okay. Well they do that. And the time machine named S.T.E.V.E. (George Takei), which was built for humans, can somehow understand the gobbles from turkeys.

Then they get there. The turkeys are just extremely obvious metaphors for American Indians, being hunted by the colonists, for this important feasts in a few days. Except these turkeys are all smart. That is right, they are saying turkeys became dumb due to domestication and Thanksgiving. So we have a bunch of smart turkeys and really only one dumb one, Jake. CAN THE TIME TRAVELING TURKEYS SAVE THEIR RACE FROM DESTRUCTION? Will he be able to score with Jenny (Amy Poehler), a smart enough turkey to not believe he is from the future? WILL HUMANS BE CAST AS THE BAD GUYS?

Or you know, will anything really cool happen? Eh.

Does this turkey look high to you?

Man, Owen Wilson I tend to hate at voice acting. Aka Cars and Cars 2. But he was able to show some emotion this time. Well done. Woody Harrelson sounded nothing like himself, so I want to assume that means he put effort into his lines. Having George Takei as navigator of sorts was a “I see what you did there” moment.

But enough about that, lets talk about the plot and other things I disliked. The beginning of the movie is very fast, so much that I’d be willing to bet that 85% or more of the movie takes place in the past, whereas the trailer had mostly set just getting to the time machine. A little misleading. Most of the best jokes were also in the trailer, including jokes that weren’t actually in the movie (due to splicing of the trailer into new jokes, not taking them out of the movie). Meh. I don’t think I would have liked it more if I didn’t see the trailer, however.

Making the turkeys in the past smart is lame. That leaves only one stupid character, and not the hordes of them that they implied in the trailer. That would allow it to have a lot more zany shenanigans! So, overall, the humor in this film isn’t really existent. The theater was practically silent for the most part.

The time travel itself is super sloppy. It was fine early on, but they went back to the present, and all sorts of stuff started to occur that don’t make sense based on how they defined time travel earlier in the film.

The ending is horrible. It just…it just isn’t good. The conflict doesn’t happen, despite a resolution. The resolution leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

So we got an unfunny movie, that breaks its own definitions of time travel, and has a shitty ending. Yawn. Let’s just wait for Frozen at the end of this month.

1 out of 4.

Puns. Puns are an often overlooked humor tool that are wildly taken for granted. In fact, some people respond to puns with groans!

Those groaners I have to imagine would not enjoy Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 which has more puns than the number of acupuncturists who also happen to be backstabbers.

I wonder how many animated dicks could fit in his mouth. For research.

CWaCoM2 takes places immediately after CWaCoM, with the town of Swallow Falls in disarray and covered with food. Flint (Bill Hader) and his friends are excited for the rebuild, but they are forced to temporarily move to San Franjose, California, while Live Corp cleans up their island…for science! After all, Live Corp is run by Chester V (Matt Forte), Flint’s hero since he was a kid and the coolest scientist ever. It is usually a good idea to let trained professionals take care of a job.

Unfortunately, the clean up isn’t going as smoothly as they had hoped. The FLDSMDFR device was not destroyed after the first film, and it has created animal food hybrids to take over the island! They are also learning how to swim, and if they do, they will spread out and attack the rest of the world! Scary!

So it is up to Flint, with the rest of his crew to save the day. Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), girlfriend and meteorologist, Tim (James Caan), father, Brent McHale (Andy Samberg), former bully and current idiot, Manny (Benjamin Bratt), jack of all trades, Earl (Terry Crews), security guard, and Steve (Neil Patrick Harris) the monkey.

We also get introduced to Barb (Kristen Schaal), the ape. The fact that she is an ape, and not a monkey, is a very important difference.

Charles V reminded me a lot of Professor Hawk from Dexter’s Laboratory.

When I saw the trailer for CWaCoM2, I knew there would be an overwhelming amount of puns, but I still somehow underestimated how many they would actually throw at the viewer. At one point, the PPM (Puns Per Minute) value had to be greater than 10. Just constant puns, one after another, with hardly any time to comprehend them all.

Personally, I think the film was a bit too short to tell the story it wanted to tell. A lot of the movie felt rushed, especially once they first got to the island. In order to appease the kid viewers, they must have moved quickly to keep their interest. That has to be the biggest negative, not giving enough time to really flesh out the island and “foodimals.”

At the same time, I was equally impressed with the film’s ability to include “background jokes.” Once I saw the first few, my eyes were constantly watching the edge of the screen and I was surprised at how often they appeared. Heck, Joe Townee from the first film was snuck into this film twice. Unfortunately he had no lines this time, because his voice actor, Will Forte, was now voicing a new major character.

This film is filled with its fair share of low brow humor jokes, but an almost equal number of intelligent-ish jokes. I guess the point I am really trying to make is that this film has a lot of jokes, and they vary across the whole spectrum (outside of the adult themed joke territory). Despite the new writers and directors, I think it is a very worthy sequel to this franchise, and I would definitely watch a third one should it ever get made.

3 out of 4.

Do not go see the movie Planes.

Fuck Planes

This won’t be a typical movie review, thus the use of quotation marks in the title. Normally I do a little bit of research about a film before I watch it, just so I can lay down some fun facts in these reviews. But what I discovered about Planes I found to be so unacceptable, I didn’t feel right telling everyone about it. But first, a little bit of back story.

For the main poster and Trailer for Planes, we see that it takes place “From Above the World of Cars.” Remember Cars?

Cars came out originally in 2006 as a Pixar movie. I linked to my original review of it, but if you are lazy, basically I describe how the movie is bad morally for children. In Cars, your job in life is based solely on what car type you are. The only exception is if you want to live below your means.

Cars 2 came out five years after that, also made by Pixar. This time they changed the main character and turned it into a strange Bond parody. More importantly, we should look at the villains. The main villains for Cars 2 are lemons, aka cars that were built badly and break down all the time. These cars only wanted more equality, but instead they are the butt of everyone’s joke.

This is all even more twisted when you realize that these cars were all created somehow. These cars age and live a life, so presumably more and more cars are created every day. These lemon cars in particular were created with the sole purpose of being lesser quality than their peers. Yeah, I’d be pissed off too.

No matter how you look at it, Cars 2 was a cash grab movie, made almost solely to sell merchandise.

So now, only two years after Cars 2, we are given Planes. One notable difference (that few people realize) is that this movie is no longer done by Pixar, but instead just Disney. You might be thinking, “Hey! Disney CGI isn’t that bad, they just did Wreck-It Ralph! This one might be awesome too!”

Yes. I too am a plane.

Well, Wreck-It Ralph was done by Walt Disney Animation Studios, their normal big movie company. Planes was done by DisneyToon Studios, who are most known for making the lame sequels to popular Disney movies. You know, Cinderella II: Dreams May Come, Cinderella III: A Twist In Time, Pocahontas II: Journey To A New World, and more. The last time they had a theatrical release was in 2006, with Bambi II, and that was only in theaters in Europe. Their last five movies that went direct to video were all based around Tinkerbell.

So why were they given Planes? Well it turns out, Planes originally was going to also be a direct to video release. However, Disney liked the animation enough to let them have a theater release. Great. Since Planes was meant to be direct to video release, it almost implies that they didn’t put a lot of work into it.

The budget for Planes was only $20 Million. To put that into perspective, Cars had a budget around $120 Million, and Cars 2 around $200 million. Turbo ended up at $135 million, and Wreck-It Ralph was at $165 million. CGI animated films are very expensive to make because the technology is expensive and they take years to produce. With a budget that low, either the film was rushed, or the CGI quality is low.I believe the evidence point towards both of these facts being true, since production of Planes didn’t begin until a few months after Cars 2 came out and was originally coming out Spring 2013.

If you want more evidence, they have already announced that Planes will be a trilogy. The first sequel has already been named, Planes: Fire & Rescue. The sequel also already has a release date set for July 18, 2014. Next summer! Less than a year after the first film, I can only assume that it is being rushed out.

To recap, in great detail I have explained why the Planes movie is just a huge cash grab. It has a low budget indicating lesser quality animation and less time spent for polishing/developing. It happens to be a spin-off of another cash grab movie. It is made by a studio who is only known for their low quality sequels to all of our favorite Disney movies. It is also banking on the fact that most people who see it will assume Pixar made the movie.

Unfortunately, by now, Disney has already profited on this film. Why? The same reason Cars 2 has made so much money. Merchandising. With a budget that low, they don’t have to care about quality when the merchandising alone is just pure profit.

So I plead with you, do the right thing, and do not go see this movie in theaters. Do not buy it on DVD or Blu-Ray. Don’t buy any of its toys for your families or friends. Disney should be punished for trying to pull this type of crap on us, making almost a mockery of the entire idea of movies as an art form.

Something something something planes.

Just to keep this legitimate, here is a quick synopsis and review.

Dusty (Dane Cook) is a crop duster from the midwest, who dreams of being a great racer, and joining the race around the world. Unfortunately, he is afraid of heights, which totally makes sense. Well, he qualifies barely and makes it to the race around the world! But certain other planes don’t like him, because he isn’t a racing plane. So with a little bit of can do spirit, he hopes to prove everyone wrong, and he can succeed despite being created for one purpose!

Also featuring the voice talents of Brad Garrett, Teri Hatcher, John Cleese, Cedric the Entertainer, and more.

I’d say that this movie did a good job of breaking the morals given to us by the Car movies. After all, it is a plane doing something beyond its design and achieving greatness. But in the film, in order for him to achieve his dream, he literally has to change everything about himself first. It really brings up the philosophy question dealing with the Ship of Theseus. Can we really say a crop duster has won a race, if he removed his crop dusting ability and replaced all of his parts?

The movie itself offers nothing new. It is incredibly inaccurate in terms of geography, despite making it clear that it takes place on some strange human-less earth. There are plot holes that a jet could fit through. They even showed scenes of planes during World War II, which accidentally makes this film incredibly dark. Is this really a world where planes go to war with other planes, and hundreds of machines die? Well, I guess it makes it more human-like in that regard.

Now remember, please do not support this movie.

0 out of 4.

To answer the first question on everyone’s mind, yes I did dress up like a Smurf for the premiere of The Smurfs 2. It was smurftastic!

Initially, watching the trailer, I was enraged at the plot. In a nutshell, Gargamel (Hank Azaria) tried to create a couple of Smurfs, but they turned out grey and evil. He needs to know how to make them blue, to extract their essence and then become a powerful sorcerer. But they can only get the formula from Smurfette (Katy Perry), who they have to convince to be naughty and join their force.

NAUGHTY. NAUGHTY. NAUGHTY.Why does that upset me? Because I know that Smurfette was a Gargamel creation in the first place (Despite the first movie contradicting that statement). He wanted to create chaos in an all male Smurf society, by introducing a woman. That makes sense. So why did he have problems creating more Smurfs? Oh, because the movie changed things up a bit. More importantly, they explained it all and made it completely reasonable.

In this world, Smurfette was also originally gray, until Papa Smurf (Jonathan Winters) turned her true blue and into a happy go lucky Smurf. Yay! Now everything is okay! Only her and Papa Smurf know the formula, which is why they steal her back into the real world to beat it out of her…with kindness. It is also Smurfette’s birthday, and as the Smurfs tried to keep the party a secret, she assumed no one remembered and felt quite sad. Poor Smurfette.

Due to some miscalculations, the rescue team consists of Papa Smurf, Vanity Smurf (John Oliver), Grumpy Smurf (George Lopez), and Clumsy Smurf (Anton Yelchin).

Oh, but they aren’t alone. No, they have human friends from the first film! Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace (Jayma Mays), their son, and Patrick’s step-dad, Victor (Brendan Gleeson).

Can this rag tag group of Smurfs find and convince Smurfette they love her before time runs out? Or will the Naughties, Vexy (Christina Ricci) and Hackus (J.B. Smoove) get to her first?

But let’s not forget about dat cat.I actually left out a lot of the minor plot points in this one. You’re welcome, that means the movie will be a bit more surprising if you head out to see it. Honestly, it might be worth it if you have a family.

You don’t have to see the first film to understand this film, you just need to know that they have some human friends. Pretty standard for a family film.

What can you get out of the Smurfs? A lot of smurfin’ puns. Smurf this, smurf that, puns everywhere. Hank Azaria continues to be a smurfing excellent Gargamel. The work he puts into the voice and that character is beyond phenomenal. It is smurfing nuts!

I laughed quite a bit at some of the jokes. The fact that the plot made sense in this universe only made it better. However, there were a few smurf problems.

Vanity Smurf? I wish they killed off some Smurfs. As one of the three main personalities on the trek, being narcissistic, he ALWAYS talks. Unfortunately, everything he says is the exact same vain pun, over and over again. It got smurfing real fast. At least Grumpy Smurf had an interesting plot line. Clumsy Smurf was ignored completely. They had the chance to branch out and give us some newer Smurfs to highlight, but they didn’t.

Really, if they make another Smurfs movie, I hope they keep them in their own world. If they want, bring NPH and the other humans to them this time. Their world has plenty of lore, magic, and fun to be a great setting. Most of all, it has more than a handful of Smurfs, so everyone can fight for the metaphorical spotlight.

 

2 out of 4.

I miss Twilight. Twilight made everything easy. I knew what I would do for my Milestone Reviews, and everyone would get why they received the extra attention. It made sense.

I worry a bit, just a little bit, you guys don’t see why these things are a big deal.

So for milestone #850, I knew I had to do Journey To The Center Of The Earth. This 2008 remake was an early use of the 3D craze that hadn’t yet fully formed in American cinema. In fact, it may have been in red/blue 3D, but I can’t confirm that.

But more importantly, I am a graduate student in Geophysics, if you missed that in other reviews. Or you know, you are someone reading this who actually doesn’t know me in person. So examining movies that I know will be very nonscientific is something that I just can’t resist! Especially those about the Earth.

And with that, let’s trash the fuck out of this movie.

Yep, that face is just asking for some movie fucking. This movie is not a remake of the book or movie. No, it takes place in a universe where those movies and books exist. Fucking Jules Verne meta up in here. But we will get back to that later.

Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser), is some sort of Volcanologist. Like a legit one, works at a university, (college?) teaches geology, and has a shitty lab to measure seismology. Only three sensors still work. He is continuing his brother’s work, but he hasn’t been seen in 10 years. Sucks to suck.

Even worse, his lab is going to get shut down and turned into someone else’s lab. Someone higher in the university, someone played by Seth Meyers! Oh no, life sucks!

This photo doesn’t fit anywhere. But hey, good clean family fun is upcoming.Speaking of his life sucking, he forgot his sister-in-law is bringing her kid over today. Fuuu. So messy. Sean (Josh Hutcherson) is there for ten days and about to be bored shitless. So Trevor looks for child toys to entertain Sean and finds an old box in his attic. What is in it? Why, Journey to the Center of the Earth of course!

But it is all covered with notes. Huh? Crazy. This must have been his brother’s. Strange strange. Apparently he thought the book was real and a guide to go under the Earth! Where crazy shit is, yo. That’d be surprising. Fuck it, let’s go to Iceland to check it out!

Still not at the part for cool pictures. So here is a big fucking plant. Iceland! They try to meet an old professor. Nope, he ain’t there no mo’. Just his Icelandic, hot daughter, Hannah Ásgeirsson (Anita Briem). Nice. Apparently her dad is gone too, he went with Max into a Volcano. Seems silly. Because it is silly.

Turns out they were “Vernians”, people who thought his books were real, all of them, not fiction. Huh. Okay. So that is enough reason for them to go check out a volcano.

“Yep, this is definitely a hole! Trust me, I know holes!” – TrevorFuck yes. Volcano. Abandoned caves. MINE TRACKS. Abandoned mines? Yes, abandoned mines. Mine cart racing. Yes. All this stuff. Eventually they find a shit ton of diamonds and jewels. Hurrah. But then they fall down a hole. A really long hole.

Seriously, he really knows a lot about holes. Aw shit, even though they fell for miles and miles, they didn’t die! Because water started to appear and that eased their fall? Who cares how fast they were falling. Water doesn’t hurt when you fall on it, not a bit!

But the good news is, the book was right. They found a completely different mini-earth where life is thriving and stuff exists at the center of Earth. Literally, at the center. Wait, they made it to the center? That is like, 4,000 miles down. How fucking far did they fall and not die?

Never fucking mind.

Just stare at the pretty looking mini planet or whatever the fuck is going on here. Well, they think it’s awesome, but they don’t want to die down here. Like assholes. So they want to escape and thankfully have a map like thing to get out. They just have to wait for an eruption and another giant tube. They will make a boat and ride the steam to the surface. Which is very, very doable. Why the fuck not?

They also have to sail across a giant underground ocean to get there, during a storm, with killer giant fish coming at them!

Just thinking about it all is getting me really wet.Well, in the ocean they lose the kid, he flies off. But thankfully they all somehow still meet up somewhere. WHILE GETTING CHASED BY A GIANT DINOSAUR WHAAT AHHHH! What the hell is it eating down there? We’ve only seen plants, fish and small birds. Da fuq?

They escape, but get to the tube too late. Oh no, water is gone. And no boat!

Thankfully a dinosaur skull can make a boat. And they can crack the wall to bring down a stream of water to the magma, to force them up before the volcano explodes to safety!

Safety? Fuck that.

Evolution worked almost identical to the earth thing. I guess. Just bigger everything else. And glow birds. They escape, life is good, and eventually we get another and another movie.

Yeah! More movies! But they won’t let Brendan Fraser be in them? That seems fucked up. Who let Josh Hutcherson stay?

The first few scenes in the movie made me realize I wasn’t going to have a good time. Trevor seemed pompous and elitist, with no reason to back it up. He gets lucky and thinks he is the hottest shit ever. He probably works at a community college, not a distinguished University.

Well, hey I don’t care for pompous people. He makes us look bad.

Okay, I am pompous too, but I feel like I deserve it. I run a successful movie review website!

If you have to watch any movie, watch the one from the 1950s. It is actually a lot better and not super fucking meta.

1 out of 4.

Turbo is the latest example of a kids movie following a very standard formula. Let’s take some sort of entity and either a) give them an impossible dream (and reach it!), or b) give them some ridiculous flaw (and overcome it!). Like a bird who doesn’t know how to fly. Or a plane that is afraid of heights (and wants to race). Or an overweight comedian who wants to box. Or a snail who wants to race in the Indy 500. Oh wait, that one is Turbo!

Fuck. Let’s get this over with. Turbo (Ryan Reynolds) is a snail! He has big dreams. He wants to go fast, and is the fastest snail he knows. In fact, he just did the yard in 17 minutes, a new personal record. He dreams of entering the Indy 500, thanks to words of advice from his hero Guy Gagne (Bill Hader), who claims that no dream is too big. His brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) thinks his dream is stupid, rightfully so.

Well, eventually Turbo falls into a car engine and gets coated with NOS, transforming his DNA and giving him incredible speed! This also somehow turns him partially into a car, with headlights, radio, rear review lights and stuff. Not sure how that second part happened. Even more eventually, Chet and Turbo find themself caught by Tito (Michael Pena), a down on his luck Taco maker. He works for his older brother (Luis Guzman) and their business is not doing well. Why did Turbo decide to not run away as soon as they were captured? No idea. But he could have.

Luckily, Tito is all into snail racing. Turns out Turbo is stupid fast and he wants to use Turbo to get more business. A very noble cause. So they set off to enter him into the Indy 500, for exposure. Nowadays kids would just make a YouTube video and become famous that way.

Oh yeah, Turbo has his own snail crew to back him up now. There is Whiplash (Samuel L. Jackson), Smoove Move (Snoop Dogg), Burn (Maya Rudolph), Skidmark (Ben Schwartz), and White Shadow (Mike Bell). Of course Ken Jeong voices a tiny Asian nail technician.

This movie is about to get fucked. Seriously. No mercy. Cover your eyes if you don’t like violent imagery.Let’s start with some factual errors. Why? Because they matter to me. I am a Masters Geophysics Student, and the sloppiness bugged me. Basically I am going to be super critical.

Turbo made a big deal about getting a yard in 17 minutes. I know it was a yard, because they showed the measuring stick briefly. However, 36 inches in 17 minutes is really slow. Like, really really slow. That is why I went over to WolframAlpha to convert it. Seriously check the link.

WolframAlpha is so amazing it compared the velocity calculated to the the velocity of a garden snail automatically and it is about 33% the speed of the actual garden snail. Great, we have a snail that is statistically slower than most garden snails. Let’s say that factual error can be ignored, fine. Unfortunately, almost every other point in the movie (pre-genetic manipulation), Turbo and other snails are still shown with greater velocities than his trial. Unless it was important to the plot that is (see: the tomato/lawn mower scene).

Come on now, consistency.

[Editor’s note: Apparently IRL and F1 are different things, but similar vehicles. I just know them as “Not NASCAR”. Point still stands, basically.]
The ending bugged me a lot as well. As it is a car race, it involved a pile up of cars real close to the finish. At this point, Turbo and Guy go into a “foot race” type of situation for the finish like, similar to Talladega Nights.  But according to official Formula 1 racing rules (here and here specifically), none of it would count and the whole thing feels pointless.

Let’s get to the most important part of the movie. This plot is inherently stupid and bad. I didn’t read the full rules for the Formula 1 racing, so I can’t confirm if there is no rule that would disallow a snail. However, the concept behind it can only be described as cheating and a snail would never be allowed to race in such an event. They have very specific standards for the size of the vehicles, type of protection they need, everything you can possibly imagine. The snail’s dimensions do not match a car’s dimensions. For an extreme example, it’d be like using a Ferrari. Or like doping.

At one point during the race, the announcer screams that he can’t believe Turbo is passing a car from below. I am fine with his reaction, because Turbo is basically cheating. But the announcer is surprised instead that he could fit, even though Formula 1 cars have about 4.5 inches of room underneath them, while a garden snail is at most 1.5 inches tall.

If you hadn’t figured out by now, Guy is the villain of this movie, but only because he wants to win the race too. Just like the other 30ish humans in the race, all doing it without cheating.

I laughed I think a total of two times. The laziness of the plot, the laziness of the details, and the laziness of the character development ruined this movie for me. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt. “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.” Turbo would not have lived up to the former First Lady’s opinions on America or Racing.

 

1 out of 4.

I guess I should make one thing clear right off the back. At the time of watching My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, I have never seen anything related to the TV Series before. So I am going into this movie completely blind, knowing full well there will be jokes and references I don’t get.

Now, I have since gone back to watch the TV show for a few episodes. You know, for “research.” I am not saying I am a “Brony” but the show has merits on its own.

It also has strange colored women. But if it worked in Doug, it can work here, damn it.

The story begins with Princess Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong) heading to the Crystal Empire for the Princess Summit. All of her friends are invited too: Rarity (Tabitha St. Germain), Applejack and Rainbow Dash (Ashleigh Ball), Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie (Andrea Libman), and her dragon companion Spike (Cathy Weseluck). It is a pretty big deal and will be a pretty big party!

Twilight Sparkle still feels weird wearing her magical crown though, not used to the power and responsibility that comes with it. However, in the middle of the night, a thief breaks into her room and replaces her magical crown with a replica! Oh no! Sunset Shimmer (Rebecca Shoichet), a bitter former student of the Queen, has stolen the crown (an Element of Harmony) and put it through a magical portal to a strange new world.

Twilight Sparkle is going to have to go chase after Sunset Shimmer to retrieve the crown, before the portal closes in three days, and she must go alone. When she goes, she is transformed into a strange new life form: a teenage girl in high school! Sunset Shimmer rules the school with an iron fist (hoof?), too. The school is  also made up of people who have very similar personalities to her pony friends back home, but they are all enemies here!

Can Twilight Sparkle restore the friendship that used to exist in this school? Can she get retrieve the crown before the portal closes, trapping her in the human world for a long time? Will the fact that “Friendship is Magic” come up at all in this movie?

Friendship Orgy Circle!

Audience wise, I was surprised that college and middle aged people actually outnumbered teenage and younger girls. Go figure, the “Brony” crowd is real and showing up in theaters, increasing ticket sales. In fact, they were a rather rambunctious group, constantly cheering and clapping at small cameos and tiny jokes. It actually made the experience better.

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls is only 70 minutes long and it is made up almost entirely of high school prom based cliches. But I still found myself laughing out loud several times throughout. There are at least four original songs as well, of course about friendship and working together, basically the cheesiest things ever. Yet they still entertain. They reminded me of this famous song from the first season of “The Powerpuff Girls.”

Unfortunately, this movie was probably just made to sell dolls and figurines. The rumors are that they will create a second show, one set in the human world with the girls if this one does well, creating even more merchandising for kids. Yes, every movie is made for profit, but no one likes an over saturation of one product.

The movie offers a great message for kids, especially with how they dealt with Sunset Shimmer. Often times, in kids movies, the villain will be completely one dimensional and just pure evil. This film at least breaks the mold from that.

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls can be watched if you haven’t seen the TV series, you just won’t get a lot of the smaller references thrown in. You just have to be able to find it in theaters, most only having one show time a week. It is good for families, and not incredibly boring, just probably an extreme cash grab. Still a better movie than The Croods. Brony up!

2 out of 4.