Tag: Judy Greer

Never heard of Love Happens.

But can Love Happens end the recent string of “bad movies with Love in the title?”

Nope.

Burke (Aaron Eckhart) is a motivational speaker/grief counselor type person. His wife died in a car accident. He was sad over it, wrote a book. Now he is famous, and definitely over it all. Right!?

Sure. He even sees a girl, a local florist, Eloise (Jennifer Aniston). She just blows him off, eventually they get to date though. Awkward, his first date since the accident.

But yeah, that is about it. We also have Dan Fogler as his Pr dude, Martin Sheen as his dad, Judy Greer as florist assistant, and John Carroll Lynch who won’t get over his son’s death.

Sure, there may be another dramatic oh man moment or two. But I wouldn’t want to spoil that for you.

Hey look. They got together by the end. Just like the cover implied. Oh man.

Oh the worst feeling in the world is watching two bad movies in a row. Seriously. Damn it. It happened only once before for my website. But the liklihood of it happening I guess increases when I stop picking randomly from a pile and just go base on how interested I am in it.

Like I said, I just assumed it was a Romance movie with Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston, and it was, but it was so dang boring for me.

I think the best person in this film was John Carrol Lunch, as grieving dad, then Martin Sheen, then Aaron Eckhart. Their grief felt a lot better acted to me.

But really, I couldn’t connect with the film at all. Maybe if I lost a wife early or something it would be better? But that is a hard per-requisite for me to fill. Everything about this felt unnatural to me, especially the relationship between Eckhart and Aniston, which is arguably one of the top two important parts of the movie.

So in that regard, I almost want to claim that in the last five years, there has been only one good movie to begin with the word “Love”. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I had no idea what to expect from a movie entitled Jeff, Who Lives At Home. I don’t think I ever saw a preview for it, maybe a TV ad once or twice, just that was it. But based on the actors, I assumed some sort of Apatow level comedy. Probably about an older guy who refuses to move out of his parents house. Sounds like the easiest theory? Might have some social disorder.

I DON’T KNOW, FUCK, JUST START THE MOVIE. AHHH!

Jeff is in a store, searching for a mysterious entity.

Jeff (Jason Segel) lives at home. Boom. Movie over.

Usually he spends most of his time in the basement, where he smokes pot and watches movies. His mom (Susan Sarandon) works in a cubicle and it is her birthday today! She left a note, telling Jeff to go outside, go to the store and get wood clue. What bus to take and everything. But someone else calls the house. They want to talk to Kevin. But who is Kevin? This isn’t where Kevin lives. It must be fate. Kevin must be important.

At the same time, his brother Pat (Ed Helms) is living with his wife Linda (Judy Greer) and they are saving up for a real home. But he bought an awesome Porsche anyways. He thinks it is important to spice up their relationship. She doesn’t like it. Oh well, she will come around.

On the way to the store, Jeff sees a guy in a basketball jersey with the name Kevin? Can this be the man he is meant to find?! He gets off the bus to follow this “Kevin”. Also the mother at work is getting anonymous messages from someone else in her work place. Looks like she has a secret admirer. At her age as well!

Jeff, believing in signs in the universe and that fate is leading him somewhere. It takes him throughout town and through his families lives, mostly his brothers. Who is an asshole. Because after drinking some for lunch, they do see his wife with another man (Steve Zissis) and he assumes she is cheating and flips a shit. Also a workplace friend of the mom Carol (Rae Dawn Chong) tries to help her determine the identity of the crush.

Is Jeff blindly following bullshit clues to absolute nothing? Or will it lead him to his DESTINY?

You see that? Dude is parked in a handicap space. Told you he was an ass.

I friggan loved this movie. And yet it is super simple. Counting credits, it is only 83 minutes long, but who counts credits? So in 80 minutes, we have a story of a day in these characters lives, where marriage, love, and potentially lives are on the line!

I actually watched this movie twice yesterday, the second time when I was busy doing some other tasks, but still wanted to re watch just to check to see if I missed out on anything. The beginning is actually Jeff talking about the movie Signs, how he loves all the subtle hints (or signs!) throughout the movie by the end, and why he loves the little girl character.

While it is marketed as a comedy, and it has its moments, it is definitely a pretty serious film. But both halves work together nicely in my book.

But honestly, if a movie that I watched twice in the same day isn’t a 4 out of 4 rating for me, then I don’t know what is.

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.

Hooray for movies nominated for academy awards!

That is what I would say if I was snobbish. But would a snobby person care about The Descendants, since the only thing it did was win best adapted screenplay? No one cares about that, unless you are the Dean from Community.

So lets just open this up in my normal way, and not a fake snobby way.

Hooray for movies with George Clooney!

Hooray for them not being political in nature!

The movie begins with a woman water skiing getting fucked up. Or at least her happiness right before the fucking up occurs. Then we get GC narrating. Ah, his wife is now in a coma, brain damage. That sucks. Their marriage has been drifting apart, sure. But this is not something he wanted to happen, or ever considered happening. She raised the children, while he was the breadwinner. While being a lawyer himself, he was also the sole trust member of the thousands of acres of land his family owned.

Why? Because he is related to King Kamehameha, and it has been passed down through the generations.

Due to some law, in a few years he will lose the land, so his family is looking to him to sell it to many potential buyers who would like to use it for tourist sites, ruining the natural beauty. He has all the power, but damn it, his wife is about to die! Both of his children are acting up, who he has never really had to raise or look after on his own before. Amara Miller is the younger daughter, living at home with him, and Shailene Woodley is away at boarding school.

The movie is about his character having to make such a great decision, while also dealing with the loss of his wife. Loss? Yeah, in her will she said she didn’t want to be supported on a machine with no hope of coming back, so the plug has to be pulled. He also has to tell all of her friends and relatives of the decision. Including one man he didn’t know existed, the man who his wife was cheating on him with.

Matthew Lillard plays that man, and Judy Greer his wife. The friend of the older daughter, Nick Krause, is also in this movie, as a jack ass who speaks what everyone is secretly thinking.

He also might get punched in the face pretty often.

So why is this movie good? You know why, George Clooney. He is an awesome character. Super relatable, minus the whole rich thing. I did bust out laughing at more than one occasion, but part of it was because the lines Clooney said wee so good. Id like to think I would say the exact same things as him, but I am not as cool.

Everyone else does a good job too, making the movie seem real, which was exciting. The Hawaiian feel didn’t hurt either.

The film was nominated because it was an all around good movie, and its not even artsy.

I have walked by this title a lot, mostly because I got it confused with a British television show that might be about Pedophiles, Peep Show. But Peep World has neither pedos nor Brits. Just Americans, a “dysfunctional family” and boner jokes.

Peep World is the name of a fictional book in this fictional movie. Written by Ben Schwartz, he is the youngest member of his family, and decided to write a novel about their lives. They didn’t know it was going to happen, but it became a very successful book, and even has a movie being made about it! Whether or not it is just based on them, or all true, that is the real question. Despite all of this fame for the youngest son, he has problems lasting in the sack, and therefore is flawed again. His assistant Kate Mara might be able to help.

He has two older brothers, one a not too successful lawyer (Rainn Wilson, took 8 tries to pass the bar), and a more successful businessman with a wife (Michael C Hall, Judy Greer). His older sister is Sarah Silverman, and is thinking of suing for damages, all while her friend Stephen Tobolowsky is trying to hit that. Oh yeah, and the entire thing is narrated by Lewis Black.

Lot of star power right there. Unfortunately just describing the plot seemed weird to me. Characters all there, and a dad, who really wants to bring his family together. That is about it.

A very odd film, no doubt, and had some humorous moments, but I am left wondering what the point was of it all. I just needed something…more!

More than Rainn Wilson looking like, well, a pedophile.