Tag: Leslie Mann

If there is one thing we like here at Gorgon Reviews, it is a good title. And I certainly refused to look up anything about the movie, Cha Cha Real Smooth, once a poster and description was released, because I didn’t care. I just wanted to see the movie on its own, with no knowledge at all going in.

Now, for everyone else, here is some knowledge going in after the fact.

Like that the director, writer, and main star is the same guy, Cooper Raiff, and this is his third film. His first film was Madeline & Cooper, but it isn’t even an hour long, and his second film is Shithouse. Yes, both of them are also directed, written, and starring him.

For whatever reason in Raiff’s life, he found himself in the position to be able to make movies and star in them, so good on him. You know, assuming they don’t suck. And I am trying to manifest positive energy that this title isn’t wasted on a poor film.

Mmmmm. Meat Sticks.

Back when Andrew (Cooper Raiff) was a kid, at a Bar Mitzvah, he was in love. It was with a party starter. A person employed by the parents of the party to successfully get individuals to be dancing and make sure everyone had a good time. She was everything to Andrew. And she turned him down, you know, age difference.

Now, years later, Andrew is an adult! He has finished college and has a job at a local fast food joint and moved back in with his parents. He wants to go to another country, to chase the woman he loves, but he is broke. Instead, he finds himself at another Bar Mitzvah party to chaperone his little brother (Evan Assante), and hang out with another girl (Odeya Rush) he knows. For reasons, and alcohol, Andrew finds himself the life of the party! He makes sure everyone has a great time and now finds himself potentially landing into his own business as a party starter during this busy Bar/Bat Mitzvah season.

Also at that party, he meets Domino (Dakota Johnson), a woman who seems far too young to have a kid at this party. But yep, she has a kid, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), who was older than the others, and autistic, and hard to actually get to dance and let go. So Andrew makes that one of his missions. It doesn’t hurt that he likes Domino too. Even if she has a fiance.

Cha Cha Real Smooth is about a man finished with college, constantly falling in love with women older than him, who is having a hard time accepting his home life, his social life, and trying to find an eventual direction moving forward.

Also starring Brad Garrett, Leslie Mann, and Raúl Castillo.

Why do we even test for Autism, when we all know that headphones is the main giveaway?

I want to get one thing noted right away. Did you know that the girl playing our Autistic character is actually Autistic? It was apparently a big concern of the filmmakers, to make sure we had some good representation here, and not some gross minstrel show of offensive stereotypes. I don’t even think it was something that was hard for them to accomplish. I am starting to think Sia didn’t even try for the movie Music. I am thinking she lied to us!

Raiff is entirely charismatic and adorable in this film. He has a Ben Wyatt like smile and glow to him when he is excited. He seems to really care about his brother and mother, even if he is still overall drifting. I think it would be awfully hard to not be invested in his story, even when he is making obviously poor choices and going down uncomfortable paths.

The story itself is relatively strong, piecing together the subplots in a nice way to coincide with our main story of a young adult drifter. The dialogue itself is also well thought out. The family bonds felt believable. The tough situations for many characters didn’t always have easy answers, even if the morals were technically easy to sort through as a viewer.

This is a comedy/drama that does a good balance of both. It made me sad, it made me guffaw, and it made me feel. Unrelated, I did go back and see Shithouse because of how much I liked Cha Cha Real Smooth. I definitely didn’t like it as much as this one, but it still had great emotional scenes so it was a good building block to his third directed film for sure. I look forward to Raiff’s next film, and I hope he keeps directing and writing them!

4 out of 4.

I was very excited when I saw the trailer for Blockers. Not due to the actors, or the plot, or the humor in the trailer. Just the title alone.

I really hoped that the title of the film was officially a picture of a rooster and the word Blockers. I can’t tell you if any film title has officially just been a picture, or included a picture, but I was excited that this one might be one of the first in a good while.

Unfortunately, no. It is just called Blockers. Sure, rooster imagery abundant on the posters. But it is not the same.

It is just not the same.

Look at all these cocks right here.

Ah, growing up. The joys of being a parent. Movies and stuff. Mitchell (John Cena), Lisa (Leslie Mann), and Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) met each other on their daughters first day of school. They became best friends, so they had to be friends. Their daughters (respectively) are Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan), Julie (Kathryn Newton), and Sam (Gideon Adlon), who are all dealing with their own issues, both in terms of their relationships with their parents and their relationships with boys.

But like all movies, prom is set up to be this big special night, so they are determined to make it special. They make a sex pact. They are all going to lose their virginity that night and it will make them closer together, so what when college happens, they don´t lose their friendship or anything.

The parents find out after they have left and aren´t sure what to do. Just kidding, they are going to find their daughters and put a stop to this madness before their daughters lives are ruined.

Also starring Jimmy Bellinger, Sarayu Blue, Gary Cole, Gina Gershon, Ramona Young, Miles Robbins, Hannibal Buress, and Graham Phillips.

Fuck that fedora is cool.

The most apparent thing about this movie is that it was directed by a woman. Kay Cannon has worked on some pretty woman based shows you would have heard about, and directed this film to make sure the woman’s voice was key. If this was directed by a dude, the parents would have been more egregious, the daughters would have had no real point of view scenes to speak their minds, and it would have been entirely forgettable.

Surprisingly, there was a wonderful amount of great arguments and feminist ideals presented by the daughters and other adults throughout the film. It was clear that our three leads were being shit heads and not thinking in a way that was beneficial to their daughters. Hell, even one of our leads for some time had great intentions as well. The message hits over and over again, without feeling like a lecture, and wanting to make a point as obvious as possible for those watching at home. Because this is just a comedic work of fiction, but it seems like its goal might be really to reach the audience, to help them learn how to better and more fairly treat their daughters.

Moving on.

Also I laughed a bunch. The acting wasn’t amazing. Cena was probably one of the lower points for me. The daughters and other teenagers really carried the film, and yes, surprisingly, Barinholtz’s character. I can’t say this is a movie I would want to watch over and over again, but it did the trick and was way better than it should have been.

3 out of 4.

Oh hey, Vacation. A comedy series a lot of people look back with fond memories. Because it told the truth. Family vacations are terrible, but we all grin and bear it because that is just what you gotta do.

It is a concept most people can related to, and with nostalgia being the strong bitch that it is, it makes sense for there to eventually be more Vacation movies. Movies that capture the true American spirit: cramped in a car with people you already hang out with too much. At the same time, people assume that if you make a new version of something old, the old one gets tarnished or something.

Those people are dumb.

Which is why I do declare I will not make comparisons to the first Vacation movie. I will judge this on its own merits as a new comedy, that may have references to a previous movie.

And my noble steed on this ride will be a small car.

Vacation is not a reboot or a remake, it is a sequel.

Rusty Griswald (Ed Helms) is now grown up and has a family of his own! He is a pretty good pilot, but works for a shitty airline that only does short domestic flights, so he can spend time with his family. His wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate) is a stay at home mom, raising the two boys. The older one, James (Skyler Gisondo) is almost done with high school, very sensitive, plays the guitar. He constantly gets picked on by his much smaller younger brother, Kevin (Steele Stebbins), who is a dick and is into wrestling.

Well, they normally go out every year to a cabin in the woods, but Rusty realizes that everyone finds it boring. So he decides to change it up. A cross country road trip from Chicago to California to go to Walley World! Yeah! Rusty had fond memories of the park as a kid, despite that one film where a bunch of bad things happened. This time it is going to go right and they are going to ride the best roller coaster in the country. Damn it.

Of course shit goes bad. Their car is weird and European, white water rafting, bad hot springs, crazy truckers, thieves, and more. They also make a pit stop to visit Rusty’s sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann), who finds the idea of a trip ridiculous. She is also super wealthy for marrying Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth), who is a super attractive weather man. The only other real plot line is James constantly running into Adena (Catherine Missal), a girl on another road trip.

Vacation also offers a lot of cameos. Of course we have Chevy Chase, but we also have Ron Livingston, Michael Pena, Kaitlin Olson, Nick Kroll, Tim Heidecker, Colin Hanks (Apparently), Norman Reedus, Keegan-Michael Key, and Charlie Day.

Most of my vacations ended up at a college strip fest as well.

Vacation ends up being different than its predecessor in many ways. For one, it is a modern comedy. So there is an industry regulated volume of a dick jokes that it needs to have in its film to make it to the big screen. This sort of thing isn’t always noticeable, because if they have a lot of varied other jokes, you usually don’t even notice all the dick jokes that are secretly hiding in the back ground. Unfortunately, if a movie is 95% dick jokes, they stand out like a sore…thumb. (You thought I’d say penis, heh heh heh).

So yes, it feels like Vacation is a one trick pony, where that trick is jumping over a bar that is floating about an inch over the ground. It would have been nice if they decided to raise that bar instead and make longer smarter jokes, but those are hard and require patience I guess.

Ed Helms just wasn’t interesting. A typical character in his wheelbarrow and it didn’t seem to offer anything new. There was some good interactions between the kids, and Applegate did a fine job.

Honestly, the reason I am giving this a passing rating is for two scenes. One, Four Corners monument scene was surprising and strangely funny. But more importantly, Charlie Fucking Day. This movie is borderline watchable for his scenes alone. Hysterical. High energy. Wet. Fantastic. Technically soon you can probably find the whole scene on Youtube, but I feel like the film should get some credit for featuring something so marvelous in its data innards.

Yep. Without Charlie Day this movie would have just been downright terrible. You don’t hear that phrased that often.

2 out of 4.

The Other Woman?

Huh? Didn’t I review this movie already? A few years ago in 2009 starring Natalie Portman. Oh sorry, that was called The Other Woman, not…wait, okay yeah, same title. I guess that one was a drama.

Apparently it is a popular title though, because there was also The Other Woman from 2008, The Other Woman from 1995, and The Other Woman from 1992. Damn, a lot of ladies being cheated on by women up in here. To compare, I only see one other movie called The Other Man, which I also reviewed. I guess that just means men are pigs, and women rarely cheat in a relationship?

“There’s the gu- GET HIM!!!!”

Carly Whitten (Cameron Diaz) is a high powered lawyer. But don’t worry, her job isn’t at all relevant to the film. She starts seeing Mark King (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), it is great. They are exclusive, she doesn’t want to sleep around, she finds no faults.

Until she finds out he has (record screech) a wife! Kate (Leslie Mann) is… well a house wife. No job because he pays for it all, doing business stuff, and no kids. Just boredom. So she doesn’t have many friends that her own either. So once the cat is out of the bag and they figure it out, she turns to Carly to rant and to scheme.

THEN THEY FIND OUT HE HAS ANOTHER LADY! Amber (Kate Upton), a young, dumb, blonde.

Hell, there might even be a fourth. No spoilers.

But the three find each other and decide they can want to get even and ruin him. After all, the three of them combined means they might be able to get that one man. Err.

Also starring Taylor Kinney as the brother of the wife, because why not, and Nicki Minaj as a receptionist, because they hate us.

Here are your heroes. Walking. Being women.

First of all, I think this movie was designed to fail Bechdel Test for the entire length of a movie. I don’t think there is a scene that doesn’t involve women talking about men. That’s the whole movie.

Second of all, fuck Nikki Minaj being in this movie. Her role is pointless, it was a role that could have gone to anyone, and her nasally talking voice doesn’t help. Related? Kate Upton’s role in this film is also basically pointless. Literally, could have been no one, because she had barely any lines, despite being in half the movie.

Third, the ending was terrible. Their plan was…really simple. There was no intrigue to it. It happened. The guy got owned. And then the movie basically ended. A lot of build up to the moment without a lot of payoff.

So, why the rating?

Leslie Fucking Mann. She was hilarious in this movie. Cameron Diaz was meh. Somehow Leslie Mann though was off the chart and saved this movie from being a shit show. I am shocked as you. I never expected that I would praise her role in a movie, but there you go.

Very basic story, rent it on Red Box eventually for Leslie Mann.

2 out of 4.

Rio 2. Did it need to happen? The first film, Rio, told a complete story. I don’t remember how I felt about the movie initially, but I quickly grew to hate it.

That’s right, I now hate the first Rio. The songs are terrible, the story is dumb. The songs are really really terrible. After one listen, I knew I could live without hearing them again (but of course I did hear them again). But whatever, I don’t have to dwell on it.

But it got a sequel because it made money, makes sense. Now they have a family of birds, doing family stuff, and living in Brazil full time. At least this time the plot won’t be an inability to fly.

No, this time it is an inability to be fly.

Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro) and Linda (Leslie Mann), the humans, are off doing human things. Roaming the Amazon rain forest, looking for cool shit. They stumble on some cool shit, but also some bad shit. I am literally done talking about them.

Needless to say, the bird type that Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) and Jewel (Anne Hathaway) are have a huge home in the middle of the rain forest, away from humans. I mean, after all, they had to come from somewhere right? That’s right, Hathaway actually voiced the same character for the sequel, unlike the travesty that occurred for Hoodwinked Too.

So they take their family and friends to find the lost tribe. Or whatever. Living in the Amazon! Yay! There they meet Jewel’s dad, Eduardo (Andy Garcia) and former lover I think, Roberto (Bruno Mars). Now that Blu knows how to fly, he has to learn how to really be a jungle bird if he wants to make sure his wife still loves him…?

Oh, and uhh. Nigel (Jemaine Clement) is back, wanting revenge. He also has a poisonous frog friend named Gabi (Kristin Chenoweth) who really loves him for whatever reason. And there are loggers. And there are parrots or something that share the forest with the Blue Mckaws.

All of the random ass bird and dog characters are also back (Jamie Foxx, George Lopez, Tracy Morgan, and Will i Am) and yes, they serve even less of a purpose in this movie.

These two, plus ant eater, plus parrots, plus loggers, means like, 10,000 villains.

Rio 2 is a strange movie. Like I just said, there are so many dang villains, it just felt excessive. Because of that fact, Nigel didn’t have a great send off. When his plan finally came true, it all was super rushed and then the movie ended.

The music for Rio 2 was a little bit better, but not amazing still. This franchise’s problem is singability. I don’t want to go and sing any of these songs later, just like the first one. Just all of them are so erratic. My favorite song was the Poison Love in which Chenoweth goes full Broadway crazy on hitting all sorts of notes. Yes, surprisingly, her character was the funniest of the whole film. She didn’t even have that much time in the movie either it felt like.

I think, somehow they went even more stereotypical than the first movie. There is even a big soccer like match with the birds, including announcers acting exactly as you’d expect.

Everything else was ehh. Was hard to keep paying attention to the film, due to how pointless the plot lines felt. I hope there isn’t a Rio 3 in the future, doing the Olympics or whatever in a couple of years. That will be stupid.

1 out of 4.

Ah, Hollywood has set out to ruin reintroduce another beloved cartoon franchise for the modern masses! This time it is Mr. Peabody & Sherman, based on Peabody’s Improbable History, a short featured on the original Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show.

Which is great. I know they did The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle about fifteen years ago, and it bombed, by why not the short associated with it? In fact, we need more shorts from shows to make it to the big screen. If I had to chose just one, I’d pick Justice Friends from Dexter’s Laboratory. Yes, that would make an excellent film indeed.

But only live action, like Underdog, another successful cartoon to movie reboot.

But I digress. It is this dog’s day to shine.

Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell) is the smartest entity in the world and he has invented a lot of things. The one challenge he had left to face was raising a son, however, so as luck would have it, he finds a boy Sherman (Max Charles) to adopt. Mr. Peabody vows to raise the boy right and teach him all about the world!

So he invents the Way Back machine (or “WABAK” but I never saw it written that way in the film) that allows him to travel time and space. Now he can teach him fun historical facts! As long as he doesn’t travel to a time where they already exist, because then there would be two of them which could have catastrophic consequences!

However, at this point, it is time for Sherman’s first day of school ever, which is also apparently first grade. There, he is picked on by a girl bully Penny (Ariel Winter, our second Modern Family cast member) and he bites her! Oh no! A social service lady, Ms. Grunion (Allison Janney) believes it is Mr. Peabody’s fault as a dog cannot properly raise a boy.

With Mr. Peabody’s integrity on the line, he makes a plan to invite Penny and her parents (Stephen Colbert, Leslie Mann) for dinner, to prove that he is a good parent and hopefully reconcile the relationship between Penny and Sherman. Unfortunately, Sherman shows Penny the Way Back and everything falls to pieces.

Also featuring the voice talents of Stanley Tucci, Patrick Warburton (yes, Krunk), and Tom McGrath.

“Now shut up Sherman while I go bang some pre-historic bitches.” Wow, Mr. Peabody used to be a jerk.

Ah yes, a movie about time travel, history, and learning! All with the potential for both kids humor and “smart jokes” without necessarily getting into the “adult joke” territory.

However, if you are going to make a movie involving time travel, you have to be prepared to be judged accordingly, regardless of intent. To me, there were a lot of flaws with the way time travel was presented in this movie. It created paradoxes (outside of the ones shown in the movie) and other bad time no-no’s, but chose to ignore all of them. Bah. It is not too hard to make a sensical time travel movie, this one just failed to do so.

Speaking of nonsense, the ending was a huge mess. Everything was bad, excrement was hitting the proverbial fan, chaos. But they had a plan to solve it! Yeah, it didn’t make any amount of sense, scientifically or otherwise. It worked in the movie and then it ended. Honestly, it felt worse than a deus ex machina. It just made me feel cheated.

Basically, the creators said that if they are going to make stuff up, they might as well go completely made up.

Other than that, this movie did have some enjoyable moments and jokes. There were nice puns everywhere, as a throwback to the original and a few touching scenes. However, the plot they give the movie is under developed and doesn’t even serve as a good excuse for time travel. I think Mr. Peabody & Sherman could have been so much more and easily turned into a huge franchise.

Oh well, at least I got the sweet 3D Glasses Add-On.

 

1 out of 4.

I didn’t plan on watching Little Birds, it was right next to the movie I wanted in the store. But that movie was gone, so fuck it, why not. Could be good.

I will admit, I had a huge brain fart when I picked it though. I saw that it had Juno Temple as an actress in the movie, so I of course went, “Ohh, I love Ellen Page!”. Damn that movie Juno confusing me every time.

Come on Juno. You are on the back of a bicycle. Smile like you fucking mean it! The story is mainly about two girls living in Salton Sea, California and they are poor as fuck. Well, decently poor. Lily (Juno Temple) is shown with cut marks around her vagina, clearly there from some attempted suicide. Which her dad totally did. Her mother (Leslie Mann) is doing the best she can, and pretty dang caring, but Lily is super angsty at 15, so she doesn’t care.

Alison (Kay Panabaker) is living with her dad, who is a super alcoholic. She also lost her mom, but to the Cancer. She and Lily are great friends, except Alison actually has a positive enough outlook in life. Because she isn’t a cunt.

Eventually they meet some skater boys, and said see you later town, it wasn’t good enough for them.

Yep, they decided to leave the area, steal Alison’s uncle’s truck, and drive to LA a few hours away to meet the boys. Lily is totally into Jesse (Kyle Gallner), where Alison doesn’t really care for any of them, but gives into peer pressure. The leader of the boys is David (Chris Coy), who is a no good, do nothing. They all are runaways too, living in a not so very safe abandoned apartment.

So why not get into shenanigans? Outside of normal crime and skateboarding. Like setting up dates for Lily with middle aged men to steal their shit when they get back home. Yeah, that can’t go wrong.

It was pretty great living for the boys before Lily/Ali joined them. Well, this is an indie coming of age movie. It turns out most of these are all the same. We have unlikable characters, doing unlikeable things, leading me to not liking the movie. Crazy how that works out.

I wouldn’t say that the acting was bad, just I was incredibly bored by all of it. It took a long long time for the girls to meet the boys and go to LA, where any excitement started to happen. It was a chore to watch Lily bitch the whole film about her life and hate her mom, for no reason at all.

But then when we got to LA, it took awhile still to get exciting. The ending was a bit exciting, but I hate out they ultimately decided to go with the scene. Sure, it was unpredictable, but the predictable ending would have been a lot better and make more sense.

Kay Panabaker was the best part of this movie, although she has yet to be in any movie that I have rated decently. Come on woman, I liked you (ish) in No Ordinary Family. Make your sister proud.

1 out of 4.

Judd Apatow wants to make a realistic comedy movie about life. How do I know that? Because that is generally what he always does. This time, he is getting older, so he needs a movie about that as well. This Is 40 is the kind of sequel to Knocked Up, featuring the supporting characters from that movie as they both turn 40 in the same week. You know, because 40 is allegedly old age and time to start dying.

Strangely enough, I can’t tell if the mid life crisis mentality is a real life thing, or if it is just a movie creation. Shit, could movies be lying to me about what being older is like?

JUST WHAT IS 40 ANYWAYS!?

Apparently cake. Cake is 40.

Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) are both turning 40 this week, so shit might be hitting the fan. They have two kids, one going through puberty (Maude Apatow) and the other in young annoying phase (Iris Apatow).

But hey, Pete runs a record label kind of. They are poor, sure, and don’t sign any new big people, but they have regular small fan base. Chris O’Dowd and Lena Dunham work for him, but really, it is shit and they are losing lots of money. It doesn’t help that he is also letting his dad (Albert Brooks) borrow a lot of money, as he also has recently had more kids, whaaat.

Debbie isn’t flying high either. She has a small boutique, with two workers (Megan Fox, Charlyne Yi), but she is missing a lot of money from her inventory as well. She is also trying to stay in shape, change her life around, with the help of a life coach (Jason Segel).

Can the two get their life back on track, learn to trust each other again, and you know, not die alone and unhappy like the rest of people in movies?

When you Google This Is 40, half of the images will just be Megan Fox in a bra. Why aren’t there more of Rudd with the starfish, damn it?

Hey, do you tend to love Judd Apatow movies and its cast and Paul Rudd? Then go see the movie, simple as that, you will anyways. Rudd does play the same character, but he kind of had to, since its a sort of sequel. There are amusing moments in this movie, there are awkward ones, but there are also scenes that go on pretty long. Pretty sure this movie is over 2 hours, which means more time to make you feel bad or good about your own life.

But I think this film could have been a lot better. Maybe, just maybe, a small cameo with Rogen/Heigl from the first movie? But no, we get none of them. Really big miss there in my eyes.

Other than that, this movie is exactly as you think it would be. Apatow has made enough movies to have a certain style and humor in them, and I would say it definitely falls in line with the rest of them.

2 out of 4.

It has been a few years since we have had a stop motion scary movie, the last of which was three years ago in Coraline. But this year we have two! ParaNorman, made by some relatively unheard of directors, and Frankenweenie, a remake of a 1984 short film by Tim Burton, king of the slightly creepy.

Yep, ParaNorman is the underdog in this fight but hey, it is at least in color!

All white people, but color nonetheless.

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see dead people. Ghosts at least, who are stuck on earth because their time and tasks have not been completed and cannot move on. So you’d think Norman would go around helping all the ghosts move on, but instead he just befriends them and acts like its not his problem. That isn’t the movie plot, they never even bring up Norman helping the ghosts, he is just a dick kid who never thinks to help out his ghost friends. Just an observation!

He doesn’t keep the ghosts a secret either, so everyone thinks he is a freak. His parents don’t know what to do (Jeff Garlin, Leslie Mann) and his sister (Anna Kendrick) thinks he is a loser. Outside of the ghosts, so far just a normal sounding life. His only friend is a guy named Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), who has no friends because he is fat. True story.

In this town, their claim to fame is that they once burned a witch. But before the witch was burnt, she hexxed her seven accusers into a zombie fate once they die, meaning that  she is actually a witch and really they did nothing wrong. You can’t just let witches free and running amuck! Years later, the curse still has not occurred because of people like crazy uncle Penderghast (John Goodman) who delay the curse. But once he kicks the bucket, it is up to Norman to make sure the zombies don’t rise up and take over, with the help of Neil, Neil’s older brother (Casey Affleck), his sister, and the local bully (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

SO MANY ZOMBIES. SEVEN OF THEM. AHH.

Personally, I found the movie to be a bit boring. It is hard to classify just what kind of movie this was, and for who it was meant to be enjoyed by. Most of the good jokes were given away in the trailer and I didn’t understand how this town even felt threatened. I mean, seven zombies? That is a very specific finite number of zombies, in the modern age, a town should be able to handle them. There is a scene where the towns people try to destroy them and end up killing exactly zero. Despite multiple guns, they actually just end up beating them up with umbrellas and clubs and let them get away. Well then.

I could talk a lot about the actual movie, but this one has controversy which is more exciting.

Controversy? In a kids movie? Yes! At the end of the movie, one of the main characters turns out to be gay. It was just meant to be a minor joke, but it has caused a lot of parents to freak out. I won’t get into how ridiculous this controversy even is, leaving that up to you.

Overall, I can’t see why this film has received such high praise. I just felt the stop motion wasn’t the best and that most of the jokes fell flat. Feel free to see it as soon as you can and prove me wrong or tell me what I missed, because I am willing to listen. I do understand that the moral of the film wasn’t just destroy the witch/zombies, but that wasn’t enough for me to care.

2 out of 4.

17 Again is of course not an original plot. A lot of movies have an older person relive their youth, and find out they actually had it good. Sometimes, they get to become old instead. And also other times, they just switch bodies, such as 18 Again! the movie I first heard of when I read about this one.

I got to see 18 Again! when I was about ten, and probably only really remember any of the plot because hey, there were boobs in it (and it was PG?). Score!

Silly kids, you can’t score points in a cafeteria. You have to use a gym!

Back in the late 80s, Mike (Zac Efron) was a stud. Everyone loved him, nice guy, star of basketball team. But during the game when scouts were on hand to see him, it all went to hell. He found out his girlfriend was pregnant, and to comfort her, he left the game and proposed on the spot, pledging to be the best dad to the kid.

Like, 20 years later, and he has turned into Matthew Perry. He has worked for the same company for 16 years and nothing to show for it. He has two kids now, Alex (Sterling Knight), a shy teenage boy who doesn’t have many friends, and Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg), a girl who might be dating a bully (Hunter Parrish). And well, his wife (Leslie Mann) now wants a divorce.

Turns out he blames her for the life he is in. If he didn’t go after he, he could have gone to college and been a star maybe. Way to take it out on your wife, jerk face. So he currently lives with his (now rich) best friend from high school (Thomas Lennon) and has a bad relationship with his family. But due to some random magic he finds himself as his 17 year old self again! After the awkward realization, he now sees it as a way to fix his life. Maybe actually stay as the young version and get a do over.

Or maybe, fix his real life. He is now going to school with his kids. Can he warn his daughter and student body about teenage pregnancy and its effects on life? Can he help his son finally fit in? Can he actually fix his marriage? Why is Jim Gaffigan playing a high school coach, when he is the type of guy who never would work out? Can he help his friend get with the school principal (Melora Hardin)? Okay, that probably isn’t a priority.

“Do you dance with all of your friend’s mothers?”

So what did he chose?! Of course he decided fuck all his responsibilities, time to go to college and get those chicks and money. Right? Who wouldn’t.

But that would be crazy. So instead we got an older guy, trying to not get his daughter attracted to him, and not fuck up his life completely. Overall it did have some interesting moments, but it was pretty easy to tell what was going to happen the whole time. Can’t say I saw any part of the friend/principal relationship coming though, that was weird.

The movie is a decent one, nice resolution, but overall doesn’t offer much new to the genre. So besides that, uhh, watch if you want I guess.

2 out of 4.