Tag: Loretta Devine

I do love a good stuck in time movie. It is just a shame that most of them are not good movies.

We recently had a few famous ones, like Edge of Tomorrow and Happy Death Day. The former was great, the latter not so much.

But what about Naked? This time it is a full on comedy, with this time focusing not on a whole day, just a single hour. And it involves a lot more man butts.

This came out over a year ago on Netflix. I wanted to see it right away, forgot and forgot, until I scoured my saves to find something new. No excuses, except hey, its still there if you want to see it!

Fun fact, I did NOT look up pictures for this movie at work.

Rob Anderson (Marlon Wayans) is a regular guy. He is a substitute teacher, but he doesn´t have big career aspirations. He is getting married to the love of his life, Megan (Regina Hall), and that is good enough to him.

His wedding needs to be perfect. Because her father (Dennis Haysbert), a self made millionaire, certainly doesn´t approve of him. And her ex (Scott Foley), he is super successful and keeps shoving his success in their faith. But he loves her and she loves him, it should be enough.

Unfortunately, the day of the wedding, Rob wakes up on the floor of an elevator. He is naked, he is confused, and he doesn´t remember the night before. He frantically tries to get to his wedding and understand what is going on, but he gets arrested for obvious reasons. At noon, an hour after he woke up, he found himself getting sucked through time and waking up once again in that elevator floor.

He not only has to figure out why he is being sucked back in time, but also what happened to him and how to fix all the issues his absences have caused.

Also starring J.T. Jackson, Eliza Coupe, Loretta Devine, and Brian McKnight as himself.

“Here are our selection of retro pants for maximum movie lols!”

I am not saying I am expert on “stuck in a time loop until everything is perfect!” films, but I do know most of the popular ones, and I think this is the first one to have the person literally sucked from their spot in time to get back to the previous point. Like flying through the air. As for originality, it is also the only one I can think of that repeats just a single hour, instead of a full day.

Unfortunately, the hour seems really off in this movie. It seems by the end too many things are happening from his reset point to realistically take the hour. I didn’t notice it was an hour until the first few times. The first time when he ended up in prison, it felt like a whole day event for him. They did a poor job of making that hour believable by the end, which is a real shame.

Another poor thing? Making it super funny. It was amusing, but I expected a lot actually laughing out loud and less smirks.

You know what? I really do respect the shit out of Marlon Wayans. He is in a lot of movies and he knows that people do not really respect him. They don’t like his acting, they don’t like his jokes, but I approve. Why? Because he really puts all of his energy into these movies. Every part of his body is acting in this movie, not just his head and hands. He seems to be the type to give 110% in anything he does. If he meets fans, he will sign everything and greet every kid.

He just loves what he does and you can see his passion in his work. So while not the best movie, it does try some new things, and obviously he puts it all out there for the viewers to pick apart.

Norm of the North? What in the flip is Norm of the North?

What? You didn’t hear about the Lionsgate animated film coming out mid January? What? Did you also not hear about Strange Magic last year around the same time, which ended up as my #2 Worst Movie of 2015?

Norm of the North has also not received many trailers or TV spots. It is the type of film they are releasing and not expecting much. And let’s not forget that the critic screening of the film is Thursday night, at a time when normal people can already pay money to see it. That is where you put movies you don’t really want the critics to ruin.

But maybe they do expect something out of it. After all, two sequels have already been announced. The sequels are only planning to be 45 minutes long and straight to DVD, but they are still planned!

Here is the real question I wonder though: The Nut Job 2 was also scheduled to be released on the same day, but it has apparently moved its date. However no one out there knows where it was eventually pushed. It has disappeared off the map. Did Norm of the North somehow eat it?

He is looking kind of chunky.

So, we have a polar bear named Norm (Rob Schneider. And now you know what you are working with here). Lives in the arctic. And he can speak Human. We learn this when he tells a seal his life story about why he cannot eat the seal because he is a terrible hunter and doesn’t do polar bear things anymore. Just humans. He in particular likes to dance, of course. He calls it the Arctic Shake. Remember that. That will be important later.

The only other animal who could speak Human was his grandfather (Colm Meaney), the king of the Arctic, but he has disappeared. Speaking of shenanigans, there is a house suddenly on the ice! Fully furnished and ready to be lived in. Apparently it is a model home and some group is shooting a commercial, hoping to sell homes to get people to move to the Arctic. It is an untapped reservoir luxury gold mine. Or something.

Norm tries to get them to flee but only helps them make a good commercial. The owner, Mr. Greene (Ken Jeong) just wants to rip people off. He also has the idea to use an actor to dress up like a polar bear to sell their idea to the world. Of course Norm sneaks to NYC to become that actor and put a stop to everything. But he also feels bad for the PR lady, Vera (Heather Graham) who just wants to get her daughter (Maya Kay) into a good school.

Time to Arctic Shake his way into America’s hearts and stop the Ice take over from happening.

Also featuring the voice work of Bill Nighy, Loretta Devine, Gabriel Iglesias, and Michael McElhatton.

And these little fucks.

Oh where do we begin. Sure, the lemmings. That is what those tiny things are, and three of them join Norm on the adventure. They are apparently indestructible and can do anything, making them a perfect plot device to solve any and all problems. Except for tense moments near the end when characters decide to not use them to untie them for some reason. Oh and they are vulgar too. They pee a lot on things and fart and burp and teehee. They are going for the fucking Minion market and it is despicable.

The plot is paper thin. Points move too fast without a lot of explanation. For some reason none of the animals will believe Norm about the house, despite it being a physical thing anyone can go to, and a lot of witnesses (The Lemmings) and a respected community member. They just laugh at him…for some reason. And in the conclusion, despite none of these same animals going on the journey, they totally believe everything because The Lemmings say so, which is totally contradictory to how they behaved earlier. There is no sense to any of it.

Part of the plot involves getting America to like him shown by some fancy real time approval ratings graph that everyone can just access about things. And after going on a talk show, says one thing, he dances, dances in the street, and everyone loves him. Yay resolution! Well done bear. It is ruining Shut Up And Dance for me now.

The animation was poor and blocky. A final storm scene was almost painful to look at. The Coca Cola polar bear commercials have better overall quality to them

I can’t find any real pictures from them in NYC, just promo art.
But at the same time, look at that background bear and see how terrible it all is.

The director had his button on a fade out button and used it constantly to go between scenes. I was going to vaguely describe an example of it being used improperly, but it hurt my head trying to describe the scene.

I kid you not, my four year old step daughter turned to me twice during the movie and told me this was a bad movie. She didn’t laugh at all. I laughed at a joke that could be misconstrued as a pedophile joke. It also had a decently offensive gay joke, to throw the whole thing more under the bus.

I don’t feel like I am done. There was a love interest. But I didn’t even link her above because she had all of three lines throughout the film and ended up being not important, despite literally marrying her at the end. The final plan of the bad Mr. Greene, which he kept secret, was simply recording Norm talk and changing his words around. And after that happened, Norm basically gave up. “Oh ho, they heard me say something else now. Nothing I can do about it!”

Just. Fuck. This was bad.

Plural? Yes.

I watched Death at a Funeral (British version) the other day, and I realized I wanted to see Death at a Funeral (American version) as well. Obviously the British one came first, but I figured they’d be different enough with the same general plot to do two reviews, but no. They pretty much are the same. Some different jokes, but all the same stuff happens. SO ONE SUPER REVIEW (that counts as two, damn it). Also probably my record for most tags. Two ensemble movies in one. Hooray!

And why not start it off with a naked Alan Tudyk on a roof?

So in both movies, the patriarch of the family dies. The main guy (Chris Rock, Matthew Macfadyen) lived with his folks and is an inspiring writer, which is bad because his slightly younger brother (Martin Lawrence, Rupert Graves) already has made a best seller. Jealousy!

We also have their cousin (Zoe Saldana, Daisy Donovan) is bringing her new fiance to the funeral, hoping her own dad will approve of him. This makes the fiance (Alan Tudyk, James Marsden) nervous, and he takes some Vallium to calm down. But it really isn’t Vallium. Her ex is also there (and trying to win her back…Luke Wilson, Ewen Bremner), now a friend of the family, along with another friend of the family (Tracy Morgan, Andy Nyman) who has the unfortunate job of looking out for the wheel chaired uncle (Danny Glover, Peter Vaughan).

Got all that? Too bad. A few problems go wrong, delaying the actual ceremony, which is perfect for the real main plotline. The midget who no one knows turns out to be the secret gay lover of their dad (Peter Dinklage, Peter Dinklage) with picture proof, and threatens to show everyone unless he gets a nice sum since he was left off of the will. Yes blackmail, and midgets.

I am sure I tagged some people and didn’t mention them. Honestly I lost track. Here is Loretta Devine, who you would have guessed was in the American version without looking it up probably.

Somehow, both of these actors naked on a roof was the easiest “same scene” from both movies to find.

So, these movies both feature large ensemble casts, with a few different plot lines so that they can all build up and get crazy by the end of the movie.

But which is better? I have heard from multiple sources that they think the British version is WAY better than the American. They also said this before watching the American though. After watching both though I find that…well they are both okay. I didn’t find one vastly superior to the other. Honestly, I probably would have been fine with either of them if only one of them had to exist!

So watch whatever version you choose, knowing full well that if you choose the British one for any other reason than it being the original, then you are probably a racist.

Now clearly I am not the market group this movie was trying to capture with this movie. As a white guy, something about the title For Colored Girls does not appeal to me. But as a movie watcher, all movies appeal to me. So I had to see this movie now. Maybe it contained secrets that I wasn’t supposed to know? Like reading letters addressed to to other people. I definitely don’t do that, because that is a crime. Crime is illegal.

And I don’t do illegal things, but I do legal things with items used to stop illegal things.

I was SHOCKED and Taken Aback from this film. I don’t think those are mutually exclusive terms. This movie could be viewed as a series of unfortunate events to happen to seven different black women. From underground abortions, to rape, to child death, the negative happenings just continued to pound away at the viewer, leaving the second half of the film to mostly be a recovery phase, to try and recollect. Seriously. It sucked. You will feel horrible at the midpoint, and then a little bit worse right after that. Each women (who have real names but also represent a color of the rainbow) also gets a long monologue that seems really out of place in the movie. It is in poetic form and it is because the movies are based off of a series of poems, called…wait for it…

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.

Rainnnnbowwwwwwww

Overall, most of the actresses did very well, and the three~ mainish man characters. Unfortunately, with all of the characters and story lines it is easy to forget what is happening to who. Similarly the out of place feel of the monologues push it from a 4 to a 3.