Tag: Maya Rudolph

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.

Jim Rash and Nat Faxon wrote The Descendants, and graced our screens with its presence in 2011. It was nominated for Best Picture and eventually won Best Adapted Screenplay. It basically made these writers pretty hot commodities.

That is why I was excited to see The Way, Way Back, their next film. No George Clooney this time, but they have plenty of other actors to fill his void.

Look, here are three now!

Summer can suck. Especially if you are Duncan (Liam James). Your parents are divorced, your dad just moved from NY to CA, and your mom (Toni Collette) is dating the biggest douche in the universe, Trent (Steve Carell). Unfortunately for Duncan, he has to head out to Trent’s summer beach house to pretend to give this new family idea a chance.

Did I mention Trent is a douche? He talks down to Duncan, constantly goes off with his friends (Rob Corddry, Amanda Peet) to get drunk or high or both. It is basically his personal summer vacation, where Duncan and his mom are afterthoughts.

But eventually, Duncan finds friendship in the local Water Park. Slacker manager Owen (Sam Rockwell) has decided to take pity on Duncan, give him a job and help him find a purpose in this long dreadful summer. With the help of Owen and the other workers (Maya Rudolph, Faxon, Rash), Duncan learns that there are non sucky things out there in life.

That is great, sure, but will this new found joy in life at all help him with his horrible home situation? Will it help him woo over the neighbor girl (AnnaSophia Robb), who has to deal with her constantly drunk mother (Allison Janney)?

Oh god. He is staring into my soul. What do I do!? Just act natural. Ho hum…AHHH!

Comedy/Drama movies are actually quite hard to pull off successfully. After all, even the strictest of dramas tend to have some minor elements in comedy, and vice versa. But most movies labeled in this category are clearly still one genre over the other, or even worse, weak in both areas to try and find a balance. One of the best examples I could list of a real comedy/drama would be 50/50, a film that made me both laugh and cry.

Nat Faxon and Jim Rash wrote a decent comedy/drama with The Descendants, very enjoyable, but it could have been more dramatic. For The Way, Way Back, they decided to amp up their game, and created a much better film. Not going to lie, I cried three times during it. I can’t say I relate specifically to the scenes in this film, but thanks to an excellent build up with terrific acting from everyone on the cast, the emotions quickly took over.

Steve Carell had to play the biggest jerk in the world, and he pulled it off well. It was quite surprising. Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney carried the comedy for me, while at the same time their characters felt real. Everyone felt real. I love real, even though real characters lead to uncomfortable moments.

Major props as well to Liam James. I can’t say I recognized him in anything before, however he pulled off the awkward/lonely teenager role really well. But hey, apparently he was Young Shawn in the Psych flashbacks, so that is kind of cool.

 

4 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.

Here are some facts about Adam Sandler!

Adam Sandler has never made a sequel to any of his movies before Grown Ups 2. He has been in one sequel before, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, but he wasn’t in the first film, and he obviously didn’t make, direct, or star in it.

Who would have thought that Adam Sandler secretly had some standards? He only works with new(ish) ideas. That is unless his film makes a lot of money, like Grown Ups did.

Okay, that is really just one long fact about Adam Sandler. Sorry if you expected more.

The scene from the trailer where he says “Your car is filthy” is cut out. Disappointment. The movie takes place soon after Grown Ups, except now in a small town! Lenny (Sandler) has moved his family away from Los Angeles for a quieter and simpler life. Long story short, Grown Ups 2 is a day in his and his friends life.

Lenny’s wife (Salma Hayek) wants to discuss having a fourth kid. Marcus (David Spade) just realized he has a son who is visiting him today. Kurt (Chris Rock) wants to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary, but his wife (Maya Rudolph) forgot. And uhh, Eric (Kevin James) really loves his mother and hides that fact from his wife (Maria Bello)? One of his kids might be dumb? His part doesn’t really have a plot.

There are other characters too. Like Nick Swardson, playing some sort of extremely drugged out bus rider. Or Taylor Lautner, leader of the frat boys, with assistance from Milo Ventimiglia.

Sorry agian, but I think that is the best plot description I can give of this film. Honestly, it feels like it is a skit movie. The plot is basically childish adults hanging out, so most of the scenes are really unrelated. It isn’t set up like a traditional skit movie, like the recent Movie 43, but it feels like it could be a long strange episode of Saturday Night Live. Or a live action Family Guy.

The amount of cameos in this movie only helps that stigma. Here is a big list! There is Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz, Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Austin, Dan Patrick, Aly Michalka, Andy Samberg, Will Forte, and even Paulina Gretzky, daughter of (of course) Wayne Gretzky.

Yet no Rob Schneider. Where the heck did he go from the first movie?

I say some shocking things in this review about Mr. Lautner. Read on to find out! D: D:There is a lot wrong from this movie. All the jokes are extremely low-brow, almost 100% poop and sex jokes. In fact, there were so many sex related jokes that I was surprised this movie was rated PG-13 still.

It just felt bad overall. Yes, I still found some of the scenes humorous, but because it was put together so badly and without any context, it just left a rank taste in my mouth. There might have been ten minutes worth of plot. Maybe.

The CGI was out of place in this movie too. The Moose didn’t look real, nor did the “tire rolling down the hill” scene. It almost felt like a cartoon, in that people were doing things that should have killed them, but they were completely fine afterwards.

The ending itself is lazy humor. I am describing it as slap stick to the extreme, as it ends with all the adults in a literal fist fight with a group of frat boys, and kicking there butt. I do mean all the adults, as in everyone linked to above. The ending of the movie is just a long brawl.

Speaking of the frat boys, Taylor Lautner was literally the best part of this movie, and he had a huge role as the main villain, with tons of dialogue. Yet he wasn’t even listed in the credits? What? Six different frat boys were credited, only two of which had real names, but not the main frat guy.

Just an example why this whole film was a mess. That and the unexplained disappearance of Rob Schneider.

 

1 out of 4.

I instantly wanted to see Friends With Kids as soon as I saw the first trailer. Wait no, that’s not right. I wanted to see it as soon as I saw the cast list.

I was so excited to see all these people I liked in it, and then you know, one person I didn’t know. I also noticed that they didn’t really try to advertise this movie at all, outside the week before it came out. That sucks. Oh well, I am sure it isn’t entire cliche based.

Hey! I know these people. And none of them are the main people.

Alright, so we got a group of friends, two couples, and two single people. Adam Scott is a successful business man doing something, and Jennifer Westfeldt is also successful at something. They are just friends though. The couple friends at Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd, who are about to have a kid, and Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm who also are going to have a kid. Well that is weird.

Four years later, their friends are completely different, and also potentially having marital woes. But when you are married you cant just ask for a “break” without it being a big deal. With Jennifer’s biological clock going off and never finding a good guy, Adam thinks they should have a child together! BUt you know, no relationship, just have a baby, raise him separately and maintain their distance and friendship, and thus, no problems! Couldn’t go wrong.

A few years later, they even are seeing people. Well first Adam finds a girl walking a dog in the park, Megan Fox, despite her being way younger than him. This makes Jennifer upset (for some reason?) but she finds an older more experienced guy, Edward Burns, who has interesting stories and knows how to treat a woman and get shit done. As the kid gets older, I don’t expect him to find it weird about his parents situation. Sure their friends do, but come on, this is 2012. Babies probably have their shit together sooner now.

I was told it was good to acknowledge the main cast in the pictures too. Fineee.

You are probably wondering, “No really who the hell is that main actress? I know everyone else in the movie but her!?”. Well she is the writer and director damn it, and clearly the only woman she knows who can articulate the emotions she wants so she did it her self! That explains it. This is also supposed to be a bit more realistic than your standard RomComs, and I can say that it is. Parents having natural fights and getting through it, and some that don’t. Friends who are honest with each other, and some that drink too much.

But the dialogue between Adam and Jennifer is great and yet not the best part of the movie. Jon Hamm, as he tends to do, steals the show, and you find yourself paying attention to him more so whenever he is on screen, that sly dog.

Despite all this, and a decent plot, it just felt like it was both missing something and too long. The ending comes pretty abruptly, but I like that. Just the build up to it? I don’t like it. It takes a long time to get there (I guess that is a realistic approach?) and there is lots of filler that drags the film way down. More than one montage based scene as well. But it does do a nice job at getting to the point early on at least.

Ehh, its hard to describe. Should have been better than what was on screen.

2 out of 4.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exhibit A.

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

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

Also, a lot of vagina talk.

3 out of 4.

You know what would make Grown Ups better? More SNL cast members. I don’t think they got enough of them.

Just kidding. That was the opposite of the truth. With at least 8 people who are (or used to be) SNL cast members (could be more? I am not an SNL addict), it helped the movie seem like a “old friends get back together” type event anyways.

Some people weren’t invited to the reunion though.

Alright, the movie is about a group of old friends from a smaller town. When they were younger, they won a basketball championship. Now? Their old coach is dead, so they are celebrating his life with a reunion for the weekend.

We have Adam Sandler, now rich, married to Salma Hayek. Kevin James, now fat, married to Maria Bello. Chris Rock, now a housedad, married to Maya Rudolph. All three of them have two kids each. Rob Schneider is on his third (or fourth?) marriage, and has 3 kids (two of which are babes). And last, David Spade, all alone and a bachelor.

OKAY GOT IT ALL? GOOD.

Anyways. Throughout the weekend they try and relive their childhood. They try and get their kids used to the outdoors. They try and fix each others problems, as they haven’t seen each other for a long time.

By the end, the kids are outside more. Their lives are fixed by each other. They are bigger friends. And their wives still don’t hate them. That is more or less the plot. Mostly just a bunch of random events and activities, where these now grown ups get to try and relive their childhood memories, and joke on each other the whole time.

I mean. Parts were okay? I thought it had a couple decent moments. But they obviously tried to make it too family friendly and just felt muzzled. I think Schnieder was badly cast as “weird spiritual vegan dude”, and Spade as a bachelor felt very child predatorish. He is the creepiest single man alive, and I would even compare that to myself.

No one else (outside of Bello and Schnieder)) probably had to do much acting. I think most of it was them just acting like they probably normally would act. So I thought that was kind of lame. Just everything seeming more or less normal. Oh well! I think we can all agree though that Rob should try going back to red hair, am I right?

Badly pixelated for your protection.

So yeah. Nothing really special about this movie. Just a subpar comedy.

1 out of 4

Why hello there, highly anticipated movie that over the summer all of my friends hyped up as heeeelarious? Well overall I did enjoy it. Not as much of a laugh riot I had hoped or came to expect. But that is what hype does to you.

It was longer than I figured, both just in terms of length of film, and length of story. I figured it would involve just the pre-planning for the wedding, then the wedding, then the after wedding party where everyone gets crunk.

Not to be confused with getting Chunk from The Goonies.

BUT IT IS MORE THAN THAT. This is prengagement to wedding story. This is the whole package from just friends to having Kristen Wiig be your maid of honor. This of course leads to bridesmaids jealousy, where Kristen has to compete with hotty ms. perfect over her the brides affections, played by the weird Maya Rudolph. Through shenanigans and not being perfect, conflict arises between them. Not cat fights, just more like hissy fights. AND CONFLICT. I already said that.

The other Bridesmaids are the shy girl (Ellie Kemper), the MILF (Wendi McLendon-Covey), the rich new best friend who is trying to take over maid of honor duties (Rose Byrne) and the bigger soon to be relative friend who lacks social graces and yet is funny (Melissa McCarthy).

I like that Jon Hamm had a role in this movie, but wasn’t even in the credits. I call sexism on that. How dare they find the bootycall role unimportant. (Cough). Speaking of Booty Call, the other love interest role is played by Chris O’Dowd, who I did find heeeeelarious.

He plays awkward police cop from Cananananada.

My favorite scenes were probably the scenes in which it seemed it went on way too long. Such as engagement party speeches, plane shenanigans, and what not. you know, awkward hilarity.

3 out of 4