Tag: Rob Corddry

Studies have shown that reviews that feature “Lake” in the title end up being better than expected when writing said review.

Of course, my only review before this was the movie Flakes, which was, I admit, better than I imagined it would be. It was quirky, off beat.

Shimmer Lake, it has plenty of quirky actors in it, but I am not sure how off beat it will end up being. I did go in with low expectations, despite the Lake theory, and as you can see, hey, it was better than I imagined.

There was less sexual tension in this movie than I imagined as well. Look at that gap between police officers!

Shimmer Lake is also a story told in reverse. Similar to Memento, sure, but it is on a day by day basis. We start our story on Friday, and we see how the entirety of Friday plays out, then we see Thursday, all the way to Tuesday.

Because you see, on Tuesday, there was a bank robbery. And this is a small town, Shimmer Lake, so everybody knows everybody, and heck, a lot of them are related. Like or Sheriff Zeke (Benjamin Walker), whose brother, Andy (Rainn Wilson), a lawyer, just helped rob a bank on Tuesday. Andy worked with two other locals (Wyatt Russell, Mark Rendall) robbed a bank when it had a well known surplus, and Zeke was shot in the theft.

And now they are still about the town, Zeke is sure of it.

We just have to figure out how all the players are involved, which of course is revealed slowly while telling us backwards. We also have a judge (John Michael Higgins), a couple of FBI helpers (Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston), the deputy (Adam Pally), and the wife of a robber (Stephanie Sigman), and somehow one or more of them are involved.

And don’t worry, the lake is not the answer to the mystery.

Blueprints and alcohol are the best items to help with a bank robbery.

About three fourths of the way into this movie, I wondered why it was being told in reverse. It didn’t seem to be adding really anything extra to the story. It seemed to be Memento-ing because people liked Memento.

But of course by the end it all became a bit more clear. And yes, Shimmer Lake is a film that will be better the second go around. I don’t know if I will ever really watch it a second time, but I would like to see what clues give it all away and make this story tick.

It was a bit hard to label this movie, because there are a lot of actors who are mostly in comedy films filling out the roster, and I think that adds a strange aesthetic to the whole film. I am calling it a Dark Comedy in that regard, because it is normally comic actors acting serious, in events that are larger than life.

Shimmer Lake isn’t a film that is reinventing the wheel or adding something entirely new to the industry. But it does try to stand out and, as I implied earlier, ends up being a better ride than expected.

Merry Christmas everybody! Sure, I am publishing this review of Office Christmas Party in January, but I totally saw it before Christmas, so this opening is okay.

I just realized that because I already saw it late, I didn’t have to rush out a review for this film, that most people were already going to ignore. Because yeah, it wasn’t the saving grace of comedy films this year. It was a standard, low effort, comedy movie.

So for whenever this review hits the actual page, let’s just pretend it is Christmas all over again. You know, so we can be disappointed and eat pie.

Bad Sign: Googling the movie name gives more pictures from Christmas Episodes of The Office than this film.

This film is about some lame tech company. In charge of the entire business is Carol Vanstone (Jennifer Aniston), left there by her father after he passed away. However, the Chicago branch is being run by her brother, Clay (T.J. Miller), and he is a big fuck up. So despite it being the Christmas season, he wants them to still get bonuses and have a small gathering to celebrate. But not according to Carol. Carol wants it cancelled, no bonuses, and 40% of their workforce canned in order to meet really high growth rates.

Really shitty. But, the CTO, Josh Parker (Jason Bateman), finally divorced and broke has an idea. If they sign the Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance) account by the end of the quarter, they will reach the growth and no one would have to get fired! Yeah! Walter likes them, but will go with a bigger company, because of news of their layoffs, branches closing, and it seems like a negative work place.

So sure. Thanks to Clay and their head tech person, Tracey (Olivia Munn), they decide to throw a giant party at work, against Carol’s wishes. Like, a crazy, old fashioned, people screwing in the copier room type party. They will throw a lot of money into it, show their happy workers, convince Davis they are awesome, and sign him tonight, and no one will have to know!

Sex, drugs, alcohol, gifts, bonuses, and a night people will talk about for ages. Fuck the HR lady (Kate McKinnon)!

Also featuring Jillian Bell, Rob Corddry, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Vanessa Bayer, Randall Park, Sam Richardson, Karan Soni, Jamie Chung, and Abbey Lee.

Look! Santa on a sleigh! How crazy indeed!

I wish I could say I liked this movie. I really do. It has a lot of people I like. Munn seems to mostly make bad film choices after she left Attack of the Show. Miller is usually my favorite supporting character in movies and can usually make a shitty one slightly more bearable, but he did nothing for me in this one. And I love Miller in Silicon Valley.

Aniston still keeps showing up in comedy films while failing to be funny herself. Bateman is playing the exact same role he always does. Mackinnon is forced into an awkward character that is supposed to be an HR exaggeration but every joke is cheap and easy.

It is frustrating because it is a comedy that barely got me to smile, making me laugh maybe twice at a quick joke. It tries to show a crazy and crude party, but doesn’t push the envelope at all. The majority of the party just seems to be Miller rapping over music to very happy employees.

There have been crazy out of control party movies in the past, which is what this one tries to do, but it is surpassed by most of them easily. And the ending where they have to leave he party and deal with pimp problems? It doesn’t help the plot, takes us away from the main focus, and gives us boring action scenes disguised as something interesting.

This is another low effort film, based on a single subject, where the filmmakers really didn’t know where they wanted to take it. Easy jokes, low brow humor, some stereotypes, a penis and some boobs, and I just saved you time explaining what you would see in this film.

Office Christmas Party is not something you’d want to watch with your work friends, as a Christmas tradition, or even as part of a lay party. Easily forgettable, but not easily forgivable for the waste of time it provides.

Hot Tub Time Machine came out in 2010, a time before I went to theaters a lot. I remember a lot of my friends liking it, telling me it was as good as The Hangover! Oh man!

And then I remember it being one of the first Blu-Rays I had ever bought.

This was pre-site, so I don’t have any review to point you towards to get my thoughts on it. So I can tell you that I no longer own that movie. I sold it or gave it away. I don’t remember. That should say everything about how I liked or disliked that movie.

But then they made a sequel. Hot Tub Time Machine 2. A super cheap, no John Cusack having sequel. Oh well. As long as it doesn’t look like it was made on a handheld camera, it might still be okay.

But cheesy hand held camera music video parodies are definitely okay.

After the first movie, our main characters are wildly successful. This is five years later of course. Lou (Rob Corddry) is a tech billionaire, not having any smarts, but having ideas early on and he had people make them. You know, exploiting the past. His son, Jacob (Clark Duke) is now his butler or whatever. I didn’t really catch why. And Nick (Craig Robinson) has sang all of his favorite songs that he could remember and is running out of material. Overall, they are all a bit sad too, thinking their lives would feel better.

Well, at a big ass party that Lou is holding, he gets shot in the dick. Not the best way to start to die in front of a bunch of “Friends” and coworkers and rich people.

So they have the quick thinking idea to go back in time again. Just a day, to find out who is going to shoot him and put a stop to it. But instead of going back a day, it instead goes forward ten years to the future. Ten years! That is weird. And Lou has his dick in the future. What zany alternative time line, multiple universe shenanigans is this?

And who fired the gun? Was it one of these three people (Kumail Nanjiani, Adam Scott, Gillian Jacobs)? Maybe it was even John Cusack pissed he was even in the first movie? Who knows.

I can only hope I have a combination of their good looks in ten years time.

Turns out I got to see an unrated version of this film, not the theatrical version of the film. Take from that what you will. There are only a few changes I heard from the two, but basically one notable one at the end. And hey, it is kind of funny!

Yet that was basically the only funny moment in the movie for me. 🙁

That’s right. Sad emoticon. That is the easiest way I can describe this movie. Because the humor isn’t there. It is like a bunch of side kick characters got together to make a movie and didn’t have a lot of funnier people writing it. It was obviously done on a super low budget, and was obviously done because the actors involved wanted to do it.

And that is fine. I assume they would also be fine knowing a lot of people might now have liked it. A crass boring comedy in my eyes. And if there is another, I might watch it and hate it too.

Sex and comedy go together like cheese and my mouth. Sure, not everyone will agree with the statement, but those who do tend to laugh more at life.

Sex Tape is thus, a comedy movie about sex. Staring some people who have been in funny things in the past, and about a subject America loves to pretend to hate, it should be successful. I mean, it is about sex and actually rated R?

Well. I guess it being funny also has to happen too. I guess.

This isn’t how the scene actually looks. The white shirt is way more see through in the film.
Not a joke. Just a factual observation.

Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel) used to have a lot of sex. When they first had sex, they both loved it so much, they did it constantly, everywhere, in every position. But then. Then they got married. Then they had two kids. Then Jay saw a baby come out of Annie’s vagina. Then the kids made them busy and tired, and Jay’s job kept him late at night and well. Sex went away.

But Annie, a successful blogger about to sell her website for mommies everywhere, wants to ignite the sex back. After a night of failed attempts, they decide to make a sex tape showcasing all the different moves in a sex book, and film it. Well, it works, they have sex, feel the love, and fall asleep. The next day, the iPad syncs with all of his other devices, as he has set it to do. But Jay has a lot of devices, looking for a radio station, and he gave them to many friends and family members to enjoy his shared content music lists. And you see where this is going.

So Jay and Annie spend a night trying to clear it from everyone’s device, and along the way get blackmailed, get into many fights, do cocaine, get terroized by dogs, and owe people lots of money.

Also, starring Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper, Rob Lowe, Nat Faxon, and Nancy Lenehan.

Kids destroy sex, not from making adults tired, but seeing the crowning.

I have to admit something. First of all, the theater wasn’t too full. There were like, eight other people, and they all sat on the right side of the theater. So I sat by myself on the left side, glad no one would disrupt me with their phones or talking. Now, sometimes a movie is so boring and dull and I get tired. Sometimes a scene might make me fall asleep for a minute or 30 seconds, and I might fight that feeling for awhile. But this time? When they were destroying computer equipment servers as seen in the trailer? That is the last thing I remember seeing.

I woke up with the theater light on, and a cleaning lady making noise so that I’d wake up. The theater was empty. I don’t know if anyone even noticed, because they all would have used the other exit and I was alone. But man. Embarassing. This is the first time a movie has been so dull and unfunny that I fell asleep for a long period of time. I mean. The entire credits. At least 10-15 minutes of movie (I’d hope). I have never walked out of a movie for being bad, but I guess this is about the same result.

Thankfully, I don’t see that as a fail. I quickly had the ending told to me by people who saw it, realized I missed not a thing, and went on with my life. In fact, my falling asleep is more telling. See, I was just going to give this a 1 out of 5 for being not funny. But with a reaction like that, in the middle of the day, after a nice night of sleep? No excuse. No excuse at all.

Yawn. Some cameos had some funny moments, but most of the jokes fell extremely flat. The entire situation was ridiculous, and they even noted in the film how easy it would have been to fix most of their problems after they found out about them. Bigger yawn. Move on. Worse summer comedy by far.

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.

I have decided to have a theme week. Are you ready? Apocalypse Week. End of the world shit. You know. It seemed appropriate with the new movies coming out this week. In case you are curious in the future which movies are part of the week, I have tagged them all as Apocalypse Week as well as their normal tags.

This mostly came about because I finally had access to Rapture-Palooza and watched it a few days after seeing This Is The End. Similar theme? Heck yeah. It was pretty easy to find a few more to shoe-in too.

I’d like to get my shoe into Anna. Or something perverted/sexy. I am bad at this.

As already stated, this movie begins with the apocalypse! Yay! Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) and her boyfriend Ben (John Francis Daley, who you may remember from Freaks and Geeks) didn’t believe in any god figure, so they were left behind, along with most of their family. Well, their moms were set. Kind of. But that is it. So now they have to try to live life as if there was no fire and brimstone, because what else are they going to do?

Anyways, life is very different. We have wraiths running around to cause trouble, their neighbor (Thomas Lennon) came back as a zombie, but for whatever reason just wants to mow his line. There are meteors that fall from the sky, usually to ruin their day.

Hell, Ben’s dad (Rob Corddry) sold his soul to the devil. Satan, or as he likes to call himself The Beast (Craig Robinson) has taken up residence in Seattle, and is out to party. Rapture is basically over, hell on Earth has happened, and people are just trying to get by.

But then he spies poor little old Lindsey, and he wants her. He wants her hard. Not just because she is a virgin either. So he asks her out, knowing that if she says no, he will kill everyone she has ever loved. Well damn. Guess she has to go out with him. Not without working on a plan to kill/trap him for a thousand years first though!

Rob Heubel plays a security guard, and Ken Jeong plays…eh. I don’t want to tell you.

Basically every time they are together, you can hear Craig Robinson say graphic things to Anna Kendrick. Worth the admission price? Probably.

Craig Robinson may have saved this movie from being a total dud. Yes, it felt like he was just playing a very arrogant and cocky version of himself, but he really bombarded Anna Kendrick with some vile stuff, and she took it all like a champ.

Anna also served as our narrator and I found her voice and attitude great for the role, giving zero fucks about the world falling apart around her. I also enjoyed a few of the gags, including pot head Wraiths, and the part near the end with Ken Jeong…even if it made very little sense.

However, it wasn’t an amazing movie on its own. It is okay, decent, not horrible, just not amazing. I understand why it never hit theaters, it is just plain weird. Yes, I do like weird, but this is a different type of weird I’d say. Quirky maybe. It could have been a lot better, and shit, might have worked best as a TV show. I could see the whole movie being an entire season, not like 22 episodes, but a solid 10-12. Introducing new problems, and just kind of nonchalantly dealing with them and giving not a fuck in the world.

I am not going to harp about how Michael Bay is the worst guy since whatever. Yes, he did the Transformer movies, and fucking Pearl Harbor, and he is about to kill the Ninja Turtles, but he has some decent stuff. Like. Independence Day. I love Independence Day!

I am just saying, there is no reason for me to assume Pain & Gain will be bad. The trailer just makes it look…weird. And apparently a true story. Okay, yeah. Sure.

So far, Michael Bay is clearly experimenting with different light refraction techniques. He is growing!

1995. Miami, Florida. Danny Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is the current main manager at Sun Gym, after serving a short sentence in prison for fraud. He promised his boss (Rob Corddry) that he would triple the membership and get the gym back on the map, and boy did he ever. Through some questionable means, but who cares when you got dat income.

He is great friends with Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), another former criminal and bodybuilder. But they are both poor and tired of it. Tired of a bunch of assholes, like Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub) who are self made rich men, and think everyone else is a piece of shit. After all, Danny is a doer, not a donter (lessons he learned from Johnny Wu (Ken Jeong)).

Doers do, and so Danny had the simple plan. Kidnap Victor, torture him until he signs away everything and ruins his life completely, then kill him and live the life of luxury. Just need a third man. Like Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson). Paul just got out of prison, was a cokehead from NYC, but found Jesus and wants to turn his life around…but he also needs cash.

Simple plan, nothing can go wrong if they have enough can do attitude, muscles/fitness, and positive thinking! Yeahhh… Ed Harris plays a private investigator, and Bar Paly a stripper turned confidant.

Step 1: Identify self to kidnappers. Step 2: ???? Step 3: Profit

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. It is not cursing if you take 10 seconds to say it.

Hot damn, this film was awesome. And amazing! And abstract. Abstract? Yes. Totally. I wasn’t just looking for more A words.

Seriously, this film was definitely something special. Who thought Bay had it in him? I was laughing and cringing, often in secession. There is just so much ENERGY in this movie, I’d find it impossible to lost focus at all.

Dwayne Fucking Johnson, I don’t even know you anymore. He acted the fuck out of this film, and was 100% the best part. Not saying Mark Wahlberg wasn’t amazing (because fuck, he was!), he just had to compete with The Rock! The two of them were out of their minds the entire time filming this, and made their characters their bitches. That is the only way to describe it. Literally. No one else has tried. If they did, they used those words.

Just. Aggh! The true story itself is a fascinating one, which is also not as funny as the movie took it out to be. Check it out here, but be warned it is a long read (so…its like reading the book version?). I am not saying the movie made light of the events in the film, because very serious shit went down and they talked about a lot of it. Just still had a more comedic tone overall, while also splashing your face off with shock juice.

I am a bit disappointed in you, random CGI/animated movies. Why the obsession with famous people to voice your characters? If they are actually voice acting, you shouldn’t understand their normal acting voice. But alas, we must fill them up with as many big names as possible, because hey, its cheaper when its just voice acting, so why not?

I am just disappointed that I have to tag so many dang people in this movie. Shit, most of my plot is introducing the characters.

Basically, before I watch Escape From Planet Earth I just hope it is a lot closer to Escape from L.A. than Mars Needs Moms. But I guess I think that for most movies.

Finally, it looks like someone is thinking of the children.

In this movie universe, we have aliens! All different sorts, all speaking English, and all on planets of only one type. Earth is so weird. Not to mention deadly. When ever Aliens go there, they tend to never return. Seems like a big damper on the Earth thing, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Like if you are Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser), Occupation: Hero. He saves shit, didn’t you see above? He saved those babies! That somehow got on that planet with things that eat babies! Well, Scorch gets a mission to Earth, hearing of a distress signal. So he goes over, but because of having a fight with his “nerd” brother Gary (Rob Corddry), he gets captured and everyone flips his shit. His news reporting lover (Sofia Vergara) is shocked. Yes, I just wanted to throw that tag in now.

Either way, because his son is a little dickhead, and his wife Kira (Sarah Jessica Parker) is nagging about how thinking is overrated, he decides to not think, and just go and rescue his brother. Bitches, man.

Needless to say, something fishy is up. General Shanker (William Shatner) ends up capturing him too.
Puts him to work, with some other smart aliens (George Lopez, Craig Robinson, Jane Lynch). No big deal, just building the biggest weapon in the universe to “Destroy asteroids” with. Hey, he said if they build it, they can go home. Pretty great!

Hopefully everything works out at the end, and they can…Escape From Planet Earth. Fingers crossed for these poor, brave aliens. Ricky Gervais is also “James Bing” a smart computer (not even subtle guys), and Jessica Alba as the head of head of mission control?

Well, these ones don’t look enslaved. I guess that is good!

Quick! Quick! Listen to this song. Maybe listen to it three times. Remix one of them a little bit. That is what the soundtrack felt like, as I could only hear this song and some woman song smack dab in the middle. They are the only two songs played during the credits too, which claimed many more songs happened in the movie, but I definitely didn’t hear them.

“Alright, so I guess it is cheesy and childish then?” You betcha. Like a lot. Like, the jokes are people falling down or running into things.

Hey, I laughed a few times. There were some subtle jokes, or things being yelled off screen, but that was about the extent of the humor.

Instead we have a mostly “lower level” comedy, without much of anything for adults to find enjoyable when they watch with the kids. Of the other aliens, the only one that I found not annoying was the Slug, and he didn’t really get much character development besides “gross, sticky!”. The main arguments of the characters involved whether or not someone was fired or quit (when it was clearly quit. Especially since I doubt the other individual even could fire him if he wanted). The plot twists (if we call them that) were obvious about 10 minutes into the movie. The child is stupid and has bad ideas.

Heck, the film basically deglorifies intelligence. Everyone was mad at the main guy for trying to think things through before acting? Fuck that, life isn’t a race people. Thinking of course helps save the day, but they are too busy nerd joking to care.

Yet despite all this, still not as bad as Mars Needs Moms.

Warm Bodies, Warm Bodies.

Unfortunately, due to hearing that title said twice in a row, I really can’t stop doing it. It adds effect. It makes it creepy. I like creepy.

I kind of hate zombie based fan ficiton. More specifically, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a terrible book, seriously read it. It is P&P with another guy throwing in some zombie fight scenes and changing some words. But his writing style is so different than Jane Austin’s style that it is painfully obvious. But that was Zombies and Romance. How about Zombies WITH Romance?

You see the whole thing is a metaphor. A metaphor, for uhh, to be emo is to be dead.

R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie. Not much to talk else to mention about his life, he is a damn zombie. He doesn’t remember his old life, or his old name or anything. He has a “Friend” in M (Rob Corddry), but that means they sometimes go out on hunts together for food and grunt some.

On one of those faithful hunting missions, they run into a group of survivors looking for meds. That is where he meets Julie (Teresa Palmer). But something is different, something has changed. He doesn’t want to eat her body. Well, not in the traditional sense.

Could this be love? Necrophiliac love? Analeigh Tipton plays her best friend, Dave Franco her boyfriend, and John Malkovich her dad.

This is also a metaphor. A metaphor, for uhh, war. War is bad.

From what I can tell, the movie has differences from the book, but the author of the book is fine with it. He saw the movie and likes it, so I definitely won’t judge the two apart (not that I ever do that anyways). But I can say that after watching the movie, I want to read the book. Already ordered it online, can’t wait. The only other movie that I did that with was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Which, I might add, I liked the book as well and there were differences.

I thought the intro the movie was pretty dang hilarious. It begins with a nice monologue from R, as he shuffles about his normal zombie life, and we learn the ins and outs of his mind and actions. It just felt brilliant.

Rob Corddry stole the show with his zombie, but he was given the funnier lines, because he wasn’t currently in love with a living woman.

The movie has obvious references to a famous love story, which I figured out halfway through. I am glad they kept it somewhat subtle, I was afraid they would smash it over your head at the end, but thankfully they didn’t.

Shit, the only thing I really disliked would be that the change happening the zombies could have been more gradual and obvious. For R, it was slow and the signs of him getting better were clear, but for the rest of the zombies it felt rushed.

Fuck it. I loved this movie. Here is a high ass rating.

Mmmm, Butter. Just the sound of it takes me back to the good old days, watching The Glutton Bowl on Fox. That was an eating competition, and yes one of the rounds involved sticks of butter.

But citizens of Iowa might be familiar with another use of butter outside of eating it. Carving it! Which is the main plot point of this pseudo-Dark Comedy, in a tale of betrayal, love, and dairy.

Not to mention great smoothing skillz.

Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) is the king of Butter carving in Iowa. He has won the best sculpture at the State Fair fifteen years in a row, and has no end in sight. But when the higher ups mention he should probably retire and let someone else have a shot, he agrees and thinks it is a good idea. Too bad his wife, Laura (Jennifer Garner), has built her entire life around their butter empire, from charities, to parties, it is all about butter. There is no way they can survive without it!

So she does what she knows is best and enters the next competition herself. Why not? She has seen her husband do it forever, how hard could it be?

Well, Destiny might have a problem with that. Destiny (Yara Shahidi) is a 10-year old orphan girl, going from bad house to bad house. She already feels out of place, being one of the few black people in the state, but eventually her mother will get better and take her back in! Until then, she is in a new house with the most loving parents ever (Rob Corddry, Alicia Silverstone). On a whim, she decides to also enter the same county competition for the state fair, and it turns out she has the Land O’Lakes touch.

You are probably wondering how this could be a dark comedy, it is a grown woman and a little girl carving butter! Genre wise, I think this has all the features of a normal Dark Comedy, just no death. Oh well, we can’t all be perfect movies. Butter also features Ashley Greene as their teenage experimental daughter, Hugh Jackman as a cowboy car salesman, Kristen Schaal as a Pickler fan girl, and Olvia Wilde as a local stripper getting mixed up in the competition.

So some people might watch this just because of Olivia Wilde. But I’ve heard of worse reasons to see a movie.

A major complaint I am hearing about Butter is the accent of Jennifer Garner. Most people in the movie don’t have an accent, just like most Iowans. How dare she have some sort of weird voice! But I think it is silly to complain about having an accent, just as its silly to complain about not having one. Just because most people don’t have accents doesn’t mean everyone has to talk “normal”.

Overall, this movie is an over the top affair about such a unique/weird topic that I just can’t help but love it. For those who complain that there are not enough original ideas in the movie industry, they should be looking for films like this one. I couldn’t help but compare Butter to other odd movies with events that escalate out of control, such as Fargo or Drop Dead Gorgeous. Outside of its general weirdness, I also found it to be quite funny, unsure of just where the film would take me.

If I was a native Iowan, I would be proud to put this in my State’s catalog. But as an outsider, I will just have to settle for my DVD collection.