Tag: Robbie Amell

Generally, if you throw the word babysitter in a movie title, it now seems to allude to sexy stuff. Maybe that is because of the film a decade ago, The Babysitters, about sexy underage stuff.

But The Babysitter still has a similar theme going on. Attractive ladies, people who want to bone them, and sacrifices to the dark lord.

Oh wait wait, that last part is a bit different. Although, ritual sacrifice in film usually, strangely, comes with an air of sexual tension too.

The only film to go against this trend is Adventures in Babysitting, which thankfully, is very unsexy.

This scene looks photoshopped.

Cole (Judah Lewis) is too old for a babysitter, and yet, he has one anyways. Seriously, he is now in high school. A freshman, but still in high school. His parents (Leslie Bibb, Ken Marino) sometimes take extended weekend trips to stay in hotel rooms in order to rekindle their relationship, and don’t trust their son alone. And he is a total straight up nerd, not like he would throw a rager.

But Cole doesn’t care too much either, because his babysitter is a total babe. Bee (Samara Weaving) is like a perfect human, with confidence, humor, looks, you name it. She is also down to earth and treats Cole like a real goddamn person, and not some burden. Sure she gets paid to hang out with him, but she seems to be the type to still find him to be a friend.

Convinced by his friend to stay up past bedtime to find out if she ends up having sex with a boyfriend when he sleeps, he instead finds a whole gang of people in his house. Normal, teenage stuff is mostly going on, until one of the group gets stabbed in the head, his blood collected, an unwilling sacrifice.

Holy shit. They are making deals with the devil. They also need the blood of someone pure, which of course means him. This is not how Cole saw his night going. He loved Bee!

Also starring Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, Bella Thorne, Emily Alyn Lind, Andrew Bachelor, and Doug Haley.

Best friends, no romance at all? They should kiss.

The Babysitter is a very chaotic film and going for a specific audience: one that just wants to have a lot of fun. And honestly, it does feel like a lot of fun.

The film isn’t that long and it feels like it takes awhile to get to the point. But it is filled with dynamic and fun camera angles, making seemingly (and actually) boring events early on feel a bit more special. This is a throw back to the 80’s in terms of plot, but really it didn’t go 80’s enough. I mean, if you are going to do a ritual sacrifice for power to the devil, can we get a little bit of devil? Come on.

Instead we get upper aged teenagers having to carry out most of the evil deeds. Once this aspect of the film starts, it gets crazy and stays chaotic until the very end. It was highly entertaining, watching them try to get our main kid, dying in horrific ways, while also not just outright trying to kill him back.

I mean, these real people have some standards, you know?

Amell was the most hilarious of the group, totally doing better than many of his other recent works. Maybe it is just because he had his shirt off the whole time, and that appealed to my senses.

The Babysitter takes awhile to get really going, isn’t a great movie at all, but it is very, very fun once it fully embraces its plot.

When We First Met is a time traveling based Netflix original movie, and honestly, one I only really went out of my way to watch because of the cast members.

Because it sounds like Friendzone the movie, and the friend zone is fucking stupid.

I told my wife the only way that this film could be maybe good is if he realizes this whole time travel thing is bullshit and that he needs to let life happen as it is, so that it feels a lot less rapey.

In general I prefer my comedies to not get rapey.

Apparently they time traveled back to World War II.

Noah (Adam Devine) really loves Avery (Alexandra Daddario). She just thinks he is a friend. You see, three years ago they met at a party and had a wonderful night. It was special. They had so much passion! And yet it ended with a hug. The next day, Avery met Ethan (Robbie Amell), they fell in love, and now they are getting engaged to be married soon!

Sad times, guess it wasn´t meant to be, Noah! Time to take it all back in, count your chickens, whatever, and move on. Psyche! Time to get wasted, cry, and be a nuisance. Somehow, this leads him to a photobooth that takes him back three years to the day they first met.

Oh wonderful! Time to fix everything and make them fall in love, or at least have some sex. But, shenanigans, it turns out that messing with time can have some consequences.

Also starring Shelley Hennig and Andrew Bachelor.

These business outfits probably came from my closet.

Look, I don´t need to waste too much time on this review. The film never really feels original. It never really feels super funny (although occasionally amusing). Our main character is a total dumbass. He believes he had the perfect first date with this lady, except he couldn´t kiss her to seal the deal. So one would imagine if he goes back in time to ¨fix things¨ he would recreate everything the same, but also, you know, kiss her or make his intentions clear.

But no. He wants to recreate himself every time. Ultra cool, ultra dick, ultra successful, all these iterations are just awkward and pointless. He is apparently a man of extremes only. It was like a really bad version of Bedazzled. Yes, I am saying that Bedazzled isn´t bad.

The film is very predictable as well, which is only an issue because nothing else really works for it. The acting is poor, the plot is poor, the jokes are poor, and if you also already know what is going to happen, then you are left wondering why you are watching the thing in the first place.

When We First Met reminds us that just because it has a time travel component does not a complex movie make.

Hey, everyone love’s cats. Just go onto the internet. But the love for cats comes from being cute, or seeing them do derpy things. They don’t love all cats.

Which is why the concept for Nine Lives is so bizarre. The plot comes straight out of a film from the 1990’s (Or a Rob Schneider film from any decade). Guy goes into a cat. The only way it could be really worse is if the cat itself could talk in English and spoke to the cast, but alas, it just has to meow at them.

People don’t like those sorts of films anymore. Those are the films that get mocked and burned at a stake. And here it is, 2016, with Nine Lives coming out. Sure, yeah, I did think Keanu would be a movie about a talking cat, but ended up just being a regular cat and pretty decent.

I don’t think the same sort of change can occur here while watching.

He is going to stare a whole through that cats head.

Tom Brand (Kevin Spacey) is what his name suggests, a walking brand. He is all about his image and his companies success. As CEO, he wants to do fascinating things and leave a permanent mark on society. And he decided that permanent mark would be the tallest building in America. Now that it is almost completed, it turns out another building in Chicago being built will easily beat theirs in height, ruining his dreams.

One of his workers, Ian Cox (Mark Consuelos) was supposed to know about this sort of thing, but he didn’t care. He wanted to take over the company and sell it for money.

All of Brand’s success means his family had to suffer a little. His new wife (Jennifer Garner) and daughter (Malina Weissman) don’t see him a lot and he forgets things, like birthdays. And his daughter wants a cat, but he doesn’t want a cat in his house. But eventually he just gets the cat.

Buys it from a weird guy (Christopher Walken), and sure enough, an accident happens putting Cox in a coma and his spirit or mind or whatever in the cats body. Knowing that the last thing he did before the accident was to actually get a gift for the daughter was a good thing, they take the cat in while he recovers. This allows Brand to try and bond with the daughter and convince them that he is a man in a cat’s body.

Also starring Robbie Amell as the son who is trying to help Brand’s company while he is in a coma, Cheryl Hines as his ex-wife, and Talitha Bateman as his ex-wife’s new daughter.

Oh ho ho, the human is on all fours. What a role reversal!

Jennifer Garner almost had the worst year ever. She had three movies come out, and I have seen two of them. Nine Lives is beyond terrible and Mother’s Day (which I haven’t seen) was blasted by critics as well. She is down right lucky that Miracles From Heaven ended up being a relatively decent Christian film, and not a standard tacky/corny over the top Christian film. It would have been real close to being just a complete fail of a year.

There isn’t a whole lot to be said about Nine Lives that isn’t already out there on the internet. What the hell was everyone involved thinking?

There are very little surprises in this film. Spacey, Garner, everyone just phones it in. When things start feeling the bleakest, it was because they made the son character a passive, dumbass. He seemingly refused to fight and it didn’t make sense. So why did it happen? Oh, so the son could do a bigger distraction near the end of the film, in order to end on a bigger note. So yeah, temporarily changing how a character works, because the writers don’t know what the hell they are doing to get to the finale they want.

The cat looked terrible when it had to switch to CGI, which was whenever the cat had to do anything special. So a giant chunk of the movie.

Walken was in this movie, and he has been in mostly shit for years.

There is just nothing really positive to note. It has a weak script, weak plot, weak acting, and at under 90 minutes it still feels too long.

Max knows what it wants and it knows how it is going to get it. It wants that American Sniper money. That patriot surge to go to the theaters and see an war hero dog, while also bringing in the pet owner crowd.

A nice strategy of course. After all, a cute dog could totally replace Bradley Cooper in many movies, and no one would really complain.

Especially one as patriotic and cute as this little guy.

Max is a dog, serving in Afghanistan. His job is to sniff our ammunition and bad people, so that the American good guys can go in, and safely get the stuff out of these villages, without harassment, interrogation, or accidental bullet spray. Max is very sad when his human, Kyle (Robbie Amell) dies in a fight that he totally tried to save him from. Now he is all crazy and barky and won’t take orders from anyone.

Luckily, Max gets to go to his funeral service, where he does sad dog things and meets the human’s family. The dad (Thomas Haden Church), the mom (Lauren Graham), and the younger brother Justin (Josh Wiggins). Max tolerates Justin, because he is a lot like his brother. Only in the DNA department. Kyle was brave and a soldier. Justin plays video games, rdes his bike, and doesn’t care. Yuck!

Max should try to help Justin, once the family helps Max out. After all, Max won’t take orders and will be put down unless they take him in. Given that Max is the last real memory of Kyle, of course they do, even though Justin is all meh!

Maybe Max will teach the family how to love again. Maybe Max will teach Justin how to talk to girls (Mia Xitlali). Maybe Max will help solve a ludicrous plot line about missing military equipment, the Mexican Cartel, and traitors. Hah. That’d be ridiculous and out of no where, no way that happens.

Also featuring Dejon LaQuake, Jay Hernandez, Joseph Julian Soria, Luke Kleintank, and Owen Harn.

Fuckin’ ‘Merica.

As you can all read sarcasm on the internet, by now you realize that yes, there is also a big plot about stolen military weapons and the Mexican Cartel. But also a story about a dog bringing a family together.

This took me completely out of the movie and I sat in the theater shaking my head in disbelief. It went from bad to worse but kept going and going. Every single aspect of that plot line is terrible. Literally no redeeming quality. I didn’t even get a nice cry at the end like I expected, watching a dog movie. No, my only cry came early on, with the dog sad that its human has died.

I can’t say a single actual human acted well in this movie. It was awkward seeing Graham be a Jesus Loving Texas woman, who didn’t have a great role in the film. I love some good facial hair, but Church was a walking stereotype mustache and it was entirely overdone. They made the kid a bad stereotype of a gamer too, and didn’t know what to do with his angsty teen self. It goes without saying that the best acting in the movie came from the dog.

I also need to reiterate again: the entire main plot line was terrible. Head. In. Palm. Max could have been a touching and amazing movie, but by forcing this terrible plot on the viewers, it turned it into a cringeworthy bad action movie, where all realism was thrown out of the window into a fire.

That’s right. Into a fire.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

Whenever I read the title of this movie, I imagine the adds for The Dump furniture store. And I put it in the voice of Duffman from the Simpsons.

Hopefully you just did that too.

The DUFF might be the final January movie of the year for me to watch. Sure it came out end of February, but you can tell by looking at the poster that it wanted to come out in January, but too much suck existed in that month so it got pushed back.

Who would delay us from watching this cheaply made porno movie for so long?

Bianca Piper (Mae Whitman) is a DUFF, but she doesn’t know that and doesn’t even know the acronym. It stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend, which every group of girls and guys has. You don’t have to be literally fat or super ugly, you just have to be less than all the other friends. This way your group of hotter thinner friends have a sort of gateway to them. If you are DUFF, you are easy to talk to and can give information about your better friends, for hook up purposes or whatever. Steven Lynch sang a song about them before they had a fun acronym.

Either way, Bianca has Casey (Bianca A. Santos) who is good at computers, hot, and good at sports and Jess (Skyler Samuels) who is into yoga, smart, and journalism. Well, they are all into journalism. Although they are totally real friends, they are also so totally DUFFing her.

She learns about the term from her next door neighbor, Wes (Robbie Amell), who is now totes max hunk but still talks together since they have been friends for so long. So once she finds out, she bails on her friends and decides to change things. She is going to be awesome on her own. She is going to unDUFF herself. But she doesn’t know how. So she works with Wes. He will help her get better and be able to talk to Toby (Nick Eversman), and she will help him pass Chemistry (so he can get scholarships, go to college, shit like that).

But wait! There is also Queen Bitch, Madison Morgan (Bella Thorne), who wants to be a future reality star and is working on being a youtube star first. She wants to ruin things and muck things up. That seems like an important plot point.

What is not important are the parents and teachers. Allison Janney is Bianca’s single mom, who is now a self help guru about getting over divorce! Chris Wylde and Ken Jeong play teachers and Romany Malco the principal.

The DUFF, in all reality, is a made for TV movie that for some reason someone put in theaters. There is nothing exceptional about it in any way. It is a comedy, but it doesn’t make you laugh. It is a high school movie, but it doesn’t offer anything new. Here is the IMDB description:

A high school senior instigates a social pecking order revolution after finding out that she has been labeled the DUFF

Social pecking order revolution? That means she is going to turn the school on its heels, probably with her sweet journalism skills, to make the DUFFs the cool kids? What? No where close? It is literally her just trying to make herself seem cooler to talk to a boy? Oh. Okay. Well that is kind of…two thirds of every high school story. Fuck.

I mean, the social pecking order revolution story line would have been just some angry kids wish fulfillment fantasy in real life, but at least it would have attempted to do something not normally done outside of Revenge of the Nerds. Instead this was just…boring if I had to say anything. And it had a couple of people involved I actually know of. I liked Mae in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Parenthood. She just doesn’t do much of anything in this movie.