Tag: RomCom

As I noted (bitched about?) in the review for Mr. Popper’s Penguins, lately Jim Carrey’s movies have not been up to the same level of quality I have come to expect of him. Almost like after Eternal Sunshine, he stopped trying.

Well, I Love You, Phillip Morris is the exception to that rule.

Somehow, with the title and cover and everything, I didn’t know this was a “gay movie”.

This movie is based on the true life story of Steven Jay Russell, and book based off of his life, played by Jim Carrey. Steven was just a normal man, living in Virginia Beach as a police officer. He had a wife! Leslie Mann, and played in the local church band. But when he gets into a car accident and nearly dies, he realizes he has been living a lie. He is a gay man, and needs to live like one!

So he does that. Moves. Gets a gay man, does gay things. Even does some con artist stuff to get lots of money! But that puts him in jail. Where he meets Phillip Morris, played by Ewan McGregor! Steven Jay Russell is famous, not for the being gay thing, but for escaping from prison. Multiple times. And this movie goes over it!

Yes, what an interesting man. Finding true love in prison, escaping it on more than one occasion, and being a con man in order to become rich all the time.

You can’t make this shit up, folks.

Or this.

This movie is great guys. Not only hilarious, but the acting done by all the parties involved is great. Sure, it is sometimes kind of campy, but it is worth it. Hard to believe breaking out of prison was actually that easy. Oh the things people do for a bootycall.

If you ever saw a preview of Life As We Know It, you probably assumed it was the “unofficial sequel” to Knocked Up. Even has the same main chick in Katherine Heigl. But instead of the story of the accidental pregnancy to birth, we instead get the first few years post birth. Done and done. I guess they realized that though too, and made the plot a lot different than the previews would have you believe.

Or Seth Rogen was probably too busy doing The Green Hornet, or something. So they had to change shit.

So what happens instead? Well, Heigl and Josh Duhamel are on a blind date with each other, both set up by their best friends (who happen to be dating). They don’t even leave the driveway, before they leave, hating each others guts. Wooo, matchmaking.

But in the opening credits, you find that unfortunately they have to spend a lot more time together. Especially because their friends, Hayes MacArthur and Christina Hendricks (of Mad Men), are now married and have a child! Damn it. Even a cool new suburban house. Now that they are godparents, and both single, they just can’t stop running into each other. But what is next might be spoilers? But it is necessary to explain the plot.

OH NO CAR CRASH. Dead parents. Baby was at home! Oh guess who were put in the will to take care of the baby and get the house? Yep. Our main two stars.

Now these two people, who don’t love each other, have to raise a kid together, in the same house, in order to help honor their friends spirits. Also, Josh Lucas is lurking his pediatrician head into the mix, to try and get some of that Heigl too.

Hilarious baby hijinks time!

The movie deals with their relationship over time, until of course, they realize they like each other. But that is probably more the living together/dead friends/baby thing, than actual love. But who am I to judge? What makes this movie work is the great chemistry between Duhamel and Heigl, they are pretty great in this movie. What doesn’t let it work is everything else. The plot? It is okay. Everything that occurs is predictable. The cast of neighbor characters, although plentiful, don’t seem to add much for me. Nor does any of the drama associated with either of their jobs and future goals.

At its heart, it is more romcom than comedy, and technically all that really should matter is the chemistry between the stars. If that is all you need, then go ahead and love it. But I was hoping for a bit more to it. Despite the long time that passes in the movie, I am left feeling not enough happened.

I have been avoiding “Jennifer Aniston movies” recently, for some unknown reason. Mostly because she has just been in wayyyy too many Romantic Comedies lately, helping flood the market. So I figured my first one back in awhile would be an “Adam Sandler movie” that has her in it too. Sure it’d probably still have a lot of RomCom elements, but a lot more focused on the comedy elements. A ComRom, I guess!

And plus, he is good with the kids!

Just Go With It begins with a ridiculous concept and runs with it. Adam Sandler is a skeezeball. Sure, it begins with him getting dumped (dude has a big nose, who just wanted his money). But instead he becomes a plastic surgeon, gets rid of the nose, and realizes he can wear a wedding ring, talk about how he is about to get divorced / left at the alter, and pick up chicks. One night stands for the win!

Aniston is his assistant at his clinic, and doesn’t agree with the methods. Well one night he meets Brooklyn Decker, who he really connects with, and they have sex! Yes! This time without the wedding ring though, which she finds in his pocket. Now she thinks she is a home wrecker. He quickly has to make up a story of how he is getting divorced and find a woman to play his soon to be ex wife. Guess who?

Needless to say, things get super complicated, as a trip to Hawaii ends up happening, and the kids of Aniston are involved. Similarly, somehow, Aniston’s rival, Nicole Kidman and her husband Dave Matthews are there, so she needs to pretend she has a husband as well. Also, Nick Swardson is playing her pretend boyfriend for Brooklyn’s sake.

Got all of that? A normal rule of improvisation is to never say no, negatives don’t work. You kind of just have to…go with it. So other people may put you in awkward situations, but you most play off of that. Thus the title, thus the humor. Also, Kevin Nealon is addicted to plastic surgery, and is quite scary.

Behold! No, his face. Not the other thing.

Despite the horrible plot that obviously has no chance of success at achieving his goal (you know, just dating Brooklyn Decker, for real), it was a pretty funny movie. Of course by the end Adam and Jennifer find out they really want each other, and make it so, but there is enough hilarious moments that had me “lol”ing by myself, which is good.

Well played, Jennifer Aniston. Well played.

You know what movie everyone loved? My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Sure it played on stereotypes of 2nd and 3rd generation Greek Americans, but the cast all seemed to love it, it really seemed heartfelt, and if you didn’t like it, you were a scrooge. But the star of that movie, Nia Vardalos, was pretty much never seen from again. Just some smaller rolls, a tv show spinoff that (presumably) no one watched.

So she figured. Hell! I was famous before for doing a Greek based romantic comedy film. LET’S DO ANOTHER!

“And this time, my success will stay!”

My Life In Ruins is about Nia, being a tour guide in Greece. Once only being a temporary job until she can become a teacher, she has found herself stuck in the mud, trying to appease spoiled tourists. And by spoiled tourists, I mean of course a whole bunch of caricatures of people, that are pretty constant throughout the movie. The only non constants are Alexis Georgoulis, the hairy bus driver, and Richard Dreyfuss, the funny old guy.

Declaring this will be her final tour, she sets off on one last trek with her “lame group of people” around Greece. Of course they only care about souvenirs and fun, no history, so she eventually breaks. But on this trip, she also finds true love guys. And happiness. And sunshine. And forgiveness. And etc.

Also, Richard Dreyfuss might actually be Zeus in this movie. You can easily argue it, so I will!

Dreyfuss definitely has the looks down.

The bus driver dude seems to be super greek. His IMDB has only a few titles I can read, most of the others are foreign. The movie didn’t really give any “new” sort of humor to the tourist drama. Everyone was as you would expect them to be, and the ending was also quite expected. Despite some interesting moments, it wasn’t enough to carry the whole thing into “worth it” territory.

Also, in case you couldn’t tell, the movie’s title is about her muck of a life, AND the fact that Greece has a bunch of ruins. Get it? Get it?

The Switch? A movie called The Switch staring Jason Bateman? That just sounds like The Change-Up, based only on titles. But apparently this is a RomCom with Jennifer Aniston, not a Comedy with Ryan Reynolds. And definitely not a romantic comedy with Ryan Reynolds!

“Boop.”

In this story, Bateman and Aniston are friends. Aniston wants to get a sperm donor (definitely not Bateman) and be a single mom, instead of waiting for Mr. Right. She decides on Patrick Wilson, because he is the epitome of a male human being. He is married, but they need the cash. Well, at the donor party, Bateman gets trashed drunk switches the semen with his own (The Switch is a better movie title than Semen Switch…maybe) and only tells fucking Jeff Goldbloom.

Many years later, he realizes that the kid is his own, because the kid is nerdy, hypochondriac, and hates sports. The opposite of Patrick Wilson. Plus he got lice once!

“No kid of mine has lice or hates sports!”

So the movie is mostly just Bateman trying to connect with his donor kid, and figure out a way to tell Aniston without you know, sounding like a complete asshole.

The chemistry between Aniston and Bateman is really well done. Goldbloom does a good job of acting like a boss who always seems to be drunk (in my mind). And Patrick Wilson does a good job of freaking out about the nerdy kid and having a midlife crisis. But it is only somewhat comedic, and entirely predictable. So overall just okay.

Whoa. The director of How Do You Know is the director of As Good As It Gets. Holy shit. That movie was awesome. Maybe this one is too?

Nope. The only real constant between the movies is Jack Nicholson.

But less crazy dog love.

Unfortunately even Jack Nicholson’s character is particularly weak in this movie. The synopsis was a bit confusing, both in trailer and reading, so here we go. Reese Witherspoon is an olympic soft ball player who had just got cut from the roster (getting old there, Reese). Owen Wilson is a pitcher for the Nationals. Paul Rudd is executive who is suddenly being indicted because of, well, he doesn’t know why, and Jack is his dad/boss.

So through a serious of awkward dates, no one knows really who likes who. Well, Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson are sure they don’t like each other. So the title is asking the question, How Do You Know if you are in love?

But blahhh. Does it fall short. Neither Reese nor Owen are particularly good characters. While watching this movie, you won’t care for them, you will only care for Paul Rudd. You hope he is happy by the end, and gets out of the mess, but unfortunately (thanks to a nice list shown in the movie) even with his happy ending, it still has negative consequences on his life. He also is still jobless! That has to suck.

One of the better parts was played by the pregnant secretary. Her acting was crazy good, yet still for some reason I don’t provide a link to her imdb. That is just the way the world works.

Spoilers. In this scene, Rudd kills Witherspoon.

Part of the problem too is it just takes too long for the outcome. Doesn’t even give me the normal cheap joys a regualr romcom would. Barely any conflict. Just people being unsure about who is a true love or not. Borrring.

This movie was dumb. I was bored with it. It did have Charlie from It’s Always Sunny and Alyson Hannigan in it though. That was interesting. I won’t tag them to sour their names. Really didn’t care about what happened most of the movie. Mandy Moore was the main role, and really, she didn’t do anything special. It just felt like a typical romantic comedy, and even the name just seems to be a mash up of key words to try and get all

STEREOTYPE ALARM. STEREOTYPE ALARM. STEREOTYPE ALARM.

Whoa whoa whoa. Sorry. I was about to make the assumption that all women love romantic comedies and respond to certain buzz words. But all the women I know who saw this movie (okay, only two) both hated it. So there ya go. It wasn’t too good. It didn’t make me rage in anger though.

Hey look, an R Rated romcom my brother said was really good. No Strings Attached refers to sex, completely. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman want to have sex, and not worry about a relationship. That is the whole plot in a nutshell.

I should let you know that I don’t think Natalie Portman is the hottest thing ever. Not my style of chick. Kind of creeps me out. But her with Kutcher is pretty unbelievable, so I had a hard time accepting that part. Anything with Kutcher seems to automatically get a negative grade from me. I won’t even watch Killers (besides thinking it trying to copy Knight and Day and also be worse at it). Okay, I will watch Killers eventually, but man will I be biased. Kutcher cannot be a serious main male lead, and can only stick to awkward comedies I think. They keep putting him in these romantic comedies though, so I guess women find him attractive.

Not these women though.

As a movie focused entirely on sex, it had a lot of sex related humor. Jokes were pretty funny, but mostly from the supporting cast (Portman’s roommates). But by the end I was kind of bored with the movie, and didn’t really like the ending. I almost thought “the dawson” played douche doctor guy, but nope. Some other dude I have never heard of.

Cary Elwes ninja’d his way into a pseudo cameo role though. Beardface doctor. I might be rambling.

“It’s Beardfacé. Why do you people insist on calling me Beardface!?”

2 out of 4.

This title sounds gross. GROSS! Well not gross. Just sexual. Morning Glory? Seriously?

I admit, the main reason I wanted to see this romantic comedy is because Rachel McAdams is hot. Not only hot, bu also a hockey fan. Not many people get their own “Rachel McAdams Cam” at a Bruins game, especially in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Rachel plays a young wanna be executive producer in broadcasting, but is stuck in the morning news shows (aka fake news). She also is able to handle the emotion of a woman who freaks out a lot pretty well (to contrast with her roles in Sherlock Holmes and Wedding Crashers, where she is a bit calmer). Harrison Ford plays the role of “I am old and awesome, fuck you people telling me what to do! But maybe inside I actually do care, rawrrr!” and it is pretty believable. I am sad he didn’t do any crazy stunts or shoot greedo though.

This is one of the references I was going for there.

Diane Keaton plays the other anchor who has been doing morning news forever, and hates the grumpy new partner, despite his credibility that he brings.

Also Patrick Wilson and Jeff Goldblum are in the movie. One is a boyfriend, one is a hard ass boss. Can you guess who plays who? (“Fuck Jeff Goldblum“) I was hoping Goldblum would do science in the movie. For some reason.

This is one of the references I was going for there.

The ending was pretty predictable, but you have to take the good with the bad. I guess it worked overall.