Tag: Russell Brand

This is my fourth movie this year reviewing with Anna Kendrick in it, and it hasn’t been a great year. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates was on top, above Mr. Right and Get A Job, all very mediocre to poor. Sorry, I haven’t hit The Accountant yet and The Hollars looks good too, but that is still six movies this year.

After the year she had been having, I wasn’t super surprised to see her starring in Trolls as well. Trolls is probably one of the most least anticipated animated movies of the year for me, after Sing.

I mean, I get it. Getting rights to old toys to make new movies for is in right now. The Smurfs movies did okay, why not create a world about Trolls? Gotta get that merchandising money back somehow right? Fuck new risks!

Sorry, I almost complained about films these days. Trolls just seems like a lazy cash grab, and they have been hyping it since Timberlake released that song like, six months ago at least. I am trolled out already and I haven’t even been forced to see a real advertisement for it.

One of those trolls is a fucking giraffe what is going on here?

The Bergens are large, basically ogre like entities that are disgusting and sad, lives devoid of happiness. The Trolls are tiny creatures full of color who are always partying and full of happy. The Bergens hate them and are jealous of them and also found out that when they eat Trolls, they get to feel happiness inside of them and it is kind of a big deal. So they captured all of the trolls and every Bergen eats one on a holiday called Trollstice.

Except this year they have escaped underground, thanks to King Peppy (Jeffrey Tambor), saving every last troll, including his baby daughter Peppy (Anna Kendrick). This gets the Bergen Chef (Christine Baranski) into quite a big trouble, because King Gristle (John Cleese) cannot feed his baby, Prince Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). So the Chef gets banished from the kingdom. The Trolls find a new place to live and they party for ever after.

Until twenty years later. Princess Poppy is throwing a huge party to celebrate being free of the Bergens. Everyone is going to be there, everyone but Branch (Justin Timberlake). The weird troll who is grey, doesn’t sing, doesn’t dance, doesn’t HUG. He warns them not to do the party like that or else the Bergens will come. And sure enough, the Chef Bergen finds them and takes all of Poppy’s friends. All of them, even the spiritual one (Russell Brand). So Poppy decides to get the rest of the Trolls into hiding and trick Branch into coming along with her to rescue them!

Back at Bergen Town, the Chef is getting back into business with the handful of trolls she captured. The king is dead, so the new king is that poor Gristle Jr. who never got a Troll before and he decides to restore Trollstice to make his kingdom happy! There is also a small maid, Bridget (Zooey Deschenal), who likes the king. This plays a part in the plot.

So yeah, get into the town, save the friends, and you know, survive. Whoa re the friends? Well, a lot of them are played by famous people, but if you asked me their character names I would have no fucking clue, as they kept them kind of hard to figure out and match. But we have Gwen Stefani, James Corden, Ron Fuches, Aino Jawo, Caroline Hjelt, Kunal Nayyar, Quevenzhane Wallis, Walt Dohrn, and Rhys Darby! Oh okay, fine, I could figure out who Guy Diamond was based off of his name.

They live in a scary place where literally everything has a mouth and eats something.

Oh hey, Trolls. Of course it was a Jukebox Musical in some regards, and I hoped to see something creative. Instead, for the most part, the songs were bad mash ups with a loosely related theme and just choruses to get the little kids moving their feet. I don’t hate Jukebox Musicals, I just hate bad music ones. It was overall a lesser Happy Feet in that regard, but better than Strange Magic.

Overall there were two really good musical moments, one was the song Get Back Up Again which is technically the only original song in the musical (Does the JT one count as original?), and another song near the end that captured the emotions of the moment extremely well. It might have made me cry, but crying does not mean I give the film a passing grade. There was also a very awkward song moment with Deschanel’s character. She gave a unique voice for Bridget, but when Bridget sang it was uncomfortable as the voice did not transition at all into the song.

The colors are bright and kid friendly, but the animation style on its own felt quite dull. It felt too fuzzy and well, doll like. Again, their intentions I am sure to sell toys, but it wasn’t too visually pleasing.

The world they created was an incredibly scary place, as there is a recurring joke of how almost everything eats something else. It frightened me and not in a sexy way.

Plot wise, about 20-30 minutes in it was pretty easy to figure out how the whole thing would end. And yeah, it was true. The love plot between Bridget and the King, although arguably necessary, felt like it was taking too much time from the rescue plot. There are not a lot of surprises in this film, nor intellectual humor. They have a character who farts glitter, and another character who shits cupcakes. Yay butt humor.

Overall Trolls is just okay, which is better than I expected. There are only a few more cartoon movies to go this year and the only place this one will make an impact in the awards is nominations for Best Song, I imagine. It is unfortunately also really dated. They decided to make the Trolls super modern, so they are saying YOLO, OMG and more terms to connect to the youth of today, meaning no one will give a crap about it in ten years.

2 out of 4.

2015 may be the year of documentaries about celebrities. I feel a bit bad that so many of mine for this year are about a single person, dead or alive. I mean, last week I did Amy. And I still have that Kurt Cobain one to do.

But today I talk about Brand: A Second Coming, about Russell Brand, a guy who is definitely still alive and kicking. Shit he kicks a lot.

This is about a documentary about how Brand came into fame, how he reached the top, how he fell, and whatever the fuck he is doing now. He is an actor, a stand up comic, sometimes a singer, and a political activist.

What? You only know him from Get Him To The Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or Arthur? Well, where have you been? Someplace that isn’t England? Oh, that makes sense.

If you aren’t in England, you might never come across this guy. Or the Queen. Or the ghost of Winston Churchill.

Technically, part of this documentary is also showcasing Brand’s stand up tour, The Messiah Complex. You know, where he compares himself to Jesus is vulgar and funny ways. But only a few jokes/stories. Really, I think the main point of this review is to show how he went from acting celebrity, to political…activist…humorist…political something that he is today. Maybe consider him like Jon Stewart. But his show isn’t a big one on Comedy Central, it is instead a YouTube channel called The Trews (if the news had truth I think), where he went over how the news was reported the previous day, showing biases, lies, or whatever.

It is actually a really ambitious project and had actually gained me a lot of respect for him. All I knew about his politics was from that one Morning Joe clip that blew up on the internet a year or so ago. It is actually quite entertaining and shows he is smarter than some of his characters let him put on.

And hey, it was also interesting to see his side of the Katy Perry divorce story, as I only really heard about the why from Katy Perry: Part Of Me. How often do divorced couples each get their own documentary? Outside of presidents and their wives.

Overall, I’d call Brand: A Second Coming as merely interesting. It feels like it is going all over the place early on, and I did find myself wondering why he even had a documentary at this point in his career. Good for people who love Brand already, that is for sure. Probably the most profound sentence in any review I’ve written right there.

2 out of 4.

Despicable Me 2 might make the most money out of any CGI movie this summer, so it is kind of a big deal. But does it deserve that money?

The kid vote does not count, damn it. Despicable Me 2 starts us off soon after the first film. Gru (Steve Carell) is no longer a big bad villain because he has three kid to take care of, and he has had a change of heart. In fact, he has turned his whole secret laboratory into a secret jelly making factory, complete with free minion workers. With overheads that low, he can really make a splash in the market.

Unfortunately, the change in operation has left Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) with no joy in his life, so he leaves Gru to pursue other opportunities. Speaking of pursuing other opportunities, Gru gets kidnapped by the Anti-Villain League. Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan) wants Gru to lead an investigation on a disappearing arctic base that is researching chemicals that can cause ordinary creatures to become terrible beasts.

He would also get a new partner on the case, young and bubbly Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig). Oh yeah, she totally has the hots for him, too. This movie is mostly about Gru as a single dad and afraid to date. This provides many scenes of him avoiding the neighbors and awkwardly flirting with Lucy. Sure, maybe the world is threatened if this formula gets in the wrong hands, but love is also important.

Benjamin Bratt leads his vocals for El Macho / the mysterious Salsa Dancing restaurant owner who looks like El Macho, Ken Jeong as a mysteriously short wig salesman, and Kristen Schaal as a mysteriously well endowed blind date for Gru.

Spoiler, he does not choose the well endowed blind date by the end. Illumination Entertainment made the original Despicable Me in 2010, and is what they are most known for. That is because before Despicable Me 2, they have only made two other films, The Lorax and Hop, both ridiculous flops (and a bit terrible). So it makes sense they are already doing a sequel, and are releasing a spin-off titled just Minions in December 2014. What doesn’t make sense is how they have the rights to so many Dr. Seuss based movies down the pipe line, when they did so badly with their first chance.

Speaking of the Minions, did you love them from the first movie? They were arguably the best part of the first film, and quite cute. They have made sure that they advertise the fuck out of these minions for the sequel and eventual spinoff.

Basically, everywhere I look, there is a Minion based toy, gizmo, commercial, because “Hey, they are cute!” They recognize the best part, gave us a movie with potential for rich new characters, but then threw minions at our faces until we had to get new 3D Glasses. There is an overabundance of minions in this movie. They are in every scene, part of every plot point, and potentially in this movie more than Gru. It turns the entire movie into mostly slapstick based humor instead of witty jokes, which doesn’t help rewatchability or entertainment.

Basically I believe the main character is pushed out of the spotlight, similar to how Cars 2 was handled. At no point in the movie is he even considered despicable. In fact, he is rather admired and chased by women, loved by his family, and just a good guy. The plot is really straightforward, and you will figure out the main bad guy well before the reveal. The bad chemical itself was inconsistent with how it works, where it could have been fixed with a sentence of dialogue.

Long story short, Despicable Me 2 is not really about Gru trying to save the world from a threat (although he does that as well) it is more about Gru the single dad finding love. With minions. So many minions.

 

1 out of 4.

I am proud to say that I actually saw Despicable Me in theaters. Yes, now I see everything in theaters, but in 2010, it was rare as shit. But I was like hey, those yellow things look cute. Let’s watch the movie!

I figured I should probably write a review on it now, with the sequel coming out later this summer. Did you know know about Despicable Me 2? I find that impossible. Their ads have been everywhere since January at least. Open your eyes people.

Yeah, your eyes like you were on a roller coaster.

Gru (Steve Carell) is an evil genius mastermind! Trust me, he is wicked evil. The best at being a villain of all time. How do you know? Because he says so, and he has minions! Little tiny yellow minions, that are awesome. They speak inaudibly and they are the main selling point of this movie, really.

Either way, he isn’t so cool anymore. Some young upshot villain named Vector (Jason Segel) (because he has magnitude AND direction) has stolen the great pyramids. Yeah, what a dick. Now Gru feels inadequate and has to one up them by stealing the moon. Jeez. But he can’t get a loan from the Bank Of Evil / Mr. Perkins (Will Arnett) without a shrink ray in development, so he steals one! Success! Vector steals it from him though. Damn.

So Gru gets the idea to adopt three little girls, make them go to Vector’s house to sell cookies, so he can sneak in and grab the gun back. Then he can dump the kids off later. But they are rambunctious individuals. Ballet. School. Amusement parks. They are hard to take care of, especially when he isn’t cut out to be a parent. But then he learns…to love. Russell Brand plays Dr. Nefario, the scientist that works for Gru.

Aw shit yeah, I forgot I can have gifs on here. Look at how cute those fuckfaces are.

Did I mention I love the yellow minions? Yeah. Most people do. But that is about all I liked from the movie. The plot was a bit forced for me, and not at all exciting. Obviously it was all about him and the little girls, and obviously the girls were there to mostly be a thorn in his side, but actually learning to care for them in like, a day? How the heck did that work?

I just. I just can’t explain it. I re-watched it and was bored the entire time. Maybe the kids were all too young and that bugged me? Why can’t one of them have been more teenager-y? The oldest is close. But not too close. This was the first feature of Illumination Entertainment, who later gave us the bad Hop and the disappointing Lorax. I in general prefer these awesome sexy CGI animated movies to give us more realistic people, instead of the overextended ones (like Dreamworks tends to do).

Yeah. I know. I think people like this movie just for the minions and I am an old curmudgeon.

1 out of 4.

My last foray into the 3D movie territory was with watching Coraline, but that was using the classic blue/red scheme and everything in my brain got messed up. But this new 3D that they are using at theaters? I tried it once, three years ago, with Avatar. Movie is pretty old now, turns out. So three years have passed since then, I’d like to think that the 3D technology and jumped leaps and bounds at this point, and should be all BAM. IN YOUR FACE.

THE THIRD DIMENSION.
YEAH.

So of course my second ever attempt at a new 3D movie, I figured why not go to Katy Perry: Part Of Me.

Aww, look at the happy couple. True love and all. Err.

Speaking of concert movies, this is my third one, and second one to be based off a single famous artist. First of course was Bieber, and second Glee. And just like before, I have no idea how to review them.

This movie is suppose to show a different part of Katy Perry, and more of her past, that the average person doesn’t (or doesn’t care to know). All this with a world concert series that she was going on for almost a whole year, with roughly only a few days off ever 2-3 weeks. And what did she do with those few days off? Go see the love of her life, her husband, Russell Brand of course!

Now I forgot in my timeline when their divorce happened, and assumed it was in the summer. I thought all the talk about their love was just a tragic joke, and the movie was finished before they broke up. But nope, that definitely did happen during the movie, and it was sad as shit. But you know what? Katy Perry still did her show that night. Didn’t cancel a single thing, despite all those tears. That’s some dedication.

Katy’s youth was with a super Christian family, her parents traveling preachers. Her first album as a teen was signed to a gospel production company outside of Nashville. But she wanted more. Turns out when she got to LA for music purposes outside of religious, she was pretty much signed right away. Since 2001. But clearly wasn’t famous yet. She didn’t like kissing a girl until 2008, leaving her 6-7 years of struggling musicianness before getting it big. That was while writing a lot of her own music too, and the normal story of “oh I don’t want to be the new Avril / Spears, I want to be me!” like talk.

I am sure it is real, but maybe overblown for the purposefulness of the film.

Ohhh, I get the cover now. She dreamed of being a star in her room, and now she is! How clever!

So yeah, despite being an overnight sensation, she wasn’t an immediate success, which is nice to know. And (although it obviously has to be a part of the reason), she doesn’t seem to be some girl hired for her boobs to sing other people’s songs with lots of autotune, a pop standard. The movie did a real good job of humanizing her.

Honestly, if you didn’t feel sad while she laid int the chair realizing Russell Brand wanted a divorce and could not stop crying or talk to anyone, you are a robot. Which would explain your dance moves.

The actual concert spliced through it seemed really well done and entertaining. Surprisingly, Firework was not the last song. Go figure. I think it just needed (like all of these) less fans freaking out and recording stuff, I don’t care about other normal people’s love. They can stop that.

Also there are some mini interviews, including Adele and Rihanna. Why? Because Katy Perry had 5 number 1 singles from 1 album, only person to do that besides Michael Jackson. And he got a movie recently too, so why not Katy?

The review of this doesn’t matter, you won’t see it if you hate her music probably. You probably also won’t if you like her music. I will say it is a bit more interesting than the other concert films I’ve done. But if she is just a fad in five years, then ehh, who cares.

2 out of 4.

I have written before about Holiday or make believe character movies, and how I hate it when they contradict with the real world that they are presumably set in. I am looking at you The Tooth Fairy.

Despite everyone knowing there is no Easter Bunny in the real real world, Hop does a pretty good job of not contradicting itself. Mostly. So I will give it a point for that. I do not recall a single adult uttering “Easter Bunny? Preposterous!” and slamming their first down. Because clearly if one existed, people wouldn’t question it, because there’d be damn easter eggs everywhere that they didn’t hide. Must. Stop. Rant.

Because I have a way more important topic to rant about.

The Easter Bunny, or E.B. (Russell Brand) doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to be a drummer in Hollywood. His dad, the current easter bunny (Hugh Laurie…who is named E.B.’s dad. What??) So a few days before Easter, he escapes from their hideout (On the Easter Island, of course), where they make all the candy and eggs for Easter (because that is a thing people think Easter Bunnies do?). He escapes to LA where he gets HIT BY A CAR!

Driven by James Marsden, who is a slacker living at home with his folks. His family (dad of Gary Cole, younger(?) sister of Kaley Cuoco) thinks he needs to get a real job. And move out. I was confused, because it seemed like Kaley still lived at home possibly. Eventually Marsden agrees to help the bunny out, despite causing problems, and get him an audition for David Hasselhoff (On Hoff Knows Talent) to be a big star!

Oh yeah, and the factory for Easter is fueled by an army of “chicks”, whereas the second in command (Hank Azaria) has dreams of being the “Easter Bunny”. Despite the fact that E.B. has no interest in being the head honcho, the dad is stubborn, and laughs away all of the suggestions from the chick to become the next guy in charge. Instead he sends the Pink Berets (highly trained bunnies) to capture his son.

There is also a subplot of James figuring out what he wants to do with his life, become the first human Easter Bunny.

Now this picture should make a lot more sense.

I seriously am about to spoil some thing. I cant figure out how to hide it so I will just say it. Yes, at the end they stop the chick and save the day. E.B. and James agree to be co-Easter Bunnies, more fun for the two.

So uhh. James gets to live his dream, and E.B. gave up his?

But more importantly, WHAT THE FUCK KIDS MOVIE? This is a horrible main plotline. Horrible horrible. Just typing this seems silly, but clearly this movie is anti-chick. These chicks, who must live in Neverland because they never go to Chickens, have to work in a factory all year (like Santa Elves) making candy apparently? There is only like 5 bunnies in the whole place from what I seen, the head honcho, his son, and his body guard unit (who never spoke. They should have spoke). And they don’t do shit but once a day, if that.

But for the head bunny to call the chick more or less dumb for wanting to advance to the head master position was horrible. It made it seem like a Kingdom, and not a business. It gave the message that those born as chicks can never advance to any higher sort of existance, but must stay there and work. Sure later, when he did take over (after he forced it) he replaced candy with worms and stuff (because Bunnies like candy, so of course a chick would put in food they like? Another dumb correlation). But by then he was probably just pissed off at how much of an asshole the dad was being.

Especially as one character noted it made more since for a chick/chicken to be handing out eggs than a bunny. AND NOT TO MENTION that at the end JAMES MARSDEN, A HUMAN, gets to be an Easter Bunny, when all the other chicks get put back in their rightful place.

Again. What. The. Fuck. These type of matters shouldn’t be brushed aside either because it is just a kids movie. This is the same shit they tried to sell us in Cars/Cars 2.

0 out of 4.

I saw the preview of Get Him To The Greek and was like, what? That looks dumb. What is Jonah Hill doing? Russel Brand? He is just acting like he did on Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Can he only do one thing?

Katy Perry?

Fortunately for my past hating self, this movie turned out to be funnier than that. Sure, a lot of jokes occur just because of drugs and alcohol, making it pretty much a stoner flick. But the “Jeffrey” scene was just way too good. In this movie Brand is still a rocker, and Jonah wants him to replay a concert he did 10 years later (big deal concert) to revitalize his career. Unfortunately with drugs and alcohol, he is really unstable. So getting him back to the greek, is filled with shenanigans.

Puff Daddy in one of his few roles ever, was terrific throughout the movie. Seriously, he was way too fucking funny. His humor could be based entirely on the fact that he is P Diddy, doing humor, and that makes it awesome, and him not actually being funny. Celebrity factor. But ehh, I will put on those shades every time to get those laughs. He played the over the top record executive, and damn it, did it go really well.

This is his “Imma fuck you up” face.

I obviously see now that he is playing the same dude from Forgetting SM, and that makes it kind of like canon. The music that is sang also is pretty decent. Not necessarily completely comedic, but actually going for some sort of listenable sound as well, helps make it believable. No way Elizabeth Moss would actually be with the Jonah Hill in this movie, but I guess we have to believe she has gone insane from long doctor hours. Speaking of insane, the scene with her, Jonah, and P Diddy? What?

3 out of 4.