Tag: Terry Crews

Sorry To Bother You

Sorry to Bother You is one of those films that sort of snuck up on me with a roar. I heard idle mentions of it earlier in the year, but didn’t go out of my way to do further research.

I knew the star. I guessed the theme. And yet none of that would prepare me for the trailer.

The trailer felt very fresh and told me that this. Would be a movie with a lot going on. A sort of extreme satire, maybe very political, but whatever it is it has a message and will be both subliminal and superliminal with that message.

I was excited and ready for this screening, without really knowing what it might give me.

Japan
I am getting a Japan / sumo wrestler headband vibe here.

Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is your regular, down on his luck, poor, brother. He is living in a garage in the house of his uncle (Terry Crews), with his long term girlfriend artist (Tessa Thompson), and they aren’t having a lot of luck making money.

But Cassius is able to get a job working as a telemarketer, working for commission. It is better than nothing. And he has the promise that if he does good, he can go to the top floors of the company. He can ride in the special elevator. He can be a “power caller,” and make the big bucks. No one really knows what they sell up there, but it ain’t magazines and book sets.

Cassius is told to just stick to the script, don’t get out of line, and make money. Once he makes money, he can make more money and more and be a success for once. Especially if he taps into his white person voice.

Starring David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Lily James, Forest Whitaker, and Rosario Dawson! Or at least their voices. Also starring Jermaine Fowler, Steven Yeun, Omari Hardwick, Armie Hammer, Robert Longstreet, Danny Glover, Kate Berlant. and Michael X. Sommers, that would be their voices and their bodies.

Drinks
This is how white people drink champagne.

Strangely enough, the trailer for Sorry To Bother You only gave you a slice of the whole story, so I tried to do the same with my plot. There is a whole lot more that goes into this story. Topics of slavery (multiple levels) , class warfare, poverty, selling out, and American indifference to clear wrongs in the world. This movie coming out now is extremely well timed given the border problems that keep getting swept away by other media distractions.

It is not a film to use subtle clues to drive the point home. No, these clues are obvious, with a hammer. Fuck, one of the most uncomfortable scenes was the precursor to a “rap” where the chants, the disparity of the cast, made everything all too real and uncomfortable.

Stanfield is amazing in this film as our lead. His senses will probably always align with the audience on the scale of what is right and wrong and when to finally draw the line. Oh yes, you will know when that line is drawn. It was good seeing Yeun in a role very different than his previous work. Thompson was great. Hardwick was as well, despite more limited time, and Hammer was a blast going full crazy CEO for this film.

Unfortunately, areas do feel a bit clunky and jarring. Especially in the end, time seems to go by strangely and not everything seems to have the same attention to detail as earlier on in the film.

Sorry To Bother You will be looked back as an important work, with extreme topics in order to get the point heard loudly.

3 out of 4.

Deadpool 2

Before any of you take my words too seriously, let it be known that I gave the original Deadpool a 2 out of 4. Why? Some people were quite angry with me back then! They called it a fresh sight for sore superhero eyes.

And I called it sort of boring. We start with a good intro, but then when we get the flashback, it takes forever to get to the point where we get Deadpool power again. A seriously long time, that is humerous, but less funny, and just….slow. The other main issue was the weak villains. It was a very ground film, but I watch superhero films so that superheroes can fight challenges, not just generic strong people.

Either way, with the sequel, I was more excited. It was going to have a wider cast of characters, it clearly didn’t have to get bogged down in backstory for our main character. It also was going to give us Cable for the first time in modern cinema, so Deadpool 2 had something unique going on for it. And honestly, just, it needed a second try for me. This time I was already given two amazing superhero films in Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War, so it had a bit of a hill to climb to get to their levels.

Ass
More ass is a nice touch though, I guess.

Deadpool 2 takes place after the events of Deadpool. I know that might sound shocking, but time is usually linear.

Unless a movie has a time travel device. Oh hey there is a time travel plot? Fuck. This movie has Cable (Josh Brolin) in it! Oh no! He is from the future, and he has a kid (Julian Dennison) to kill. If he kills the kid, his future is better for him at least. So why not?

Well, there are a lot of reasons why not. And Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) might have to protect them, although it doesn’t sound very Deadpool-y. Speaking of Deadpool-y, this plot outline is really vague, isn’t it? Yeah, because honestly, the less you know, the better.

Also starring Morena Baccarin, Zazie Beetz, Brianna Hildebrand, Bill Skarsgård, T.J. Miller, Terry Crews, Lewis Tan, Eddie Marsan, Jack Kesy, Shioli Kutsuna, Leslie Uggams, Stefan Kapicic, and Karan Soni.

And Rob Delaney as Peter.

Peter
And Peter guys, come on.

If you only had to read one statement about the film to confirm your beastly desires, then let it be this one: I think Deadpool 2 is better than Deadpool. So if you loved Deadpool, this might an even more crazy experience.

There is more action, there is more gore, there are a lot, lot more surprises, and an infinite amount more Celine Dion. It will shock you early on, throughout, and through the end. Both in terms of just how far it goes and the themes it will explore. It has probably one of the best credit scenes of all time.

And yet, it actually put me to sleep early on. Getting plot heavy isn’t a problem, but when the plot is sort of going all over the place, and it is just filled with streams of meta or lame jokes, it is easy to lose disinterest. Sure, it picks up in the second half. And yet as a full film it is just lacking again.

I do find myself more willing to re-watch this one than the first film. And future films too, given that they probably won’t have any T.J. Miller after the incidents.

Also, Peter!

2 out of 4.

The Ridiculous 6

How many movies does Adam Sandler do in a year? Usually one right? Maybe two?

Well this year, he stars in three different movies. The Cobbler, Pixels, and now The Ridiculous 6. Sure he is getting older, but those private yachts aren’t going to pay for themselves. And as he does more and more films, he gains more and more friends to have to support on his army of yachts.

This film is a Netflix original movie. Last year he signed a four film deal with the company, and so it will be awhile before his films are released theatrically again.

And uhh. I guess this is Adam Sandler’s take on a western, with a name similar to those other western and samurai movies.

Group
There are rag tag groups and there are shit groups. This group is worse than the later.

White Knife (Sandler) grew up never really knowing his father or his mother. But he is half Native America, despite looking white. And yes, her is freakishly good at using knives. Name explained, boom.

Then one day, an old guy comes to town. Frank Stockburn (Nick Nolte), a famous bank robber who was notorious throughout the land. Turns out that is his real daddy. But he needs help. Members of his former gang are going to kill him, unless he pays back money that was stolen from there. The gang is now lead by Cicero (Danny Trejo), and they are ruthless. Frank lies to them about the location, so that White Knife aka Tommy can get the money and put it in the spot before the bad guys get there. Then, after saving his dad’s life, he can enjoy some of that sweet ass quality time he has been hoping for. So he will run off and do that, before he gets married to Smoking Fox (Julia Jones).

Along the way, Tommy finds out that his dad really did get around, by meeting several half brothers. There is Ramon (Rob Schneider), half Mexican with a burro. There is Lil’ Pete (Taylor Lautner), who is half retarded and well. Yeah. Herm (Jorge Garcia) is half…Mongolian or something. He speaks gibberish. There is also Chico (Terry Crews), half Black and a piano player! And finally, Danny (Luke Wilson) who is half an alcoholic and half an American traitor.

Remember when I said Sandler had friends? Yeah, a ton of them are in this movie.

Chris Parnell. Blake Shelton. Harvey Keitel. John Turturro. Jon Lovitz. Nick Swardson. Saginaw Grant. Steve Buscemi. Steve Zahn. Vanilla Ice. And Will Forte!

SJ
Lautner’s tooth gap is played by Steve Carell!

I almost forgot to mention the controversy! You know, where Native American extras walked off the set because they found the humor to be racist and demeaning. One would say that isn’t good publicity, but of course we know there is no such thing as bad PR.

In fact, Netflix can only gain from a raunchy Sandler film. No one will cancel their account because it exists, but they will get more international audiences who love the shit out of him still. Win for them, no matter how terrible a film is.

But in all honesty, this film isn’t even super terrible. No, it is really fucking…slightly below average. Sandler’s character is a bit boring, which is true for a lot of his things lately. He is just playing an every guy, who happens to be good at knives I guess. The only reason to watch the film is for the rest of the 5 brothers.

Taylor Lautner playing what amounts of Simple Jack? Fantastic. He was the best part of Grown Ups 2 and one of the best parts of this one as well. I have been know to enjoy Schneider, and I think his performance is one of his better ones lately (again, not saying a lot). Garcia and Crews felt a bit underused, especially Garcia. His character didn’t even make sense.

But really, the movie has bottom of the barrel. I only laughed occasionally, the twists were obvious, and it was just far too long. It looks like they really did try to make a good western parody, but you know. Poop jokes. Under using actors. Some racism. You know what you are getting going into the film, I suspect.

1 out of 4.

The Expendables 3

Ah, a third movie. The Expendables 3 was rocked with “controversy” a few weeks before its release by having an actual good copy of it released on the internet. DVD or better scan, all the effects in, everything. Not a shitty cam copy. Well, in a day it had over 100,000 downloads, and by now over a million I am certain. They say that the video was stolen or whatever and you know what? I don’t believe it.

There was a lot of negative press on this film because now that there are even more stars in it than before, it is now rated PG-13. The other two films (1 and 2 here) were rated R! That is how an action movie should be! But this one was certain to fail because no one wanted to see a big action movie with lots of stars with toned down action.

So yeah, I think they leaked it themselves and will now blame that leak on bad ticket sales, and only like one person will lose their job.

Fancy
But at least they are classing it up for this third installment.

The Expendables. Lead by Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) still, they are making their current mission to free Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes) from confinement. He was an original expendable, but they eventually locked him up for tax evasion. That is a real life joke right there. But after the mission they use him to do another mission and that is where they find out that Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson) is free and out to kill.

Conrad was another original Expendables, but he is a lot crazier and lot more mad at the former members of the groups. So he wants to kill em all. Simple as that. After injuring one of the current crew, Barney vows that he will get him back and make him pay. So he sends away his crew (Jason Statham, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews) because he doesn’t want them to get hurt. Instead he decides to get a bunch of fresh new guys and get them hurt instead!

So he gets his guy who knows guys, Kelsey Grammer, gets his team of noobies (Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Ronda Rousey, Kellan Lutz) to get Conrad! Yeah!

Also starring Harrison Ford as the CIA guy who also wants to take down Conrad, and Antonio Banderas as a former special ops type guy, but is getting older and no one likes him. Also of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li are just hanging around too.

Gibson
Mel Gibson? Playing a bad guy? That doesn’t fit in with my world view at all.

By far, The Expendables trilogy has to be the most mediocre trilogy I have reviewed on my website. 2 out of 4’s across the board. They don’t even hold equal 2 out of 4s either. The second one is the best, the first one is the worst, and this one is somewhere in between. A lot of the action early on felt shitty, so let’s blame that on the rating.

The first one didn’t know how to be entertaining. This one really didn’t have huge entertaining moments either, outside of the fact that Antonio Banderas was a-freaking-mazing. His character was hilarious and brought a lot of fun to the movie. Without him, it would seriously be a 1 out of 4 dud.

Because lets look at the new guys? Who the fuck are these people? Two of them are just MMA fighters, not action stars. Lutz is the only one who actually has been in technically action movies.

Isn’t that the point of these movies? To bring in action stars together? Gibson was great as a villain. Snipes was underused. Crews, normally the best part, was even more underused, so that was disappointing.

The action was whatever too.

Easily a passable movie, and technically a passable franchise.

2 out or 4.

Blended

I can say for certain that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Blended. It looked like feel good trash. This is like the fifth movie in a row where Adam Sandler is playing a father like figure, and the third time he has had Drew Barrymore as the love interest.

It kind of just felt like a money grab from the start, where the jokes are mostly just Africa jokes with a shitty plot behind it.

Crews
But yet at the same time, something compelled me to watch this movie as soon as I could.

Basic plot time! Jim (Sandler) and Lauren (Barrymore) are on a blind date. Lauren is recently divorced due to her husband cheating on her (Joel McHale). Jim unfortunately is recently widowed. But also, Jim seems to be a dick, taking his date to Hooters and stuff. Both are awkward. It is a bad blind date, they don’t want to see each other again.

Until they do. A lot. Mostly on accident. They are very similar. And due to strange circumstances, they are both able to take their families on a vacation to Africa! But they are also sharing a romantic getaway package. One meant for families made up of step-children/parents, half-whatevers. You know. Blended shit.

So now they are on a zany adventure, both in each others lives, with each others kids, and hey, maybe they will learn to love and trust again too?

Jim has three daughters (Belle Thorne, Emma Fuhrmann, Alyvia Alyn Lind) and Lauren has two sons (Braxton Beckham, Kyle Red Silverstein).

Who else do we got? Well, we got Shaquille O’Neal as a best friend and Wendi McLendon-Covey as a different best friend. Kevin Nealon is a guy on the trip, with his son Zak Henri who becomes a love interest to the older girl.

And last but not least, Abdoulaye NGom as the vacation host, and Terry Crews as a lead singer of an African A Capella group to serenade us the whole movie. Also, countless other guest stars, some from most of Adam’s movies and some that were only in one before.

Cast
Basically, here is most of the cast outside of a couple kids and best friends.

Sandler is such a jerk. He can do pointless ass movies involving as many cheap celebrity cameos as possible now, or a movie that actually has some heart behind it. I blame the director. The director did Click, The Waterboy, and The Wedding Singer before this. He knows how to make a decent Adam Sandler movie. Although this one didn’t have me cry like that sneaky movie Click, it did have a lot of touching moments behind it. All the asshole-ish behavior on both sides seem to get explained away with great excuses and reasons, and you can’t help but feel sorry for both sides.

But that is the surprise drama element of the movie! You don’t want that, you want the comedy promised to you in the trailers! Well, here are actually a decent number of laughs. I am a bit disappointed in how much of the funnier moments in the movie ended up in the trailers. Mostly since a lot of them were based on a surprise/sudden action. But thankfully the film had a few more surprises up its sleeve.

Funniest movie ever? No. Great drama/comedy? Debatable. Definitely at least decent. Crews was really awesome in his role, dude always gives it the 100%.

I am mostly thrilled this movie actually had a plot and a jokes derived from the plot and characters, and not just 50 sight gags with African related scenery. They have some, but a lot more is available than the “Random jokes” that I was afraid the whole movie would end up being.

Is it better than the last two collaborations between the two? Arguably not, but eh, it was still a pretty good experience on its own.

3 out of 4.

Draft Day

By and large, the trailer for Draft Day is one of the worst I have ever seen. If you haven’t seen it, give it a watch. It is two and a half minutes. It is almost mythical the way they made that trailer. It is both a trailer that gives us the entire movie while also giving us absolutely nothing at all. It is truly marvelous to comprehend that achievement.

I guess that is a negative. A terrible vague yet overly detailed trailer. It also was advertised a lot, so I got to see the same identical thing over and over again. The concept became slightly infuriating. Basically, it had a huge uphill battle to prove itself an amazing movie in my mind.

Chill
Look at how fucking laid back they are about this movie. Clearly they don’t care what I think!

A lot is going on in Sonny Weaver Jr.’s (Kevin Costner) life right now. His dad died a few days ago, one of the more famous coaches of the Browns. Ali (Jennifer Garner) runs their salary cap number stuff, and it turns out she is now pregnant with his kid. It is also 12 hours til the NFL draft, and as the GM Sonny is told he has to make a big splash tonight at the draft or his job might be done. So sayeth the owner (Frank Langella).

Good. He has the 7th pick though. Right now his choice is between a running back that fits his teams system, Ray Jennings (Arian Foster), that is also the son of a former Browns player Earl Jennings (Terry Crews). So Browns royalty, the obvious pick. But Sonny really likes this defensive guy Vontae Mack (Chadwick Boseman), good at sacks, can stop many great players, just might have some emotional issues.

But thanks to all of the pressure he is facing, he ends up trading for the number one overall pick for his first round picks this year and the next two. Shit. Now he can get Bo Callahan (Josh Pence), a great looking franchise QB. Their current QB (Tom Welling) has bad knees and got injured early on their last season. This pisses off the coach (Denis Leary) who feels his job is on the line thanks to Sonny’s boneheaded decision.

Yeah, then a lot more drama happens. OH WHAT WILL SONNY DO? Ellen Burstyn plays the mother, Sean Combs plays Bo’s agent, and Griffin Newman plays an intern.

Draft Room
Didn’t you know there was constant arguing and drama right before a draft pick?

If you hadn’t noticed, there are no real NFL players or coaches or GMs talked about in this movie. All of the plot points related to the Browns are of course made up. Which is why seeing Crews/Foster there was a bit weird. Oh wait, 98% of this is made up. But they also mention Andrew Luck, and that is probably the only mistake they do I guess.

Garner’s character didn’t really seem to fit the normal stereotypes of a woman in her situation. She was really calm, which is generally not how I see her in most roles. It was strange.

What they ended up doing by the end was a bit clever, but not really too realistic either. Basically, there is no reason for a certain other GM to have done what he did and that is the only main issue with it.

So overall, it is an okay movie. I am surprised it came out in April, since it is clearly just a giant commercial for the NFL, romanticizing the whole thing. The NFL is next month, so I figured they’d make it basically the same day. Most of the teams mentioned were bad, maybe to drum up support, outside of the Seahawks. I also liked Boseman in this movie. Pretty crazy. I have seen him as a famous baseball player, now a made up football player, and later this year, a famous musician. Pretty exciting film roles for this guy is all I gotta say about that.

2 out of 4.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2

Puns. Puns are an often overlooked humor tool that are wildly taken for granted. In fact, some people respond to puns with groans!

Those groaners I have to imagine would not enjoy Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 which has more puns than the number of acupuncturists who also happen to be backstabbers.

Dicks In Your Mouth
I wonder how many animated dicks could fit in his mouth. For research.

CWaCoM2 takes places immediately after CWaCoM, with the town of Swallow Falls in disarray and covered with food. Flint (Bill Hader) and his friends are excited for the rebuild, but they are forced to temporarily move to San Franjose, California, while Live Corp cleans up their island…for science! After all, Live Corp is run by Chester V (Matt Forte), Flint’s hero since he was a kid and the coolest scientist ever. It is usually a good idea to let trained professionals take care of a job.

Unfortunately, the clean up isn’t going as smoothly as they had hoped. The FLDSMDFR device was not destroyed after the first film, and it has created animal food hybrids to take over the island! They are also learning how to swim, and if they do, they will spread out and attack the rest of the world! Scary!

So it is up to Flint, with the rest of his crew to save the day. Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), girlfriend and meteorologist, Tim (James Caan), father, Brent McHale (Andy Samberg), former bully and current idiot, Manny (Benjamin Bratt), jack of all trades, Earl (Terry Crews), security guard, and Steve (Neil Patrick Harris) the monkey.

We also get introduced to Barb (Kristen Schaal), the ape. The fact that she is an ape, and not a monkey, is a very important difference.

Green Screen
Charles V reminded me a lot of Professor Hawk from Dexter’s Laboratory.

When I saw the trailer for CWaCoM2, I knew there would be an overwhelming amount of puns, but I still somehow underestimated how many they would actually throw at the viewer. At one point, the PPM (Puns Per Minute) value had to be greater than 10. Just constant puns, one after another, with hardly any time to comprehend them all.

Personally, I think the film was a bit too short to tell the story it wanted to tell. A lot of the movie felt rushed, especially once they first got to the island. In order to appease the kid viewers, they must have moved quickly to keep their interest. That has to be the biggest negative, not giving enough time to really flesh out the island and “foodimals.”

At the same time, I was equally impressed with the film’s ability to include “background jokes.” Once I saw the first few, my eyes were constantly watching the edge of the screen and I was surprised at how often they appeared. Heck, Joe Townee from the first film was snuck into this film twice. Unfortunately he had no lines this time, because his voice actor, Will Forte, was now voicing a new major character.

This film is filled with its fair share of low brow humor jokes, but an almost equal number of intelligent-ish jokes. I guess the point I am really trying to make is that this film has a lot of jokes, and they vary across the whole spectrum (outside of the adult themed joke territory). Despite the new writers and directors, I think it is a very worthy sequel to this franchise, and I would definitely watch a third one should it ever get made.

3 out of 4.

Scary Movie 5

Scary Movie 5.

Fuck. I watched Scary Movie 4 before this, even though I swore it off after seeing Scary Movie 3. Fuck my need to be a completionist.

Baby
Fuckkkkk.

Basically, long story short, Scary Movie 5 is a parody of Mama more so than Paranormal Activity 4. So hey, that’s unexpected. The trailers didn’t really show any Mama scenes. But the other major movie “parodied” is Black Swan, with a scene from Inception, and an even shorter scene from Sinister. Hell, they even have the new Evil Dead in there, but it is obvious (if not by the timing alone) that it is based only on the trailer for Evil Dead, not the actual movie. Oh yeah, Rise of the Planet of the Apes too, because why not?

BUT AM I DONE? NO. Also Zero Dark Thirty, and The Help. THE HELP? WHAT? WHY? That doesn’t even remotely get near the topic of the title.

Okay, calm down self. You can’t freak out this early.

Either way, Jody (Ashley Tisdale) and Dan (Simon Rex) are able to find his brother’s missing kids in a cabin in the woods. They are all weird now, the oldest talks of some entity Mama that is helping them out. They get to stay in a kick ass home, with lots of surveillance, where paranormal things happen. Their housekeeper (Lidia Porto) is very religious of course. Dan is a scientist trying to make Apes smarter, and Jody wants to get back to her ballerina roots like her mother. So she tries out for Black Swan, and has a rival (Erica Ash).

I don’t want any celebrity who was apart of this to miss out on getting tagged, so here is a big list of people in this movie! Usher, Heather Locklear, Sarah Hyland, Jerry O’Connell, Terry Crews, Molly Shannon, Snoop Dogg/Lion, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Katrina Bowden, Katt Williams, Darrell Hammond, and Mike Tyson.

There is also a narrator, who sounds a lot like Morgan Freeman, but it is not Morgan Freeman, I repeat, it is not Morgan Freeman! They did it to make you think he was in the movie. It’s all a lie, so he shall not be tagged.

Evil Dead?
Yep. Taken from the trailer, clearly.

If you need a recap of where the Scary Movie franchise went wrong, see my review of A Haunted House. Yes, A Haunted House is a much better film than Scary Movie 5, no question about it.

It has only a couple of the scenes from the trailer actually in it, which is a pretty annoying habit that needs to die out. Instead of having an overall unifying plot, it feels instead like a bad sketch comedy show (given the over-exaggerated everything), with scenes that barely fit together just to include some pop culture references in it. But Scary Movie arguably only talks about 3 horrors, and fills the rest with a thriller, a suspense, and a movie about apes! That isn’t even appropriate for something called Scary Movie. Bad movie makes, bad!

I went in expecting bad things, and well, this time it came true. I think I heard giggles once in my theater, two days after it came out. I actually did laugh out loud once, and it was because of something the narrator said. But other than that, this film might have been better titled Silent Movie given the reaction from the audience.

Also, Usher isn’t in the IMDB credits yet, but he totally has a dance scene, so I wanted to draw extra attention to him.

0 out of 4.

The Expendables 2

Good news everyone. There are only 13 tagged actors for this movie, and one of them is actually a woman. Crazy, right? Obviously, The Expendables 2 is a sequel to The Expendables, which I forever have disliked because it came out the same day as Scott Pilgrim.

Dead Horsaz
Insert dead horse joke.

The crew is basically the same before. Lead by Stallone, second in command Statham, but also still with Couture, Lundgren, Crews, and Li. Too bad Jet Li leaves in the beginning of the movie, to come back later. Yes, he is pointless.

But they do have a young guy, Bill the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) who is former military sniper, and good at what he does.

Bruce Willis is mad because of events from the first film, but he is willing to forgive the team, if they go and retrieve some data from a downed plane far away. Easy enough. He is making them bring along a woman too, Maggie (Nan Yu) who definitely won’t be there as a romantic interest either.

But turns out the simple mission isn’t very simple. Shit hits the fan, and people might die. A different military group, lead by Vilain(Jean-Claude Van Damme…and yes Vilain? What?) and his lackey Hector (Scott Adkins) decides to steal the package and get away pretty cleanly. But what they stole, for their secretive reason, can actually put an end to the world as we know it.

The Expendables crew will have navigate unfamiliar territory, versus basically an army, and a pretty short clock to do it in. For those disappointed with Bruce and Arnold from the last movie, don’t worry, they do more shit. But also, Chuck Norris, because the internet loves him. Before you ask, basically, Chuck Norris was a walking Chuck Norris joke in is 2ish scenes he was in.

So much Power
The triumvirate of power, right in front of your eyes folks.

I think it is acceptable enough to compare this to the first one right? Well I thought the first one was boring. It had a lot of action, but I don’t think I really understood everything going on, in between explosions and fisticuffs.

The second one? Well, I understood the plot! There is that. I also found the action scenes to be a bit better overall. I would say the first scene of the movie, a compound break in was a bit confusing due to the vehicles. The airport scene was a bit over the top, because it made no sense to have a basic flood of enemies continuously appear for them to mow down from all angles.

Interesting action movie? That is a rarity in my case. When the death happened, I actually felt upset. The final fight scene that you know exists between JCVD and Stallone was pretty epic.

But at the same time, a lot of features ended up annoying me. Having Jet Li in for one scene felt like a waste. Couture, Crews, and Lundren were all underused as well. The girl love story was a nice pointless addition, that felt forced. And basically anything involving planes, really.

So I am sure they are planning another one, which I will watch, but won’t really need to see the previous ones again.

2 out of 4.

The Expendables

It has taken me a long time to watch The Expendables, mostly because it and Eat, Pray, Love came out on the same day as Scott Pilgrim vs The World in theaters. Both of which did better in the box office, despite my fanboyism declaring that SP was clearly the best movie. So, in order to make up for it, I had to do the SP review before at least one of those movies. Hooray!

Excitement Expendables
Well, I know ONE cast member who is excited.

The Expendables are a mercenary group for higher, and has quite a few of the names mentioned in them. Lead by Sylvester Stallone, and Jason Statham, it also features Jet Li, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, and Randy Couture. Each having their own specializations of course, because that’s how elite teams works.

They are sent to (somewhere in South America), to take down a dictator played by David Zayas. Eventually Mickey Rourke joins their team as well. Steve Austin is a hired muscle bad guy too! But where do Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger come in?

Arnold is the leader of a rival group, who already has a mission lined up, so he lets the Expendables take this one. Willis is the man hiring them. So there is one scene with those two and Stallone, and that is all you will get of those two. So, if that is your draw? Well, ignore the movie.

So yeah. Plot is basically that. Lot of action, lot of killing, and the heroes win out at the end of the day. I think what makes a better story is who didn’t make the film!

John-Claude Van Damme was supposed to play a major role, but didn’t want to. But he regrets it now and will be in the sequel. Terry Crews role went through 3 people before him (Wesley Snipes, Forest Whitaker, and 50 Cent). And the role that Willis landed was first given to Arnold, and then offered to Kurt Russell, but I guess he was too cool to do one scene in a movie.

Really, all that does is make me wish original people got their roles. There’d be more bigger famous names, less new guys (who the hell is Randy Couture??).

Couture
Some guy who loves puppies?

In terms of plot, its is pretty weak. In terms of tons of action, and throw backs to the “classics” in the 80s and 90s, it does well. This is one of those films where you will know if you will enjoy it before going to see it. Really not much else to say about that.

2 out of 4.