Day: November 24, 2011

When I saw The Art of Getting By was going to star Freddie Highmore, I guffawed out loud. That kid? The one from Spiderwick Chronicles and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Well, dude bro isn’t a kid anymore. Well. Kiddish. But he is a lot taller and way more mature.

Or at least Emma Roberts is super short.

The movie begins with George having to explain why he didn’t do his trigonometry homework. Why? Because he claims he realized his own mortality last night and everything else just seemed unimportant. So at that moment I figured this George guy was supposed to be very smart, but you know, an underachiever. What happens in this movie? Him accidentally befriending Emma Roberts. George falls in love with her, but has some social anxieties to go with the rest of his problems (including becoming poor?) so he flips a shit of course. It also turns out that by the end of the year, thanks to never doing any work (well, gradable work), he also will not graduate.

Alright, so my plot write up is kind of weak. It is hard to say what really happens in this movie without giving a lot of it away.

In fact, I had a hard time figuring out if I even liked it overall or not. I thought Freddie did a great job. The dialogue used I definitely loved, as he talked way too smart. There is a great scene where he calmly and rationally told his parents to leave him alone. Giving nice reasons and everything.

But really, that is all I probably really liked. The ending wasn’t at all original. The side story involving the artist Andrew Levitas wasn’t anything special either. The only great parts involved George and his interactions with his family and new friends. The story might not appeal to everyone. In fact, it is just one of those “privileged white people problems” movies. I think that is why the critics hated it so much.

Sometimes people like those kind of movies though.

But because Freddie just did so gosh darn good, I have to give it an okay rating.

Sometimes you look at a movie or title and think that it can only be ridiculous. This, more often than not, is probably true. Thankfully for Tucker & Dale vs Evil, this is the good kind of ridiculous.

Bloody ridiculous.

This movie is about misunderstandings. It also is about playing on a lot of horror tropes. Movie begins with a group of college students going to the woods for camping or something. But they realize they forgot the beer! OH NOES! So they go to a “Creepy” looking gas station to stock up. They also meet Alan Tudyk (Tucker) and Tyler Labine (Dale), where Dale finds the college girls attractive and just wants to talk to them. But his nervousness is creepy.

And oh noes! Katrina Bowden, still from 30 Rock, gets injured so they take her into the cabin to help her out, because for “some reason”, her friends all run away from the hillbillies. I am doing a horrible plot description.

From the young college kids point of view, they thing Tucker & Dale are dangerous hillbillies trying to kill them all, and want to save Katrina Bowden! Tucker & Dale have no idea that these kids are just being judgmental, and think they are running around killing themselves like a suicide cult.

Hilarious!

So this is a parody on horror movies more or less, and it does a fantastic job. I thought it was going to go a lot further, given the location of their vacation home and the opening scene, but maybe they are leaving that stuff up to future. The evil, in this movie, is of course Xebophobia.

And Xenophobia can lead to horrible consequences.

Overall, I thought it was a very clever film. Tudyk and Labine have great chemistry together, and the only thing I wish is that they had more even screen time. Labine was the star of the movie, and got more of it about him as a result. The ending had some cheese factor that was maybe a bit too much, but hey, the whole movie is ridiculous. Here is hoping another one happens in the future!