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Milestone review. MILESTONE REVIEW. MILESTONE REVIEW!

This review is my 1100th from the site. I know, after 1000, what is the big deal? Eh, having a special longer review every 50 reviews gives me something to look forward to. It allows me to save particularly famous movies for ridicule. But not every one of them is actually bad. For instance, I last checked out Teen Beach Movie and it ended up being okay. So there is always hope. Maybe the hate these movies get is all internet hooplah.

Which is why I have decided to look at Dragonball: Evolution today. I, like every male in my age group, have seen Dragonball Z on Toonami as a youth. A nice anime, despite the 75 hour fights. Lots of story and backstory, and for what it’s worth, the show makes sense in the universe it created.

So when they decided to make a movie, clearly there would be an army of neckbeards furious if any part of it strayed from the anime, like any of their sacred source material. They don’t believe in movies telling their own similar story. I will do my best to avoid that in this review.

Well, so far the villains look power rangers quality bad. This should actually be good for my demographic.

This movie takes place on an Earth. But in this earth, two thousand years ago, this alien Piccolo (James Marsters, yes, Spike from Buffy) tried to destroy the earth with a giant monkey, but some people sealed him in the Earth. Now, Goku (Justin Chatwin) is a teenager. He is getting training from his grandfather (Randall Duk Kim). He knows how to fight, channel his Ki and all that. But why is that important? Hard to say. Buy kicking the butts of bullies at school is always fun.

Woo beating up regular school kids!

Anyways, his grandfather gave him a Dragonball, with four stars in it. He told them there were seven overall. These do stuff. We all know what they do. Get all seven, get an immortal dragon to come down and grant a wish! Yay! But not so fast. While Goku was trying to get his Chi Chi (Jamie Chung) on, this Piccolo fellow and his woman assassin friend Mai (Eriko Tamura) came by grandpa’s house and killed the old man, looking for the ball! Oh no! Sad times.

Anyways, those sad times don’t matter, because then some bitch comes into his house with a gun trying to take his ball! He beats the girl up, her name is Bulma (Emmy Rossum), and somehow she made a device that can sense local dragonballs. Of course, lucky timing. Yes, this is the same Emmy Rossum from Phantom of the Opera.

I honestly couldn’t find many more good pictures then generic character ones.

So they team up and go to find Master Roshi (Yun-Fat Chow)! Oh yeah, that is a guy that Goku’s grandpa told him to go and find before he keeled over. He can learn how to fight better with him maybe.

They actually find him next on accident! Yay dragonball locator. Mini fight happens, oh shit, he is Roshi. Big happy times. He joins them on their journey to help train and stop Piccolo.

Despite the age difference, this might be the closest good casting decision in the movie!

Then what? I dunno. Some training and shit. Let’s take a moment to talk about other things. Like about how un-exciting the Piccolo character is in this movie. He isn’t even scary, he just looks awkward. Let’s also talk about how our male lead and Bulma both went on to be major characters in the American remake of Shameless.

Anyways, while looking for another Dragonball, they fall into a pit trap from this fucker Yamcha (Joon Park). He doesn’t want to help them until he gets cash. Eventually he helps them and they fight off Mai and get another Dragonball!

Yay!

That’s the fucker, right there.

Did I tag everyone who was important by now? Good. Because no more new characters.

So, the rest of this movie is Goku training under Roshi, doing crazy things and feats of strengths, while Piccolo for whatever reason isn’t fighting them.

Speaking of Piccolo, why do they have such a hard time getting the dragonballs? He knew where some were, like Bulma’s, but couldn’t find Goku at the party? That seems strange. I am even more confused that he didn’t reach the Roshi or Yamcha ball before them either.

Bullshit training stuff.

Blah blah, training and stuff. Oh hey, Piccolo’s team has stolen the dragonballs and will now summon the dragon! Oh wait, Goku and friends crash the party and start to fight. Turns out, Goku is actually the big monkey demon that is supposed to be on Piccolo’s side, but that seems to be just a minor issue. Because he remembers his destiny and frienship and decides to not be a demon anymore.

They really dodged that demon monkey bullet, didn’t they?

Goku then uses the Kamehameha wave, takes out Piccolo and saves the day! But now they have a dragon to summon. They can wish for basically anything what will they do?

He wishes Roshi back to life. That’s it. Dragon says sure, then gets the fuck out of the way, and spreads his balls all around earth. I mean, he could have wished for all lives lost by Piccolo back to life or something, including his grandpa, but yeah, sure, just Roshi.

Man, Goku sure is a fuck face.

Does that not look like a fuck face to anyone else.

How about that analysis?

Well, Dragonball Evolution indeed was terrible. Not even basing it off of the cartoon, but you know, it’s own plotline and movie was just absolutely dreadful. Sometimes the internet is right about these things (although they always choose their opinion before it comes out).

The plot is all over the place, mostly nothing is explained, things happen so fast, and none of it in any way is believable. The villain is never seen as scary. The threat doesn’t feel real because it is accidentally too stupid. The fucking demon monkey scene took only a few minutes to begin and end! That should have been way scarier and had a bigger impact than what we got.

Acting was awkward too. Goku as a hero wasn’t relatable or really heroic feeling. Kind of felt like a whiny kid at times. Chi Chi is maybe the only character to be given a bigger role and expanded into someone you might actually like.

It also had no fun elements. Dragonball Z is kind of funny. The humor in this movie was practically nonexistent. If they attempted some humor in it, it would be a wildly better movie, because the plot is impossible to carry the serious tome without being overtly ridiculous.

Please, movie makers. Don’t do another live action anime anytime soon. Unless it’s Sailor Moon. I would watch that one easy.

I have avoided watching One For The Money for a long time. It came out in theaters before I went to them for every movie, but out on DVD after I left Blockbuster and before I needed more DVD filler.

But there it always was, on a rental shelf looking at me, begging to be watched. And every time I nope’d into something else. So why now? Well, I hopped on Netflix, picked a random film category, and went over until I saw a movie that I hadn’t seen yet that was recent to review. And that is how One For The Money finally got me.

Finally got me, like a prostitute, might finally get free of her pimp. Err.

Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl) is poor and out of work. Oh no! She needs cash fast, so she quickly finds out from her family that her cousin Vinnie (Patrick Fischler) runs a Bail Bonds business. You know, find people who don’t show up in court, bring them in, and get some of their bond money. Bounty Hunters, if you will. She has no training, no useful detective skills, doesn’t know how to fire a gun in anyway, but hey, whatever, she needs cash.

So grabs a high profile target. A cop who used to work vice, apparently murdered someone. It will net her a ton of cash. This Joe (Jason O’Mara) was also her boyfriend in high school though, and her took her virginity then dumped her. Awkwarrrrd. At least she will have the help of this Ranger fellow (Daniel Sunjata) who teachers her some gun tips and what not.

Oh yeah, and of course the Joe claims he was framed and needs time to fix it all. Ehhhh. Why can’t making money be easy?!

We also have John Leguizamo, Sherri Shepherd, and Debbie Reynolds playing decently big roles.

Hopefully she watched enough Dexter to help her with blood splattered crime scenes.

I like RomComs, I do. Katherine Heigl makes me laugh occasional. I had a hard time finding the Com elements of this movie. In fact, it might be closer to a RomAct. Feels more actiony than comedy, and there isn’t even a lot of action. The only time I really laughed was near the ending, but that was just because of how ridiculous a few people were acting, and not from any jokes on their own.

What I am really trying to say is this movie felt incredibly boring. I yawned a lot, fighting the sleep that tried to take hold over me (in the middle of the day, not even a late at night viewing). That is definitely not a good sign.

I think part of my boredom stemmed from the fact that everything moved so fast early on that it was kind of confusing just what was going down. I feel like 5 minutes into the movie she already became a bounty hunter. Then there came to be all this conflict for catching that dude who she was mad at. Why so much conflict? Because he is attractive or something? Bull shit, just get your money and let him do his court stuff.

So the chemistry felt very off between Heigl and any other of her costars. Nothing really felt too earnest. Add that with boring, not funny, and just an awkward movie? Yeah, no wonder I avoided it.

Documentary time!

This time, it was Forks Over Knives, recommended by someone to my fiance, so of course I said I would watch it too. It is in my range, came out in 2011. Title was a bit weird, mostly because I didn’t see the need for my cutlery to battle. I prefer them to work together in harmony. Where the fuck are my spoons at??? Represent!

Alright, so the tagline of this movie on its cover is “Warning! This movie could save your life”. Good, time to be a skeptic.

I will admit the beginning of the movie was a bit more interesting. The “reason” for this documentary is because the director Lee Fulkerson wanted to be healthier than he is, so he goes on a journey of self discovery that, miraculously, a lot of people have published papers on recently at the time of his documentary.

Long story short, Veganism. Or as they called it a “plant-based diet” void of meats and dairy. So you know, Veganism. There were studies that were interesting, showing people who switched over and got healthier. Studies that reported the same findings. They spent a lot of time talking about Cancer and China, because there was a “Cancer Atlas” or something, that showed cancer abundance over the entirety of China for each type. They related this to diet somehow too.

This is like my nightmare incarnate.

The one study I found really interesting was the one about Norway during WW2. Basically, because all documentaries need to mention Hitler, the Nazis invaded Norway, and fucked them up. They took away their meat and the citizens had to start eating basically just plants. Then a lot of diseases went away like the next year, instantly, and it had a drastic downgrade. Huh. Cool.

But if that was true, I wasn’t really ready to believe it. So I went and looked it up! Science bitches! Basically, I found that it was pretty misleading. The Nazis took away a lot of things. Like cigarettes, so there was a country wide shortage, a lot less smoking. They also increased in physical activity, so people had to move a lot more, doing healthy things. Shit, blaming it all on meat is kind of awkward, no?

Getting to that study lead me to this other “review” of the movie by MD Harriet Hall over at www.sciencebasedmedicine.org. Harriet looks at every claim and study the movie mentions, notes the inefficiencies of the studies (low sample size, no controls, whatever) and where the movie people make broad claims where the studies do not themselves.

So basically, OP is a liar.

Damn it, I hate bad science movies so damn much. Obviously this documentary would be biased, all of them are, but finding out how biased is just the worst. At least they didn’t also alter or have misleading interviews like another terrible science documentary.

You know there is an issue with a documentary if they seem to claim that humans were meant to be herbivores, not omnivores. Bitch, I know what these canines in my mouth are for.

So most of the claims are incorrect. Is Veganism healthier overall? Probably in some aspects. But it seems the science really goes towards living a healthy lifestyle, eating just not a shit ton of meat and diary, but still having it in your diet. Basically, increase fruit and vegetable intact will probably be the better results here, not an elimination of animal products completely.

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.

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.

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.

Who doesn’t love an older franchise getting a reboot? Well, older Godzilla fans for one. They probably wouldn’t even consider this movie a reboot, just a continuum in the long storied history of the Godzilla franchise. But me? Sure, it is a reboot. We all remember the 1998 Godzilla. Even you in the corner probably remember it. I don’t care how many movies came out since then in Japan, if any. I only know there was a sixteen year gap between this one and the old one, and no characters are the same.

Well, one character is the same, I guess.

But fuck those older movies. This one is newer! With graphics!

State of the art Robot Graphics!

The year? 1999. Probably to mess with the other movie a bit. Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is working at a nuclear reactor in Japan as a head Engineer, noticing some seismic waves, when holy crap, big disaster occurs! People die, questions are raised, and maybe, the whole thing is covered up.

Fast forward to now! Fifteen years later! Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Joe’s son is now a grown up, just a lad during the incident. He is in the armed forces, a bomb diffusion-er. I guess you can say he is good at calming high intensity situations. He is just arriving back home to see his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and kid when he has to go BACK to Japan to get his father out of jail.

He is now a conspiracy junkie and snuck back into the heavily radiated area they had to leave. Well, Ford joins his dad on a mission to go back to the plant, when holy crap, big disaster occurs! People die, questions are raised, and maybe, the whole thing is covered up. Just kidding, video footage gets out, at least one giant monster exists and it is about to fuck up a lot of shit!

But what do these creatures have to do with the mysterious Monarch group, lead by our only major Japanese character Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his three lined assistant (Sally Hawkins).

Also, the role of Godzilla is played by Brian Posehn.

It has often been prophesized that Posehn given enough radiation could cause this must destruction.

I think I have admitted to past to not really caring about the large raging lizard known as Godzilla. I can’t get into those movies, despite having multiple friends who have been raving about them and awaiting this movie for a few years.

However, I am a fan of really well done, exciting and entertaining movies. So, I guess I am a pretty huge damn fan of this movie. Godzilla is only right around two hours and never really has any pacing issues. Do you get to see giant creatures battling in the first thirty minutes? No, of course not, but the build up and the human drama early on really set the tone for what was going to go down. Shit, Bryan Cranston’s role isn’t that big in this movie, but he damn near made me cry with his own intensity.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson has had a pretty good movie career over the last few years, some good movies, some bad ones, but usually solid acting. In this one, he mostly displayed a calming silent attitude when faced with near death situations, but I think it worked out well.

But who cares about HUMANS when we have giant monsters FIGHTING? Were the fights great? Yes. There are fights rhgouhout the movie, although some of them are teased or kept intentionally dark to only give you snippets, but by the end it is definitely worth it. A lot of fan service here for Godzilla junkies along with chances for easily made sequels in the future.

Even more exciting is the science! Obviously it isn’t 100% correct, because we’d probably have Godzilla-esque things now. But for the movie, it seemed to work out pretty well in my mind. Yay reasonable science in a movie!

Looking at the summer schedule, Godzilla is likely to be the best “disaster film” of the next few months.

Brought to you by the people who gave us Invincible and Miracle? Well, Million Dollar Arm is breaking up the one word name scheme then.

The two movies above were interesting, I guess. But even as a hockey fan, I didn’t really care too much for Miracle. Too much marriage drama over nothing coupled with some awkward inaccuracies like mixing up Sweden and Finland’s flags at the end.

So, knowing that those movies were just okay, I guess that is what this movie is going to aim for? But since it is based on a real event, that is extremely recent, I already know how it ends up. Dudes get signed by the Pirates. They spend a lot of time in the minors, some time in the MLB, and do okay to bad at pitching.

His big smile is due to the dollar signs that flash on the inside of his sunglasses.

This film takes back in the ancient time of like, 2008 or so. Just like the British Empire of yore, we have people hoping to exploit the rich untapped potential of a foreign nation. Err, also just like the British Empire, this land is India.

Things are going bad for JB (Jon Hamm) and his advertising firm. They wanted to branch out on their own, make their own mark in the world, and they are having trouble making money and signing any real clients. Once they fail for the thousandth time, JB decides fuck all this nonsense. Let’s create a gimmick, change some lives, and become famous that way!

He sees Cricket on TV and thinks he can turn cricket players into baseball pitchers in one year. The first Indian MLB player will bring in a ton of new fans to the sport and lots of advertising and endorsements. Bling bling, playa!

So he gets an investor, creates a reality show in India, eventually finds two young guys (Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal), and an Indian translator who likes baseball and will work for free (Pitobash) and begins the training to get them into the MLB. But can they do it in just a few months?! ?!!?!?!!? !!!!?

Lot of other people here of course. Alan Arkin, small role as a talent scout. Bill Paxton as a crazy method man for teaching pitching. Lake Bell as the tenant in JB’s guest house who is the romantic love interest. Aasif Mandvi is the Indian friend of JB to not make this whole thing super racist/imperial like. I guess it kind of works.

I think my two photos this time clearly represent business before pleasure.

Alright, first and easiest complaint about this movie is the length. The idea phase happens realitve quickly, so somewhere in the trip to India, finding of the boys and the training it just takes too long to get to the eventual end point. Too much of the movie is JB being an asshole, so it gets tiring. Maybe knowing the outcome doesn’t help this fact. But Lincoln kept up its entertaining aspects despite knowing how that finished too.

A lot of the characters are pretty good, but hats off mostly to our three characters from India. Sharma and Mittal aren’t similar in any way, both of their characters have personality and shine in different ways and excel for different reasons. Huh, kind of like the real life counter parts. But also Pitobash. Man was he amusing, probably made me laugh the most. I hope he is based on a real life person too, because that guy sounds like a cool guy to be friends with.

Hamm? Well, he played a dick sports agent who eventually found a heart to care for the kids he brought over and then they succeeded. But is it really a change of heart when it takes multiple people multiple times to tell him the same thing? JB is the type of character who will do almost anything to get ahead. He is desperate, that is why he went to India. Wouldn’t put it past him to fake the caring thing too, just because he knows it will make him that money.

So whatever, a pseudo inspiring tale I guess. It isn’t terrible, just is too long and again, is so recent we know that even though they came over and pitched, they didn’t revolutionize anything. They aren’t Jackie Robinson or anything.

Come on Disney. Find a sexier sports moment to make a movie out of next, please.

Farmland. Farmers. Iowa. Hey, I live in Iowa!

So, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that there was a huge crowd to see a documentary about farmers. They had the biggest theater in my city and there were barely any empty seats. The only real reason I went is because they were giving away some tickets, free movies yo. Not to mention to excitement of the crowd for a one time only showing of a movie.

They really love their farming here, so hell yeah, let’s watch it with them.

Farmland is a pretty basic documentary. Apparently a lot of old people own farm land, and they might die off soon. Not a lot of people are going into the farming industry for many reasons, and eventually there might not be good people to run the land. No farmers? No farms! Oh no!

So this documentary goes over six individuals who are all in various aspect of the farming life, and all under 30.

Brad Bellah Rancher in Texas. He wears a cowboy hat, grew up being a rancher, and still raises cows with his new family. Leighton Cooley from Georgia, who raises Chickens and other minor crops. Has a huge farm area, second generation I think. There is David Loberg, a Nebraskan who raises corn/soybeans, also at least a second generation.

We have Sutton Morgan from California, fourth generation, but doing huge organic farms and is very successful. Margaret Schlass a first generation woman in Philly, doing organic stuff also, but more small time and co-op based. Finally, we have Ryan Veldhuizen, a Minnesota native fourth generation pig farmer.

Yep. No one from Iowa. Denied!

Cowboys, cowboy hats, and cows? Is this my future calling?

This documentary was made to inform the general public about the wonders of farming, the hardships, and the fact that they aren’t just a bunch of dumb hicks. It is to get younger people interested in the profession and save America’s farming future!

But man, from someone without much of a farming background, it was just okay. It had some funny moments, but I wouldn’t say I learned a lot either. I guess it was okay to see their lives, and what they did throughout a year, but eh, still not really too interesting for me.

It did have some sweet moments too, particularly with the Nebraskan farmer. His dad died a year before the film, so they talked about him a few times and how he took over the business. Then there was a moment where he tried to explain a specific moment from his past, and he just started to babble incoherently, fighting back tears. It was extremely hard to not cry along with him. I looked around the packed theater? Dozens of teary faces in my vicinity. Very touching, but doesn’t make the movie great.

I can tell you if you grew up near farms or plan on going into farms, you will love this movie. The theater clapped at the end. Huge ovation over a documentary about farming. I guess that is what happens when you watch a movie like this in Iowa.

Readers, don’t judge me. But when a movie has such a succinct and eye catching title, can you really blame a person for being curious about the movie?

Literally, Asian School Girls seems to just be able high school Asian women who have to defeat bad guys and kill them. Very simple plot from the cover. That is all I knew going in!

And so this will be a short review. Mostly because I can’t find any pictures of it on the internet.

Basically, four girls (Sam Aotaki, Catherine Hyein Kim, Belle Hengsathorn, Minnie Scarlet) of which whose ethnicity you can guess go to a night club despite high school status. They have fake IDs! During the night, they are invited by two handsome men to come hang out at their place. Unfortunately, it was all a set up where they instead are drugged and raped.

This causes one of them to commit suicide. In grief, and anger at a police department who doesn’t seem to be able to help (Andray Johnson), they decide to get some weapons and enact their own revenge.

They just need money first, so you know, they become strippers, and then eventually kill some people.

Accidentally misleading, since only three of the four go on the killing spree.

Oh boy. This movie started off rough, and kept its sandpaper level quality. First thing I found out about this movie was that it was made by The Asylum. They make a lot of low budget straight to DVD crap, selling bad graphics and sex, movies that are titled eerily similar to bigger blockbusters, and of course fucking Sharknado.

It was extremely hard to pay attention to this movie filled with no substance and terrible action. That’s right, a movie about revenge and killing bad guys has terrible action. Some of it is graphic sure, but most of it is shit.

This movie does have copious amounts of nudity. Way too much, since it is all just awkwardly long stripping scenes for the most part. Speaking of awkward, they threw in a lesbian scene too for shits and giggles.

Yeah, skip this movie. I knew it should have been terrible. But eh, sometimes I just give things the benefit of the doubt.

Fuck this movie. Just, get it out of the way. During The Nut Job I predicted Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return would end up being the second worst animated movie of 2014. I was wrong. At this point, I don’t see how there could be anything worst than this trash of a film throughout the rest of the year. No way. No way at all.

It was so many levels of shitty, I don’t think I can properly spend time explaining it all, so I made a short play to try and explain it all.

Here are most of the characters. Not of the play, but of the shitstorm movie.

Executive 1: Alright, we need a sure fire hit for the company. We got about $70 million in budget, and we want to cover ALL demographics. We want the nostalgia, we want the kids, we want songs, we want jokes, we want it all.

Executive 2: We gotta get that Glee girl involved. She is relatively free with the dead boyfriend news being almost a year old now.

E1: Yeah, get her to be the lead!

E2: How bout we do another Wizard of Oz movie? That one last year was pretty well received, and they didn’t try at all!

E1: Brilliant! Who doesn’t love the Scarecrow and Tin Man and Lion! We can make a sequel. Bring everyone back!

E2: But sir! We are out of villains! All the witches are dead!

E1: Shit, we can’t just have them having fun and going on an adventure. We need excitement!

E2: Well, we could get Ralph, our idea man…

E1: Ralph? That man is a wild card, shit, just saying his name three times tends to get him involved.

(Just then, Ralph busts in the boardroom door, pen and paper in his hands).

RtWC: FUCK THIS! WILD CARDS DON’T NEED TO WAIT THREE TIMES! HERE IS OUR MOVIE.

BOOM. FIRST OFF, DOROTHY’S HOUSE GOT FUCKED UP BY A TORNADO. LET’S MAKE THE VILLAIN BE AN APPRAISER WHO KICKS HER OUT OF THE HOUSE. ALSO, LET’S CHANGE THE LOOK OF HER AUNT AND UNCLE. HER AUNT HAS TO BE YOUNGER, HER UNCLE NOW BALDER. IT WILL WORK.

E1: Yeah people probably won’t remember the look of the outside non Oz characters.

RtWC: ALRIGHT. LET’S GET HER BACK TO OZ. WE NEED TO UP THE NOSTALGIA. FIRST THING WE SEE ARE HER FRIENDS, ALL FREAKY AFTER THEIR NEW BRAIN HEART AND SHIT. ALSO, FLYING MONKEYS. WE NEED MORE OF THEM.

LET’S SAY THE WITCH HAD A BROTHER. BUT HE IS A JESTER, BECAUSE THE WITCH IS A BITCH. HE IS EVIL NOW BECAUSE OF THIS STUFF. WHY NOT. HE IS ALSO OUR COMIC RELIEF. FUCKING JESTERS.

ANYWAYS, SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG, DOROTHY WILL HAVE TO MEET NEW PEOPLE.

LIKE A FAT OWL THAT CAN’T FLY AND IS SMART. AND A MAN MADE OUT OF MARSHMELLOWS. A PORCELAIN DOLL. THEY HAD THOSE LAST MOVIE, LET’S DO MORE OF THEM.

E2: Is the Jester going to have a stupid death like the witch?

RtWC: I DON’T KNOW, LET’S NOT WORRY ABOUT THE END TIL WE START FILMING. HERE ARE SOME PLOT POINTS. ANGRY APPLE TREES? BRING THEM BACK, BUT THIS TIME LET ONE OF THEM KILL HIMSELF FOR DOROTHY.

THEY ARE GONNA TREAT HER LIKE ROYALTY EVERYWHERE SHE GOES. IN FACT, LET THE FACT THAT SHE IS DOROTHY SOLVE 95% OF HER PROBLEMS! THE PORCELAIN DOLL? LET’S HAVE A TIME WHERE SHE BREAKS APART AND EVERYONE THINKS SHE IS DEAD.

E1: Now now, looking into your other notes, I see have written down here that the doll breaks a bunch of porcelain suitors, who then go on talking and living lives, just need to be glued back together to walk again. Why would anyone think she is dead?

RtWC: BECAUSE WE WILL INEXPLICABLY MAKE HER NOT TALK AND JUST LIE THERE POST CRACK, DESPITE HAVING HER WHOLE HEAD GOOD WHICH SHOULD IMMEDIATELY ALLOW HER TO DISPEL ANY OF THOSE THOUGHTS.

E2: Are any of these new friends going to serve a purpose to her journey?

RtWC: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THAT’S JUST FOR MORE MERCHANDISING! I WANT POINTLESS CHARACTERS AND TIE-INS. I WANT FAKE DRAMATICS. I WANT EVERYTHING TO HAVE AN EASY SOLUTION AND THERE BE NO REAL THREAT TO OUR CHARACTERS.

LISTEN, ALL WE NEED IS AT LEAST ONE REALLY BIG NAME, SAY PATRICK STEWART OR MARTIN SHORT. THEN WE CAN FILL SIDE CHARACTERS WITH OLDER, NOT AS FAMOUS PEOPLE. LIKE DAN AYKROYD, JAMES BELUSHI, KELSEY GRAMMER, OLIVER PLATT AND HUGH DANCY. THEN GET SOME “FRESH FACES,” LIKE BERNADETTE PETERS AND MEGAN HILTY. WE MAKE THEM SING AND DANCE, AND CAN DO IT ALL FOR PROBABLY $20 MIL WITH OUR ANIMATION QUALITY.

E1: Hey, we have $70 million on the table! Where would the other $50 million go?

(The three men look at each other, smile, and agree to greenlight the movie).

Anyways, that was probably terrible. But it was still more entertaining than this trash. I didn’t even begin to touch what didn’t make sense with this movie. Just. Fuck.

Finally, a movie that can relate to almost anyone. Neighbors. Hey, I have had neighbors most of my life! Some people live on farms in the middle of no where with no real neighbors. Those people aren’t the target audience for this movie though. I doubt they are anyone’s target audience really.

Also it is the first big comedy of the summer. Last year we got This Is The End as our first big movie (because I am just making shit up now and ignoring other films, like The Hangover 3. Let me make up this imaginary point, jeez), and that one set a bar too high for most other comedies to follow.

Can Neighbors do the same?

Not with these squares trying to act cool. Nope nope nope.

Mac (Seth Rogen) and, Kelly (Rose Byrne) are adults! They have finally done it! They created a human from their love and they have a house!

But then they got…grr…neighbors! They thought it would be a lovely gay couple. No, it was a frat house. How’d they get a house in the middle of a residential neighborhood? Who knows. But they are stoked, because it is time to party. Their president, THE Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron) and a VP of Pete (Dave Franco).

Mac and Kelly try and be cool about it all. Sure they have a baby, but as long as they are cool, the frat will probably try to keep it down. The frat is willing to be friendly with them, as long as they don’t call the cops ever, just them first.

Well, they call the cops eventually after a party that won’t end and won’t get quiet. That makes the frat angry. They decide to rage war on their neighbors, as they have messed with the wrong frat. Then shenanigans happen. Shenanigans!

We also get Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Jerrod Carmichael as frat guys. And Ike Barinholtz and Carla Gallo as friends of Mac and Kelly. And Hannibal Buress as a cop! But his role is limited.

When there are multiple De Niros, you will never know who is talking to who.

I have long talked about how great Zac Efron is in past reviews, and it is still true here, so I won’t talk about it more here. Seth Rogen is very much like his normal self, so I won’t talk about that more here.

Instead, I will talk about Rose Byrne, who was absolutely hilarious in the movie along with the rest of the cast. I realize I rarely praise the female in a comedy, but she really held her own against some of these other professionals of comedy. She doesn’t do comedy much, outside of Bridesmaids I really can’t remember anything, so it really came as a big surprise to me.

The film definitely has its moments. The one De Niro scene had me in stitches, and reminded me a bit of the seagulls in Finding Nemo.

It was a good show from an all-star-ish cast with hardly any downtime in between laughs.