Category: Uncategorized

I have never really enjoyed stories about children and the Holocaust, mostly because I was flooded with them as required reading in middle school. The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, Number the Stars, and a whole lot more. Every single one of them just felt like the same story over and over again, with minor details changed. Repetition only bores me.

But The Book Thief is something different AND something new. The book came out within the last 10 years, and it is about a little German girl going through this experience, not someone sent to a concentration camp. It is a completely new point of view, with some other notable differences as well.

They hide someone below, not above. Brilliant!

You know, like the story being narrated by Death (Roger Allam). Yep, that is new!

But our main character is little Liesel (Sophie Nelisse). Her mother is giving her up for adoption for some reason, and en route, her brother dies mid trip. It is the late 1930s, she is around 12, and she is already used to death.

Her new mother, Rosa (Emily Watson), and father, Hans (Geoffrey Rush) take her on, for reasons not really ever touched on. Maybe they can’t have kids of their own? No idea.

Either way, with a new home, she has the same old problems. Hans realizes she can’t read and takes an interest in her education. Once she learns to read, she can’t stop. Not even when the Nazi party marches into town and holds a book burning event for…some reason. She likes books so much that she saves one from the pyre when no one is looking. That little thief.

Her life gets turned even more upside down when Max (Ben Schnetzer) comes knocking. Max is a Jewish man looking for a place to hide, coming to collect on a promise made by Hans during the first World War. Can Liesel keep a secret, and can she keep a low enough profile to make sure no one starts to suspect their ruse? Will she ever give in to the temptations of her very Aryan friend, Rudy (Nico Liersch)? Will the Nazis win the war? No. No they won’t.

Like. Really, really, really Aryan.

Well, it turns out just because something is new and different, it doesn’t mean it will be amazing.

One of my movie pet peeves happens when a film is set outside of America. When this happens, there are two routes movie makers can go with. They can either do the entire movie in the native language, and give us subtitles, or they can just do it in English. I always assume that when it is in English, they are obviously speaking their native language (in this case German), but we can fully understand the German.

But I hate it when they decide to do a bit of both. Usually this is English with some native language words thrown in to go for “Authenticity,” when really it just confuses my ear drums. The Book Thief goes this route, but also one step further. They have entire conversations and scenes in German with subtitles, before switching back to English which is the majority language of the movie. And honestly, it makes absolutely no sense why they keep switching to German. It is a bad directing move. To make matters worse, sometimes words are written in German, and sometimes English. No continuity whatsoever.

The Book Thief is a movie where the acting is pretty great from everyone involved, but it fails to tell a useful story. About 4/5 of the way into the film, I realized that I have no idea what this movie wanted to be about, the messages it wanted to convey, or where it wanted to go. There was some conflict, but outside of the “World War II” idea, there wasn’t a main conflict for the characters in the film to really overcome. It literally was just a story of a girl over a few years during World War II, and that was it. All of the potential major plotlines ended relatively quickly after they were brought up.

So the film lacks direction. As you could tell from the plot outline, a lot of the details seem to be missing. Throw on confusing speech patterns for the characters, and you got a lackluster film.

I feel like this could have been a great story, and it probably was in the book form, but the movie really failed to deliver. With such great acting, I am disappointed the story felt so flat.  If I read the book, the movie might have been a lot better, but I shouldn’t have to read a novel first to enjoy a movie.

 

1 out of 4.

Frozen, not to be confused with the survivor horror movie of the same name, is the first Walt Disney Animation Studios film since Wreck-It Ralph. You know, because Planes was made by a lesser Disney studio, not their main one.

It is also based on “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Anderson, which explains why they gave they call this movie that over in Europe. Anderson is kind of a big deal over in Europe. I have only heard bits and pieces of “The Snow Queen,” so this film will be a complete surprise story wise for me!

LOOK. TWO WOMEN. TWO DISNEY PRINCESSES. SUCH MADNESS!

Frozen is about two sisters, Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell), both princesses in their castle home. However, the sisters are quite different. Elsa, the eldest, was born with magical powers: the ability to make ice and snow from her hands! Anna is completely ordinary in the magic regard, but she has a big heart. Unfortunately, after an accident, Elsa is forced to remain hidden from the rest of the world, for they will not be able to understand her powers. This means she also is kept as a secret from her sister.

Years later, Elsa is set to officially become the Queen, meaning the Castle is opening its doors for one day only. Surely nothing can go amiss in a single, nice summer day?

Well, her secret rears its ugly head and she accidentally sets the city in eternal winter! During her escape to live in the mountains alone, she also accidentally traps all of the visiting ships in the fjord (first time used that word in a review) It is up to Anna to save her! And Hans (Santino Fontana), a prince she just met and totally got engaged to in a day, and Kristof (Jonathan Groff), an ice maker who lives alone with his reindeer Sven. And Olaf (Josh Gad). A magical snowman. Don’t worry about him.

There are also trolls! And an evil Duke (Alan Tudyk), which would be the third villain played/voiced in a row for Tudyk, after Wreck-It Ralph and 42.

I wonder if he is going to warm her icy heart with a cool island song?

It turns out that Frozen is basically a full-fledged musical! Hooray! It features eight unique songs (although the length of a couple are pretty short) and one amazing reprise of a song. Of course, like all Disney movies with singing, most of them are in the first half, with the second half left to just plot development and action.

I was also a bit worried that this movie would tease us like Disney did with Enchanted, by casting Menzel but not letting her actually sing a song. Thankfully, she got a solid 2ish songs overall (one full one, and two shared ones). Bell is given most of the singing work, and she really knocks it out of the park with her voice.

I was amazed at the world that was created for this movie, which showcased the beautiful snowy (and summery) landscapes that Finland/Norway had to offer. The ice effects from the Queen were gorgeous and really popped from the screen, but not in a gimmicky way.

Story wise, I don’t think this has actually anything to do with “The Snow Queen” tale that it is based on, so it is practically a new story that will seem fresh to audiences.

Frozen did have some annoyances. While watching, more and more characters seemed to be added to the adventure, knowing at least a few of them served just as a way to sell toys, but that is the way Disney works. The animation style for the human characters felt a bit off from the rest of animations in that everyone looked like a literal doll character. It was like an improved version of the style used in Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse. Yes, I have seen an episode or two of that show for comparison sake.

Overall, I really enjoyed every other aspect of the story than the few parts I listed above. It does a great job of avoiding cliches. The film surprised me over and over as I couldn’t tell where the story was taking me.

Plus, this film isn’t about some man coming to save the day, it is about sisterly love in the face of adversary. Okay, well, I guess there are some male heroes still, but that is beside the point.

Frozen is the last animated movie of the year (unless you actually include Walking With Dinosaurs) and a must watch for people who enjoy happiness.

4 out of 4.

Oh man, diversity.

I do believe, with Instructions Not Included, this is the third mostly Spanish movie in the same number of weeks on my website!

Too bad I totally won’t keep that going. I literally don’t know of any other that are about to come to the US, and we have a shit ton of new releases to look forward to. So, uhhh, don’t get used to it, que?

Shit, did I not do that Spanish part correctly?

Valentín Bravo (Eugenio Derbez) is a coward. He is afraid of small problems, medium problems, big problems, and the biggest problem of all, committment. A different woman every week, living life with no job, no responsibility, no worried. Until Julie (Jessica Lindsey) visits him with a 8 month year old baby. Looks like cheap condoms aren’t full proof, but she also leaves it in his living room after a ruse, and runs away back to LA. Well shit. Babies.

Despite his best attempts, he can not keep up with her, and by the time he sneaks into LA, she has moved to NY. He is super stuck with this child, which means he has to do things like get a job, care for another human being, and try to stop being such a coward. Due to those intense parental instincts, he somehow gets a job as a stunt man and befriends a a director (Daniel Raymont), and next thing you know, seven years have flew by, and he is the coolest dad ever. Stunt work pays well, and it all goes towards making her life awesome. He even has fake letters sent from the mom to keep his daughter, Maggie (Loreto Peralta) happy.

Unfortunately, life is about to get more difficult when Julie (Record Scratch) returns home. And she is a lesbian (with Alessandra Rosaldo). And a lawyer. And she wants the kid back. And there is a disease that there is no cure for, which will also potentially ruin this happy arrangement. Well fuck.

Maybe, he should have done something different with the baby early on. Then no heartache now, right?

So this guy, Eugenio Derbez, I have seen him before. He was in Girl In Progress, and it was terrible, but he had the best part in it, even though his role was small. But not only did he star in this film, he also directed it, and helped write it, so this is definitely his baby. The girl above is most likely not his actual baby.

Well, his facial expressions were pretty great in this film, just like Girl In Progress, but it seems like everyone else was made to over act and just made this movie feel like a soap opera. A less dramatic, entirely frustrating soap opera. The beginning felt super rushed, pretty chaotic, but interesting. His life in LA just felt ridiculous, and the events that happened to him, both in his career, with his kid, and with Julie kind of started to just piss me off. Not in the “Oh, this incredible acting is pissing me off and making me feel emotion!” way, but the “This stuff is shitty, what the hell is going on, I am mad at this movie for sucking!”

But it also had heart. And at the end, thanks to a few sudden scenes, I was crying. Stupid movie. Making me rage. Interesting story. Emotional ending.

Gah.

2 out of 4.

I can’t believe I almost forgot about Homefront! Maybe because it doesn’t feel like a holiday movie? No idea. But this was the last movie I had on my mind when I went to go see movies coming out before Thanksgiving.

I guess what I am really saying is that a Red Dawn remake made a bit more sense than Homefront for the holidays.

Don’t stare too long. You will start assuming the smoke is some sort of strange facial hair.

Phil Broker (Jason Statham) is a former DEA agent. He is an excellently skilled fighter, in hand to hand combat and in gun shooting, sure, but really he was terrible at his job. The movie opens with him undercover in a Biker gang, four years of work. They are doing a drug bust finally, and from what I can tell as a movie viewer, he does everything wrong. Like reveal that he is undercover to the people he is bringing down, instead of pretending to get arrested too. He goes on a full on chase, and it ends with the death of the leader’s son, and the leader locked away.

So of course Phil goes into retirement and hiding. It is actually unclear if it was necessary, I guess. Because it isn’t witness protection, he just moves to a middle of no where place in Louisiana (which is somehow still in that same biker gang’s turf). So I don’t think he is hiding too hard.

Well, he lost his wife, and is now a single dad, with his daughter Maddy (Izabela Vidovic). He just wants to live a peaceful life, but there are rednecks here who hold grudges over the smallest things. Like when Maddy beats up a Bully, after warning him. So his parents (Kate Bosworth, Marcus Hester) hate Phil now.

So the brother in law, Gator (James Franco) gets involved, a local meth dealer boss here. So of course he knows people, has connections, blah blah blah. The tiny event turns big, and now the biker gang knows where he is, and people might die.

Annnd that’s about it. Winona Ryder plays a former crack whore (that’s the movie term, not mine), Omar Benson Miller a friend of Phil, and Clancy Brown the local sheriff.

Believe it or not, his character is not high right now.

So, right from the beginning, this movie began to disappoint. The undercover bust was one of the worst attempts at catching a criminal base that I ever saw. First, somehow their tactic included kill, not apprehend, as many of the gang members as possible. They took out the lights way before they were in position. The only prisoner they got was the leader, which is almost pointless. And of course Phil gave himself away at the first opportunity and didn’t even try to stay undercover.

I guess they had to find a bad way to get the movie started.

But after that, this was mostly a bad drama/action movie without a lot of the thriller moments implied from the trailer. With the trailer and the title being Homefront, they showed a lot of Statham in his house, preparing to defend it from a huge amount of attackers. A nice home invasion story, which would be the conclusion. Well, it wasn’t the conclusion, and he didn’t stay in the house. Right when they got there, he left the house, and then they did a bunch of shooting in the woods. The shooting itself went super quickly, and was in the dark, so we couldn’t see a lot of how it went down, depriving me of the action I deserve.

The drama components were bad. Too many scenes were tense for no reason. Statham was a huge dick to the local sheriff, who just wanted to know what was going on. Absolutely no reason.

He was a dick. And he wasn’t entertaining for me. That is all. Waste of potential of a movie. Franco was decent though.

1 out of 4.

Željko Ivanek.
Xander Berkeley.
Craig Fairbrass.
Bruce Davison.

These are all names that you may have seen before, but probably don’t recognize in big amounts. If you clicked their links and saw their pictures, you might recognize their face, but find that you can’t quite picture what you have seen them in before.

Timothy Omundson.
Mark Rolston.
Wade Williams.
J. C. MacKenzie.

Are you getting it now? These guys are those guys. Those character actor guys. The ones that make you go, oh yeah, That Guy…Who Was In That Thing.

These are the working actors, who don’t make million dollar blockbusters, and then can live at home with their family or months off not a worry in the world. These are the actors who aren’t doing it for the money, because their pay certainly isn’t a lot (unless they are a long running TV show maybe). These are the ones who love to act, who will do most any role, and sometimes even have to live paycheck to paycheck. These are the guys not going to be winning awards down the red carpet anytime soon. Nope. They can probably only get Emmys. Well that is not true, one of these guys was nominated for a Tony, but I forgot who.

It was one of these sixteen guys. Yeah. One of them.

Robert Joy.
Stanley Kamel.
Rick Worthy.
Paul Guilfoyle.

This documentary interviews all of these sixteen individuals and splices them together to tell a sort of story. We learn why they wanted to be an actor, what they were before acting, how their parents took the news, what their first big break was, what their favorite memories were, their regrets, the process into getting onto a new television show, what they have been doing lately, their interactions with fans when they have that “Oh shit, you are famous” moment, and their thoughts on fellow actors.

And that is about it.

Gregory Itzin.
W. Morgan Sheppard.
Zach Grenier.
Matt Malloy.

Honestly, early on, I was excited about this film. What a fun concept!

Then I got bored. Like, a third of the way in, I was already done. It seems like a good idea, to let us get to know these guys, and some of the stories were interesting. But I stopped caring pretty quickly. I don’t know if it is just the straight them talking format, and nothing else (because that is true), or what. But man. It turned into a snoozefest. I think it is only 80 minutes long, but it felt really really long.

Maybe the problem is that I just only knew like, half of these guys from things, and the rest felt like scrubs? Let’s go with that.

Either way. This documentary could have been a lot better.

1 out of 4.

I have been avoiding LUV for quite some time. Why?

Because it is fucking named LUV. What is that? That is dumb. I don’t like that.

But I do like reviewing things that I think will be stupid, so I guess I kind of have that going for me.

Oh, come on Common. You don’t look like you at all when you laugh.

Uncle Vincent (Common), I guess just Vincent, was locked up in prison for the last 8 years. But now he is out and he wants to make his life better. But first, he has a nephew, Woody (Michael Rainey Jr.). Vincent wants to open a high end crab shack, and Woody just wants to move from Baltimore to his mothers house in North Carolina (he was living with his grandmother).

Also including such fine actors such as Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Dennis Haysbert, Michael K. Williams, and Russell Hornsby.

You guys are doing it wrong. This looks nothing like the Abbey Road cover.

I STILL DON’T KNOW WHY THIS MOVIE IS NAMED LUV! Argh!

Well, it is an acronym, that I only knew existed once I saw the wikipedia page. Learning Uncle Vincent. The fuck? I mean, it makes sense, but why wasn’t that better advertised? LUV by itself is just silly.

Speaking of just silly, I liked the idea of this movie. It seemed like a good plot line for some nice drama, some crime, sure. Maybe even I would learn a life lesson or two. But it just didn’t deliver. Early on I was interested, but over time my apathy grew as what I felt looked like more and more ridiculous situations. I don’t mean ridiculous in the entertaining way either. Some sort of dramatic/crime ridiculousness, with a lot of guns, but without the excitement. It is hard to describe.

The ending was a bit of a dull too. I guess it was supposed to be surprising, but at that point, who gives a shit, right?

Learning Uncle Vincent, I don’t believe its a true story from the writer, in any way. Nope. But it is what it is, and I will go back to ignoring it.

1 out of 4.

In the end, The To-Do List will just be known for Aubrey Plaza‘s first lead role in a film, and nothing more.

Huh, that sentence would have made more sense at the end of the review, but I think it is too late now. Now the bias is set. Now you know where I am going with it. Oh well.

But I guess you already knew the movie might suck.

Brandy Klark (Aubrey Plaza) is your typical Boise, Idaho native. Her parents are pretty strict (Clark Gregg, Connie Britton), because her dad is a judge, so she was raised correctly. It is 1993, no internet to corrupt her, so she became Valedictorian of her graduating class. But she never really learned anything about sex or the human body. Only what she was told by her “slutty” friends (Alia Shawkat, Sarah Steele).

But after being forced into a college party, she sees someone. Rusty Waters (Scott Porter), an older guy, playing guitar. Oh em gee, so dreamy!

In fact, he almost has sex with her on accident. Oh snap! But he still doesn’t. She thinks it is because she isn’t an expert at sex, despite being an expert at everything else she does. So she makes a list of things to do over the summer, to elevate herself to sexual maturity, so that one day she can have sex with Rusty Waters. No matter who gets in the way.

Like her friend Cameron (Johnny Simmons) who clearly likes her. Also in the movie is Bill Hader as the pool owner, Rachel Bilson as the older more experienced sister, Donald Glover as a token black guy, and Andy Samberg as some local band guy.

See, there he is. At a House Party. Looking like Kid.

Really, just really, I got the feeling that no one really tried in this movie. Let me take a step back.

Aubrey Plaza does not act the same way she does in Parks and Rec, and other live interviews. That is presumably how she is. No, this character isn’t brooding, or sarcastic. It is just a overachieving girl, who wants a boy. So there is definitely acting in this movie.

It was definitely going for comedy, because it had a few amusing moments and a lot of shenanigans ended up happening. But nothing really struck a chord with me. IMDB tells me everyone is over 25 playing teens as part of the joke, but it isn’t a good joke. Why? Because that happens all the time. If they wanted to make that real joke, they should have gone even older. Make it super awkward.

Some situations were “Sex-awkward” which I guess is the main selling point. Virgins doing stuff! A nice girl being “slutty!” Oh the humanity. I will admit they were the most amusing part of the film, but even they fell short to me. But hey, Clark Gregg is in this movie. As a Conservative Judge! That sure is nifty.

In the end, The To-Do List will just be known for Aubrey Plaza’s first lead role in a film, and nothing more.

1 out of 4.

It took me a long long long time to finally watch Milk. Which is stupid, because I am also trying to watch movies nominated for Academy awards, and it was the last film 2008 for me to see. I wasn’t sure why it took so long originally, but now I definitely know.

Last year for Thanksgiving I reviewed the movie Butter, because it made sense in my head. So clearly I was meant to review Milk, for Thanksgiving this year. Arguably Milk has less to do with thanksgiving than Butter, but fuck it. Milk at least goes in the Mashed Potatoes y’all.

Basically, I am saying I have no idea what I want to review for 2014 Thanksgiving. Come on, we need some more food-ish based titles. Get your act together Hollywood.

We also need more movies set in a time where hair ruled all.

Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) was the first openly gay man elected to a public office, in 1978 in San Francisco, California. In terms of a biography, the movie starts eight years earlier, when Harvey meets Scott Smith (James Franco), his first big love, and their decision to move to San Francisco. As soon as they do, they buy a property on Castro street and open up a camera shop, but they find that they are still not really welcome in the area.

Over time, Harvey becomes more and more of a political activist, and his shop becomes a sort of center of the gay community in the area. The police harass them though, despite no law breaking, so he decides it is the last straw and he must do something about it. He wants to run for City Supervisor, and introduce change in the area, and end the discrimination against gay culture.

But becoming an elected officially isn’t actually that easy. Since its a biography, you know he achieves it eventually, but you don’t know how hard it was to get to that point.

Victor Gerber plays the mayor, Josh Brolin another city supervisor named Dan White, Emile Hirsch plays Milk’s protege of sorts, Diego Luna another of Milk’s lovers, and Alison Pill as a lesbian campaign manager.

His name is Harvey Milk, and he is here to recruit you. For his army.

I am a bit disappointed that this movie didn’t feature Sean Penn drinking milk, like, at all. It seems like the obvious scene to have. But I guess this is a serious film, honoring a man’s life, so they don’t want to do shit like that.

At the start of the movie, it took me awhile to really get in to it. A lot of events happen quickly to get the story set up properly, with Harvey, talking about his earlier life. But once the political activism started, that is truly where it got interesting for me. Where you see a man who knows he is doing the right thing fail over and over again, each time getting stronger after every loss. Getting smarter too, some of the tactics used were amazing. I am a bit surprised that the community kept going for Harvey after he failed a few times, because it shows many different individuals who probably would have been just as good as him, but they must have believed in him that strongly.

Sean Penn acted really well in this role, as he tends to do, so I guess at this point it is just standard.

The film also used actual footage of real events spliced into the real ones, normally I find it pretty tacky, but it was extremely well done this time. Footage of riots and interviews. At the end, they did the standard thing of showing what happened to the real individuals later on, and they spliced actual footage of the actors with their real life counter parts, which just looked great.

Milk is a great story, with great acting, and a great part of history that a lot of people might not know about.

3 out of 4.

Tell me. Honestly. Did you click this review thinking it was the Disney movie Frozen? Coming out, huh, well…today?

Yeah, I bet you did. I did this on purpose. Consider yourself movie trolled.

But seriously. Frozen. Came out a few years ago, had the ridiculous concept. For whatever reason I ended up buying it, so hey, might as well watch it, right?

Or else, its like, a waste of money, right?

Two friends. The skiing and snowboarding trip of their lifetime. Literally. Har har har.

Lynch (Shawn Ashmore) and Dan (Kevin Zegers) are great buds and have been planning this trip for awhile. They go a bunch, so this one isn’t more special. Only it includes Dan’s girlfriend for once, Parker (Emma Bell).

She isn’t good at snowboarding though, a beginner, so they still to lamer hills most of the day. Sad. And it is the last day of their trip! So Lynch convinces Dan to go on one last big run, down a good slope. For some reason Parker wants to go too. Unfortunately, there is storm coming soon and they are closing early. No, no, this can’t be. They convince the guy to let them up for one last run, and they will be very quick about it. Success!

Until a series of horrible events occur, leaving them stranded on a ski lift, far above the slope, in the dark, with a storm coming. Not to mention it being Sunday, with the resort closed the next four days so they won’t be found in the morning. Shit.

What would you do in this situation? Would you wait it out? Would you risk the jump? Would you try to climb the wire? Would you just…not be in that horrible situation?

Would you punch a wolf in the mouth with your wrist?

Oh yeah, fucking wolves. That can’t help either. Those damn Vermont or New Hampshire carnivores.

This may be a ridiculous plot line, and it may have needed a few things to fail to occur, but you know what? It was actually good.

The characters all felt real. They weren’t just very dumb teens. They had their dumb moments, but they weren’t like, super movie dumb to get to their point. They did what they had to do for survival, or at least what made sense to them at the time. The movie didn’t end with some ridiculous twist or anything, it played out the story to its conclusion, and we weren’t secretly on a reality show the whole time or some other stupid twist. No, you get what you see.

But lets go back to feeling real. There were two scenes that made me very involved in this movie. The wolf scene didn’t need to show the gore to be powerful. The noises, the sobbing, and the voices all told the story in such a way that even typing about it almost makes me emotional. Then the later realization about missing loved ones/pets back home? Shit. That was straight to the feels, and almost made me a wreck.

I am surprised they made the movie over 90 minutes when the topic seems like it would be an hour max, but it worked, and we got some real character development (kind of) going on. Surviving sucks yo, especially in certain peril, but it can really bring us closer together.

3 out of 4.

I have failed the movie going public tonight.

Tonight I have seen Delivery Man, but I did not watch Starbuck, the foreign movie that this one is based on. It isn’t super foreign, because it is set in Canada, but it is the French part of Canada. Plus, the director and writer of Starbuck made this version too! Really, it is just some strange re-imaging with a star in the US that people might want to go see.

Well, they might have wanted to see five years ago. David (Vince Vaughn) is a piece of shit. It sounds harsh, but he really is. The movie makes sure you know that early on, by showing him rack up parking tickets, fail at his job delivering meat, disappoint his family, disappoint his girlfriend, and get turned down for loan applications. He owes some thugs about 80,000, and no way to pay it back.

And there was a screw up a fertility clinic about 20ish years ago. David donated sperm over 600 times in a few years, under the name of Starbuck, and because of its high quality, it was given to and successfully birthed 533 children. Over 100 of them are suing the company and David to determine his identity, believing their right to know their biological father is far more important to his right to privacy. Huh.

Who wants to be known as the guy with 500 kids? Especially when his girlfriend (Cobie Smulders) is pregnant and can’t imagine him ever being a father.

Basically his life is falling apart and he has no idea how to fix it. Maybe he can fix the lives of others? Despite his best interests, and the wishes of his lawyer (Chris Pratt), he decides to check out the profiles of a child, just one at a time, and see if he can help out their life in any way while remaining anonymous.

Clearly a plan that won’t backfire.

His immediate family includes his father (Andrzej Blumenfeld), and two brothers (Simon Delaney, Bobby Moynihan) and some of his children are played by Jack Reynor, Dave Patten, and Britt Robertson.

Really, if all you want is Chris Pratt in bath robes, then this is the movie for you. From what the internet tells me, this is actually a scene for scene remake of Starbuck, so I don’t feel too bad not getting to watch the original before this one. The last time I attempted to do something like that was when I watched both Death At A Funerals back to back, and that was just awkward.

Speaking of awkward, that is this movie in a nutshell. It touches on a lot of personal and serious topics, but generally in a strange way given the circumstances of this film. I find it hard to categorize it as a comedy, because although the idea is silly, the jokes are really few and far in between and it gets really dramatic. If you go in expecting a laugh a minute, you will be disappointed.

Vince Vaughn plays a screw up who has his heart in the right place. The reason that sounds familiar is that he always plays those roles, because he is somewhat believable at them. I am not sure how to describe the emotions I felt during this movie, but I can tell you they were there.

I think the movie did far too much disservice early on by making me hate the main character. It was vague on a few important details, like just who was after him for money and why they were surprisingly passive over 7-9 months. The passage of time was very hard to follow, when months would pass for his character without letting the viewer know. Certain problems ended up getting solved too easily and David had a surprising amount of money to give to use for his kids, and gas, and shopping when he owed so much cash in the first place.

I can’t say for certain if this film will stick with me in the long run, but for now it is a decent attempt at trying something new (well, a remake of something new), and I can applaud it for that. It also does a good job of teaching about the potential horrors of sperm bank.

2 out of 4.