Tag: 1 out of 4

Alright, turns out everything I thought I knew about Sparkle was a lie. A lie! When I first heard about it, I was told that it was about a Motown era girl group, like the Supremes. One of them being Sparkle, the daughter of Whitney Houston.

Personally, I had never heard of their group, didn’t know Whitney Houston had a singing daughter who was also famous, and didn’t know any songs by this person. But whatever.

Well, not even a spoiler, I was way off. Topic, sure, but it wasn’t Whitney Houston being a character, it was Whitney Houston just playing a mom character before she died. Oh. That explains why everyone called her Emma…and she never sang…and wasn’t famous in the movie. I seriously was confused the whole movie because of this.

Pictured: Actual Whitney Houston playing someone, not someone playing Whitney Houston.

Sparkle (Jordin Sparks. Okay, that is unintentional maybe. This movie is actually a remake of one in the 1970s. Still weird. Also still fake) is the youngest daughter to her now single mom Emma (Houston). She is 19, while her oldest sister Sister (yes. Carmen Ejogo) is 28 and had to recently move back home due to some issues, and the middle sister Dee (Tika Sumpter) is 24. Turns out Sparkle is a song writer, and great at it, but might have some singing issues. Thankfully Sister is not shy, and performed her song at a club like a star.

Guess who else is at the club? Stix (Derek Luke) an aspiring record executive spots them at the club and becomes interested. He learns that not only did Sparkle write the song, but they all have singing talent too. So he eventually convinces them all to join him and be a singing group, yay! And it takes awhile… But here is some other issues.

Emma doesn’t want her daughters getting involved. Dee is just going to do it until she has money to pay for medical school. Sparkle kind of has a thing for Stix. Sister kind of has a thing for everyone. Seriously, a potential serious mate in Levi (Omari Hardwick), and a more successful person in Satin (Mike Epps) who might also get her hooked on the drugs and beat her. Can they keep it together and get a real record deal by Larry (Curtis Armstrong)? Does CeeLo Green have more than one scene in this movie?

Feel free to guess on who looks like doctor, druggie, and writer.

Alright, so besides my initial confusion, I still felt like this film was a waste of time. I was incredibly bored, and this film kind of qualifies as a musical! Lots of songs in the movie. Some were nice, some were okay. But I couldn’t get over the rest of the movie to just enjoy them.

I don’t know how this compares to the original Sparkle, obviously, but its general description sounds like a better version of what I watched. “A girl group experiences turmoil after one of their members turns to drugs and another achieves their desired fame all by herself.” That makes it seem less like Sparkle, and more about them all. After all, middle sister doesn’t even care. Sparkle, by the end does succeed on her own as a solo artist (with a weird concert I also have issues with), but the other sisters don’t care. The only problems come from the mom not wanting them to be famous and stick with church choirs. Boring!

This film basically put me to sleep. A lot of nothing kept happening, disguised as things happening. That is all I can really describe it as.

Total Recall, for people who like movies based off books that also already had another movie based off of said book.

Do you love the old Total Recall? Yes? Then why the heck are you going to watch this film? You know it wont be anything like it, and will just make you mad because you compare the two. I say ignore it. See how this one goes. Then don’t get too pissed off when you realize this one has no trip to Marsin it.

But if we’re lucky, we are in for a mind fuck. Kind of like the recall business.

Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) is a factory worker, helping build police drones, in the Britain Empire. After chemical war, there are only really two livable places left, Britain (Which is a lot of Northern Europe), and Australia, now called The Colony. Guess which one is in charge? GUESS. Lead by President Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston) of Britain, times are rough. Hell, Douglas lives in the Colony, but has to tramsute to Britain each day for work with his pal Harry (Bokeem Woodbine).

What? How can they do that daily? Oh haven’t you heard? The Fall is a giant gravity elevator that goes through the earth’s crust and mantle, around the core, to the other side. Don’t ask questions.

So times are rough. There are ways to get over it though, through Rekall. They will implant false memories into your brain to make it all better. People don’t trust it though. Since Douglas has been having strange dreams about a girl, he finally decides to go. Despite the calming voice of John Cho, shit hits the fan when he tries to have secret agent memories. What’s that? Apparently he already has those memories? How can that be?

Either way, shit is weird. Even his wife Lori (Kate Beckinsale) seems to have turn on him! She is a spy for the government? Oh nos! But at least he finally met the mysterious girl, Melina (Jessica Biel) who claims he was kidnapped and had his memories replaced, and he is actually an agent for Matthias (Bill Nighy), a resistance leader wanting the Colony to break out of Britain control.

Oh, or is all this actually just the memory that was implanted in him? That could be true as well.

For “whatever reason”, when you google Total Recall you mostly get these images.

Wooo science and action! And that is about it.

I mean shit. Okay, I know they don’t get to go to Mars. That sucks. Mars is awesome. Curiosity agrees. But you know, all this felt like was a bunch of confusion, with action, and eventually a crazy ending. I have talked before about how too many plot twists can ruin a movie. Once you reach a certain point, you lose interest, and don’t trust the film anymore. I think this movie passes that threshold. Also, if you thought the lens flares were bad in Star Trek, you are going to be pissed off watching this movie.

I mean shit. Besides the obvious, I feel like the science presented in the movie didn’t even stay too consistent. I’m looking at you magnet cars.

Fuck, I can’t even think of more to say. I just thought it was kind of boring and dumb.

I originally had no intention of watching All About Steve this weekend. In fact, I had no intention of watching it anytime soon. I never felt like I’d be in the right mood.

But unfortunately, the movie I watched Friday night was so fantastic, I thought it wrong to give it a Saturday review, since more reviews are read during the week and not weekend. So, might have had a post midnight freak out to find and watch another movie. Hooray!

With that picture, I still have no idea what this is even about.

Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock) is, in a word, eccentric. She is almost like a walking encyclopedia, she knows pretty much everything, but has basically no filter. She will just keep talking and talking, regardless of who is actually listening. She also writers the crosswords for the local newspaper, not much of a career, and lives at home with her parents. Her parents! Who have also set her up on a blind date with a cameraman, Steve (Bradley Cooper).

Originally interested, he quickly realizes (minutes later) she doesn’t stop talking and also is afraid of her strong commitment talk quickly ends the date but halfassedly invites her to come out. So of course she does, she thinks it is true love!

Steve has to work with an egotistical asshole Hartman (Thomas Haden Church) who really wants to be an anchor, and they also brought along a network guy (Ken Jeong) to make sure no shenanigans occur.

But when Mary actually finds him? He freaks out. She is like a stalker! And she causes problems! A really nice and in love stalker, who doesn’t know her own level of socially unacceptable behavior. She even meets some nice hippie friends (Katy Mixon, DJ Qualls) who help her, well, stalk Steve. She may even turn out to be a hero!

A hero who really puts herself out there.

Whewww, this is definitely not what I was expecting. To give Sandra Bullock some credit, she has never acted like this in a movie before, to my knowledge. Technically I am not a Bullock expert, so I could be wrong. But wow was this portrayal something else.

I think the goal of the movie was to make the audience love her and help accept others who are different than you, but I think they did a poor job of showing it. A lot of the earlier funnier scenes in which people quickly give up on her and treat her like crap just made me feel sad, and never really laughed. I found her interesting as a character, but as a comedy they went just a weird way with it all.

I’d say watch it only if you want to see Bullock go way outside of her normal zone, but definitely not for an overall good movie or plot.

So I just learned that Step Up: Revolution is not the original name of this movie. Nope, originally it was called Step Up 4: Miami Heat. Wow. If anything, I can say that they did a good thing with the name change.

After all, who doesn’t love a good revolution? Wait. One second. Turns out people in power don’t like revolutions. Hmm. This title could be a controversy then.

Well that is good, after all, who doesn’t love a good controversy? Oh what’s that? Shy people hate controversy? That is fine, we can ignore shy people. They generally aren’t going to be dancers anyways.

Pictured above: No shy people

Miami has a lot of things going for it. One of those things is that people like to live there. But in this world, they have this crazy never heard of thing before called Flash Mobs. But instead of a regular flash mob, it is the “same people” every time, and they are a public disturbance, because they are the only type of Flash Mob. Heck, they even call themselves The Mob, for creativity purposes.

Lead by Eddy (Misha Gabriel Hamilton, who has past roles as Dancer and Detroit Dancer) and Sean (Ryan Guzman, first role!), they rock the streets and get them recorded and put on the youtubes. Why Youtube?

Because for whatever reason, they are in a competition to be the first to get 10,000,000 views on a video (or overall their videos? Not sure). Because the first to do that gets $100,000, so they do these dance flash mobs to get hits. But what if they can turn their mobbing into a message?

Emily (Kathryn McCormick, formerly Dancer, Audience Member 1, and Sexy Girl 1) is in Miami to audition for some fancy dance company, but her father, Mr. Anderson (Peter Gallagher, yes he gets no real name) doesn’t really approve. In fact, he is a real estate grabber, for his new and fancy hotels, and he plans on buying up a huge plot of land in Miami to renovate and make awesome luxury spots. Turns out this involves some of the best hang out spots and homes of some of our main cast, and that is bad.

So after she secretly joins their group (because she needs to learn to let her wild side out more in her classical /modern dance stuff, by adding some street moves), they come up with the idea to protest this stuff, making them become bigger and more powerful. But I mean, can dancing stop commerce? Also featuring Cleopatra Coleman as their DJ and Stephen Boss as another main dancer.

Just imagine how uncomfortable standing in the middle of that would be. Closeness on an escalator, gross!

You know what, there are a lot of plot problems in this movie. I could ignore them, but fuck that, lets talk about them.

First off, the youtube competition makes no sense. Everytime they mention it, I cringed because they made it seem like they didn’t even know how the internet worked. Was a vague competition, and tons of videos already have over 10,000,000 views in real life. Similarly, a video wouldn’t take months to reach that high either.

Secondly, what the fuck Emily plot line. Really? She needs to add more fire and passion to her dances? And so she starts doing hip hop crazy stuff on the streets? How is that not pretty much the entire plot from the first Step Up?

Anyways, this is a dance movie though. That is what is important! Well, first off on that, I hated the music. Pretty much every time. The best DJ in Miami my ass, what was that shit?

The dancing to the music? I wasn’t impressed. I am pretty sure I have seen dancing like that before, and well, it wasn’t as cool watching it in this movie. The only dance scene I really liked was the above fedora/business scene, their first protest dance. But hey, I might have just liked that more for the outfits and props.

Should I have complained that the movie theater staff never came out and flash mobbed our theater? Probably.

If you went to the movie theaters this summer, you might have heard about Girl In Progress, because really that is the only time I heard anyone ever talk about it. I think I saw the preview for the movie maybe seven times in a single month. SEVEN TIMES. So as you can see, watching this movie as soon as possible was a priority, because damn it, I wanted to know what the trailer kept teasing at me.

Huh, I wonder if this picture is a metaphor.

Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez) is just a girl, who kind of hates her position in life. She at least gets to go to a private school, but her mom Grace (Eva Mendes) is having problems paying for it. Grace works a few jobs, including house cleaning for a Dr. Harford (Matthew Modine) and waitressing at a local crab shop. Their relationship is pretty strained, because Ansiedad feels her mom spends all her time working or sleeping with married men (Yep, the doctor) and not enough time just being a good mom.

But (and we are about to get super meta here), when she starts to learn about a genre of novels that tell of coming of age stories, she makes it her desire to have her own “coming of age” story, so she can become and adult and fix her situation in a flash. With her only real friend (Raini Rodriguez) they develop a list of tasks that most occur in order to have the appropriate experience. Everything is on that list, from first awkward kiss to virginity loss, to changing her lifestyle from nerd to badass (including intentionally losing her old friends), to hopefully moving out of her home and escaping to NYC!

While at the same time, Grace’s life is getting more stressful, as she is put in charge of the restaurant while her boss is at a festival. On top of that, Dr. Harford is willing to elope and take their family far away from the area. Sounds sweet, but can easily backfire. But all of these stresses make it harder to see the changes her daughter is going through, until her teacher (Patricia Arquette) is able to point them out.

Additionally, a middle aged hispanic individual nicknamed Mission Impossible (Eugenio Derbez) is a part of both of their lives, and might be willing to fix there situation at any cost.

The real star of the movie. Anyone else think he looks like a Hispanic Matt Berry?

So what happens when you get a coming of age movie, about a girl attempting to create her own coming of age story? Well, it could either go amazingly well, or amazingly bad as far as I can tell, and I think this film falls on the latter. I wouldn’t describe any of the main cast performances as bad, but it actually just felt like they didn’t care.

That Eugenio? He was excellent. A lot of it might have just been in his facial expressions, but he is really the only person who made me enjoy the film. Although the film itself is about character growth, it felt fake or forced the growth that occurred. Arguably, a forced growth in a movie about forced growth could also be intentional, but I doubt the creativity of the director in this case.

For a hilarious read, I suggest the outline on wikipedia of the plot. If anything, it makes my writing look awesome, so clearly checking it out only leads to positives!

Finally. Finally I can say I am the last Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie…or am I?

This version, Dog Days, takes place after seventh grade, but during the summer before 8th. Shit, that means if there is only middle school for these books (guess), then they can still do another one next year.

Four movies in four years, kind of ballsy. Or maybe it is just easy for this type of ‘epic novel’.

Summer? Time to get fucked up and ride some rides.

So yeah, get stoked, time to meet up with Greg (Zachary Gordon) again! But now that school is out, he has one goal, to play video games. Lamely enough, he is playing some dumb wizard game, and apparently thinks it will take all summer to beat it. Well, maybe he sucks at life.

But his dad (Steve Zahn) is not a fan. Summer is good weather so he must be outside! Physical fit stuff, oh well. And he better not piss off his dad this summer, because he just learned about some prep/obedience/military? school that starts in the 8th grade. You know, which Greg is about to be in. So of course Greg fails to get his game on after the first day, and pisses off his dad. Oh well, according to the mom (Rachael Harris), it is partially the dad’s fault. He needs to spend time with his son!

But they have nothing in common. Camping, reinactments, fishing, blah. Thankfully, Greg lies again and says he has a summer job at the local country club. But really he is just going there as Rowley’s (Robert Capron), trying to impress Holly (Peyton List), by lying to her a bunch. She meant to give him her phone number, but never finished writing it. Unfortunately, throughout the summer Greg is too much of a pansy to bring that up and get the missing digits to actually get his girl.

Chirag (Karan Brar) is still an Indian kid stereotype, Patti (Laine MacNeil) is still mean, and Fregley (Grayson Russell) is still unpopular.

Rodrick (Devon Bostick), despite what happened in the last film, is kind of a dick again, and uses his brother to get into the country club.

Can Greg not screw up everything he touches, and get a good relationship going with his dad?

I can’t tell. They look pretty much the same, so they must be awesome.

Remember what the sequel did with the first? It made it better, and also feel more realistic. You think both Greg and the brother grew with that movie, and it felt kind of awesome. Well I think that is what they meant to do with this version. But instead of the boy and older brother relationship, it would go to the boy and his father relationship.

Don’t get me wrong, it definitely happened, but the execution felt wrong. Just felt wrong the entire time. The threat of boarding school, and Greg’s inability to not be a dick. Like, he made progress in the last movie, but it is almost as if they were just kidding and no progress was made at all. His brother was kind of a dick to him (not as complete, but still not very nice). Just felt like they robbed the characters of their development.

Literally nothing really goes as planned in this movie, and to me it seemed like that most of Greg’s actions were caused by an inability to think, even though they generally portray him as a bit smarter of a character. But nope, bad choice after bad choice, and still, despite learning lessons in previous films, wanting to be cool and treating his friends like crap.

Way to go Greg, you really are starting to suck. Other minor announces, like Patti yelling out the score during tennis, and scoring it wrong (but seemingly correct? She was calling shit a point that wasn’t close to being a point). Also, Greg’s inability to get the last two digits of Holly’s number, all because he couldn’t just say, “Yo Bitch, finish that message”. Especially if he was right by her, and other people were talking that involved neither of them, he couldn’t figure out how to talk on his own I guess. Just made me pissed off.

I say a lot I try to make sure that movies based on books are given their own subjective look, without bringing the book into it. After all, they are different mediums. I need to judge the movie just on its movieness.

But The Lorax? That shit is classic. Here is an audio version for the lazy who have never heard of it. I think a movie version is definitely doable, but it will be weirder, and probably pretty short. Depending on what they set it in.

And just hopefully not extremely up in your ass on the environmental issues. That’s all I want. Lots of rhyming, damn it. Also, lots of Lorax!

Well, these things arent the Lorax. Poor start so far.

The movie begins with Ted (Zac Efron) a very non Lorax human having big dreams in Thneedville, a completely “artificial city”. Everything is metal, plastic, or synthetic in some way. No trees or plants, that is all fake too. But no worries, they love their lifestyle and capitalism. They even love the fact that they by air, from O’Hare (Rob Riggle) for whatever reason.

But Ted is in love. With a girl! A strange girl who dreams of the world outside the walled city that they cannot leave. Audrey (Taylor Swift) wants a real life tree so badly, she even said she’d marry a boy if he gave her one. Simple needs! Despite the wishes of his mom (Jenny Slate) and grandma (Betty White), he escapes the city walls and goes to the barren landscape! And obviously, as I just described it, it kind of sucks. No trees anywhere.

There is a creepy house though, hopefully that is where the Onceler (Ed Helms) lived, a rumor of a man who is said to have tree seeds in his possession. And does he? Who knows, because he wants to talk to Ted first and tell him his tale, about how he met the Lorax (Danny DeVito) when he first came to the fields to start up a business and become a success.

Then you know, we get a really long version of the Lorax story, with lots of singing and dancing, and animation explosions, and lengthening. After the seed is received, where the book normally ends, the movie then continues to explain what he does with the seed and his attempts at taking down the O’Hare foundation in Thneedville.

Aw, there is the Lorax. Super caauyuute.

Interestingly enough, the first scene actually got me hooked into the movie. The first song titled after the city was actually catchy and interesting, minus the weird parts about extreme capitalism and being a zombie. But yeah! I was excited. But then it went more and more downhill.

After that I didn’t really like a single song, which is a shame. Especially the last one, Let It Grow, that stuff got weird. But after Ted meets the Onceler (who yes, you get to see in the flashbacks. Just hands would be weird in a movie), the story of him going out into the fields, finding the lorax, and then eventually destroying the ecosystem takes WAY TOO LONG. It is ridiculously long. And pointless. Especially since the destruction part doesn’t take a long time, just the part after 1 tree to get to oh man cut it all down.

The morals associated with the Lorax novel are basically simple. Hey, don’t over do it. That is about it. The movie kind of takes that message, amplifies it to show even further extremes (Thneedville) and smacks you over the face with it again and again. I didn’t like that, it was far stronger than it should have been. The ending, after the return to the city with the seed, was just a long chase scene that felt pretty annoying too. I didn’t hate the O’Hare character, minus the fact that he didn’t make much sense, but the way they chose to portray him (not his portrayal?) was annoying to me. Just his general look. I thought “Oh jeez, thanks storyboard artists. Couldn’t have made him more normal sized? Fuck your proportions”.

There were some good moments, but man, I do think this would have been better at 40 minutes max and less acid trips.

Adventureland! A title like that, it must be a good time.

This is actually my second attempt at watching Adventureland. The first time I tried, it was going to be while I was donating Plasma. But the nurses kept talking to me the first 30 minutes of the film, so I missed a lot of plot (and was quite annoyed) and then the machine blew up. Very messy. Never really tried to reschedule after that!

I also had a temporary ban on Jesse Eisenberg movies, because there was a month span when I saw…pretty much all of them but this one.

Fuck the plot, just tell me how to get one of them giant pandas.

James (Eisenberg) has just graduated from college! And as part of his college grad gift, he gets to go to Europe for the summer for many weeks. All planned out, just needs a bit more to fix the cost of travel.

But fuck. His dad kind of got demoted and they are losing a lot lot of money. They can’t even help him handle graduate school in NYC. So his Euro trip is cancelled and he has to move back to Pittsburgh to find a summer job. But where could he work with virtually no real world work experience (fucking literature majors man)?

Adventureland! Too bad the owner (Bill Hader) and his wife (Kristen Wiig) have him working at Games. Rides are where the real winners get to be. A lot easier, no asshole customers. I mean, even his asshole old friend Frigo (Matt Bush) has a rides job. Oh well.
‘
So he gets shown the carnie ropes by Joel (Martin Starr), a fellow intellectual lost in the pit of amusement park despair. And it kind of sucks a lot. But then he meets Em (Kristen Stewart), and it gets a bit better. Kind of. Too bad too much drama happens at this place, and way too much pent up sexual frustration. Especially one Lisa P (Margarita Levieva) returns to the park. Not to mention having the maintenance guy (Ryan Reynolds) being a kick ass musician who once jammed with Lou Reed.

Studies have shown that reviews with a picture of Ryan Reynolds get clicked on 3x as much than those without.

Adventureland! Where uhh, dreams go to die I guess? Apparently carnie life sucks in Pittsburgh, and it is full of privileged white people. It happens all the time, I am sure.

I was kind of very disappointed with the movie. No one really stood out as a great role, except for the Hader/Wiig duo of awkward owners. Good at conversations they are. But didn’t feel like it was that funny for a comedy. Probably has a lot more drama in it than people would expect. But when one of the biggest movie problems is just based off of miscommunication and people not talking about what is actually happening? That is such a cop out. That shit doesn’t happen in real life. Anger can still be there, but at least people generally get the truth.

But overall, the movie felt pretty lazy and just eventually ended for me.

I’ve finally done it. But my money where my mouth is.

I can make a claim, “sure I will watch anything”, and prove it by watching a bunch of shit you’ve never heard of. Hell, half those movies could be fake for all you really know. A huge conspiracy!

But what about things that are often considered very bad, that everyone knows about. Stuff that takes me out of my comfort zone, and in uncharted waters? Yeah, that is really what you want to see.

Well I have actually tried to watch a Madea movie before, Madea’s Big Happy Family. But halfway through, I realized I still had no idea what was going on and just turned it off. I rarely stop movies. So with Madea’s Witness Protection, it was time for try two. And I would watch it in a theater so I couldn’t just shut it off without getting arrested.

My only actual Tyler Perry knowledge is what South Park has told me. Apparently black people can’t help but give him money!

George Needleman (Eugene Levy) finds himself quickly in a pile of shit. Sure, he is ‘happily married’ to his second wife (Denise Richards), has a daughter from the previous marriage (Danielle Campbell) and a boy from his current (Devan Leos), but his job is about to make things a lot more difficult. From an accountant to CFO, he was placed ahead of a charity department of a company, and clearly under qualified. Turns out it was intentional, because through the charities they were doing that ponzi scheme stuff. His boss (Tom Arnold) set him up as a fall man in case they ever got caught, and guess what, they did!

Turns out the local mobsters also were heavily involved, and don’t want George ratting them out (Even if he knows nothing). Shit violence. Well it turns out George is more than willing to cooperate as long as he and his family, including his delirious mother (Doris Roberts) are protected.

Agent Joe (Tyler Perry) who has to quickly find a place for them to stay ends up convincing his aunt Madea (Tyler Perry) and father Brian (Tyler Perry) to take them in, for the cool cost of $4,000 a month. He just didn’t tell them they were white people. Oh man!

Awkward shenanigans and racial stereotypes occur, along with the plot of a local man Jake (Romeo), who invested all of their churches money in the company and now find that they are probably going to lose the church. That would be, uhh…bad?

Everyone quick, look at Eugene Levy dressed like a fake frenchman. Look at him.

So this movie has a lot of hate (probably mostly the series of movies not this one in particular), but is it justified? Well I guess its a comedy, lets look at the jokes! A lot of easy jokes are made in the movie. Unreasonable social awkward person going through TSA and being on a plane for their first time. That stuff isn’t new at all. Differences between white people and black people, poor people and rich people, and real family values. Ehh. Man in a dress? Happens a lot.

I did laugh at a few scenes, mostly at the absurdity of it them, but it was mostly a silent reaction movie from me.

In fact, it took me awhile to realize, but a lot of the film began to feel unnerving. I couldn’t put my finger on it, until about halfway through, but I realized that the conversations never felt real. There was always just a little bit extra pause before the next person talked. Not sure if that was for a quick audience guffaw or what, but it felt like everyone was alone. This just seems like bad splicing probably, since they could have shortened a lot of that downtime. And yes, obviously, when Tyler Perry talked to Tyler Perry, he didn’t have Tyler Perry to talk to, but seriously, could have been edited better.

Also the ending? Total crap ending. Everything wraps up quickly and magically, and an extremely illegal act goes overlooked. Fuck any morals.

Ice Age Fucking 4: Continental Fucking Draft. Much like Madagascar movies, I had to watch a few of these films real quick before seeing the latest installment. I saw the first one a long time ago, but 2 and 3 I never really go to, because I never really liked the first one. Might have just been old bitter teenager phase though, so might rewatch it as well.

Either way. I have been up to my neck in these guys this last weekend, so lets just get straight to it!

Marathoning these things could explain why I find the teenage girl Mammoth Peaches strangely attractive.

Manny (Ray Romano) the mammoth, is living the good life. With the help of his “half opossom” wife Ellie (Queen Latifah), he is busy raising his ~teenage daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer). Diego (Denis Leary) the sabretooth is still kicking ass, kind of lonely. And Sid (John Leguizamo) the sloth is still crazy. But at least his family came to visit! Just to drop off his grandma (Wanda Sykes) who is also ‘crazy’.

OH WHAT THE FUCK THE GROUND STARTS TO BREAK APART AND THE SHIT IS HITTING THE FAN. Sid, Diego, Manny, and Grandma Sloth find themselves on a small ice chip floating down the sea, with plans on reaching the rest of the herd at the ‘land bridge’.

They have to get there while being chased by a (geologically quick as fuck) slowly moving massive wall, that uhh, represents something. Peaches wants to fit in with the other teen mammoths, especially cute Ethan (Drake). But he has nasty ass ho friends (Heather Morris, Nicki Minaj), and they all hate other things. So she might have to disown her best friend a molehog named Louis (Josh Gad) to do it, but hey, whatever. I’m sure he will understand.

Back on the crazy ass main adventure, uhh after giant storms, they run into pirates. Because why the fuck not.

Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage…!) an ape like creature, named for his tendency to rip open animals from their gut to their neck, wants the sabretooth and mammoth to join his crew (on a floating ice, yes). That is how his crew was formed, saving animals mostly, and them wanting to work for him. There is a song and everything. It includes Shira (Jennifer Lopez), a white female sabretooth tiger (yes that means exactly what you think it does). Some sort of bunny (Aziz Ansari), a kangaroo (Rebel Wilson), a large Sea Lion (Nick Frost) and many other smaller critters.

So their big plan involves escaping from them (At every corner), trying to figure out how to get back home to save their families and friends from certain doom. How they’d save them once they get back? Who knows, thinking ahead is for lame people.

Arggh, a band of ice pirates, rag tag sailors, scurvy, etc.

Ugh. So uhh, first off, as you may have guessed, this movie is full of bad science. “But it is a kids movie…!” Get that excuse out of my face. That seems to be the go to response when filmmakers would rather be lazy and make a poor movie with little to no value. That is sad though, because the original Ice Age had tons of science facts on their side. It actually took place when there were Mammoths and Sabretooth Tigers and even Humans. Sure, during an ice age too. That was around 18,000 BCE. Well, this movie is arguably a few years later than the first, with the birth and growing up of the mammoth baby. But yet Pangea splits apart in it? Something that began 200 million years ago, but instead is represented as something 20k years ago? That is a few magnitudes off, fuck that shit.

It is a popular notion in education. Get an idea in their head, and every few years, fix it a bit for them until it is actually correct. But why not just always be correct? You know, so the kids don’t feel lied too?

Either way, this movie had WAYYYY too many characters. I left out some pretty big names, because small roles because I was just tired of adding more.

It also did bad on its own self pacing. Would show a few days in time with the main cast, then 5s with the rest of the families. Their story lines being mostly one of a normal middle school drama that we’ve all seen before, and happens the same way every time. I guess they took a cue from Madagascar and decided to get in on that interspecies lovin’.

I’d say the CGI was better than the previous ones finally, but most of it was just ridiculous ice boats floating on random storms and water. And narhwals.