Tag: Comedy

Grudge Match

Every year on the Christmas releases, there tries to be that who gives a fuck “family”-ish film. Last year it was Parental Guidance. A movie that everyone can enjoy without thinking much.

Unfortunately for this year, two movies tend to fit the family genre, with one of them clearly leagues above the other. Sure, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty requires some thought, but all the families are going to flock to it over Grudge Match.

I mean, sure, take the guys from Raging Bull and Rocky and make them box. Sounds like a good idea, but oh man, the execution.

Green Men
Why do movies have to show montages whenever a video goes viral? That shit is dumb.

Basic premise: Razor (Sylvester Stallone) and Kid (Robert De Niro) were both Pittsburgh area boxers, who used to be a big deal in the 1980s. Their first match against each other went 15 rounds, with Kid coming up on top. They battled again a few years later, when Razor knocked out Kid in only 4 rounds. Before a rematch could be made to give them the best 2 out of 3, Razor mysteriously retired from boxing, and left Kid without a chance to redeem himself.

Now, many years later, they are both hurting. Razor financially, and Kid with his ego. They agree to pose for a video game from business man Dante Slate, Jr. (Kevin Hart), but once they meet, their feelings take over and they fight it out on the spot. The video goes viral, and there becomes a demand for them to finally have their rematch, 30 years later, despite their age and condition.

Their rivalry goes deeper than just a few boxing matches, when it is found out that Kid also slept with Razor’s girlfriend at the time (Kim Basinger), knocking her up. So Razor wanted to get back at him by never giving him the chance to fight him again. The reason this matters so much is because their son, B.J. (Jon Bernthal) finally learns the identity of his real father, and wants to help Kid train to get in shape for the big game, and introduce him to his grandson.

So who is going to win? A man fighting for the love of his life and money, or the man fighting for redemption and his new family?

Alan Arkin plays Razor’s old and trusty trainer, while LL Cool J plays a very successful trainer.

Supporting Cast
The supporting cast deserve their own video, for saving this accidental disaster flick.

During the very cliche and simplistic ending, the entire theater was booing at the screen, almost in anger at how much it felt like a cop out. It didn’t give us a real ending, is how it felt. Of course, I was the only one in the theater, so I can say things like “everyone there agreed with me” and it be correct.

Let’s compare it to another recent fighting rivalry movie…Warrior! Warrior was an incredible movie, one of the best of its year, great acting, and had more than one fight to watch. Both people had reasons they needed to win, like in “Grudge Match”, but they didn’t sugar coat the ending. They fought and a winner was chosen without either side backing down or doing anything but fighting to win. It was emotional and great, and fuck, I really want to watch Warrior now.

Grudge Match went the safe and boring route, and it should be judged as such.

Alan Arkin and Kevin Hart were pretty funny at their roles, but the ending of the movie sickens me enough to not care about any of that.

Get out of here wannabe emotional fighting movie. Just, just go away.

1 out of 4.

Straight A’s

I remember back in the day when I got Straight A’s. Then, I went to a smart residential public boarding school. There I learned that I am not always the smartest person, and learned to accept the B. Unfortunately, that lazy attitude went with me to college, and here I am today, writing movie reviews for you.

Related? Who is to say really.

Cigarette
If I keep it up, this might be me in a few years. And I don’t mean a well paid actor.

If I have learned anything from movies, it is that sometimes brothers compete over the same woman, and it is generally deemed acceptable. This is kind of one of those movies.

Scott (Ryan Phillippe) hasn’t been home in forever, many many years, because he has spent the last decade or so in and out of hospitals. I’m talkin’ rehab. He left home due to everyone hating him for the drugs and alcohols and having a falling out with the rest of his family.

He was dating Katherine (Anna Paquin) at the time, but she wasn’t cool with that lifestyle, even if she was in love with Scott. So she stayed behind, not willing to accept his plane ticket, and decided to get involved with his brother, William (Luke Wilson). They also had many children.

Either way, why is Scott back? Because their Mom died, and a vision of her as a ghost appeared to him, and spoke to him to make amends. Too bad his brother is out of town on a work thing most of the week, so making amends is kind of hard. He only has his ex and her children to work with. And his dad (Powers Boothe), who doesn’t appear to want to talk either. But hey, if he befriends the oldest kid (Riley Thomas Stewart), maybe that will be enough?

Audience
Perhaps the hardest adult task: watching a kid perform and trying to pay attention.

I started this a few days ago, and I will admit, I don’t remember a lot of it anymore. I remember I didn’t enjoy it.

This is another issue where the plot might have been a good idea, but the delivery was pitiful. The ending, man, the ending was horrible. All of it felt unnecessary and a bit confusing.

The cool uncle was supposed to help the kids out, and make them do fun things. He wasn’t even that cool. The things they did weren’t cool either.

The chemistry between the leads was basically missing.

I am done talking about this movie. It is dull and lame.

1 out of 4.

The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

The first trailer for The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty is probably one of the best trailers of the year. Watch it, if you haven’t.

The next one was far more typical of a trailer, but it was still decent. Even better, the song in the trailer was actually used in the movie, a rarity these days.

The only thing I knew about this movie is that it took forever to get made, and it is based roughly on a short story written by James Thurber in the 30s. The next decade, it actually had a movie adaptation as well. I am pretty sure this is nothing like the short story, but eh, who gives a shit.

Skateboarders
Look at all the fucks I give about the short story.

Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) manages the negative assets of the Life magazine department. I don’t know what that means, really, but it involves receiving the print rolls of cameras, and using the negatives to put in the magazine. He only has one employee, Hernando (Adrian Martinez), so it is pretty slow, and only one photographer still uses an actual camera. That photographer is of course Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn), a freelance photographer, and one of the best in the biz.

However, when the announcement that Life magazine is switching to an online only format, with some asshat manager Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott) coming in to handle the downsizing, it is unfortunate that Sean sends what he calls the epitome of Life magazine and an image that must be on the front cover. Especially since he telegrams the heads of the office and inform them of it too. The only reason it is an issue, of course, is because the picture in question seems to be missing from the film.

So what is a constant day dreamer to do? Why, go and find Sean in person of course, even if it means traveling halfway around the world to do so. At the same time, he is trying to build up his online dating resume, to do something cool with his life, to win the interests of one of his coworkers, Cheryl (Kristen Wiig).

Starring Shirley MacLaine as his mother, Kathryn Hahn as his sister, and Patton Oswalt as an overly helpful E-Harmony customer service representative.

Bad Beard
I mean, I am a huge Adam Scott fan, but this beard is terrible.

Well, as expected, this movie sure was purdy. It had scenery from Greenland, Iceland, Afghanistan and more. Beautiful as fuck, really.

Not only was it pleasing on the eyes, both in terms of his fantasies and actual exploits, but it had a great soundtrack as well. Every time a new song played, it felt perfect.

Ben Stiller gets a lot of flack amongst my friends, but I always tend to enjoy him. I mean, did you see him in Heavy Weights? He treated this movie like a child, it being only the fifth movie he has directed. Everything really works together in this movie, and one of the best parts is that once the missing picture is found, it isn’t disappointing.

Sean Penn has only a small role in this movie, but his character was amazing in his only few scenes. Incredible impact for such little screen time.

As the film progressed, the day dreams became fewer and farther in between, and you get spoiled by most of them from the trailers. During the long fight scene between Ted and Walter, the CGI was a bit shaky, I am guessing because there weren’t any other action shots to worry about.

Overall, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty is a great feel good movie, about living in the moment, and doing something important with your life. Yay happiness!

3 out of 4.

American Hustle

A lot of hype went into American Hustle and rightfully so. After all, it is the third movie from David O. Russell in four years, with the last two (The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook) being wildly successful and nominated for numerous awards.

Not only that, but he took the two best people from each of his previous two movies (Sorry Marky Mark), and put all four of them together in this to create some sort of mega-moviestar-zord.

Body
Featuring Bale, who has once again recklessly warped his body for a role.

One reason why I really enjoyed American Hustle is that I could never tell what was going to happen next. They had very descriptive trailers, but the plot was left vague so you could still experience the movie. So I will try to be vague here as well.

Ever since Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) was a boy, he was a con man. His dad owned a glass company, and he broke windows. So he grew up gaming the system and perfecting his craft. Next thing you know he stealing money to give out make believe loans to the crooked and desperate. Easy cash for the late 1970s. But then he meets Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), and he realizes she is special.

Soon they start scamming together, but eventually they get too big and reach too far and get busted by the FBI. Next thing they know, they are taking orders from rambunctious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), who has big lofty goals of getting even more criminals taken down. The only way Irving and Sydney walk, is if they help out. But Richie has big dreams, can ever really be satisfied?

Oh yeah, and Irving has a wife (Jennifer Lawrence) and kid. That is important, I guess.

Jeremy Renner plays a small town mayor who gets mixed up in the bribing network, with Michael Pena as another FBI agent, and Louis C.K as a local head of FBI. Yeah, really, Louis C.K.

Costume
Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook was my Halloween costume in ’13.
Will this be my Halloween costume in ’14?

American Hustle truly was an experience. Despite the fact that it was over 2 hours in length, I still am a bit surprised at how much material was fit into that movie. Tons. A lot. I remember a specific scene that felt like the final climatic show down, that actually ended up being the halfway point of the movie. It blew my mind, in the best way possible, that it continued to go and tell the story. I was shocked that the story continued to build and reach new heights. That somehow, I couldn’t for the life of me guess correctly what would come next.

After all, this is a con movie at its core, so you are going to expect a lot of twists and turns of the plot. The biggest problem with a con movie is that if it all relies on a twist, sometimes future viewings are dampened, already knowing what to expect. American Hustle feels like a film I could watch over and over again, never getting tired of it, thanks to the brilliant acting and writing that went into the movie.

It is based on/inspired by/whatever by the actual Abscam operation that occurred in the late 1970s, for those history buffs out there.

For those of you out there who already like David O. Russell movies, you will probably like this one too. For those of you a fan of any of the actors/actresses mentioned, you will definitely find their role awesome. If you don’t like David O. Russell movies or the actors/actresses involved in this one, well, your opinion is wrong and you will like this movie too.

4 out of 4.

Saving Mr. Banks

Before this week, I had never seen Mary Poppins. Classic movie sure, and I of course knew songs and scenes from it, but I never watched it in its entirety. Blame the parents. While watching the movie as an adult, I did find it very odd. The message was clear: money is evil, family is great, but why they chose to enforce that message in the 1960s was beyond me.

That was my main goal for watching Saving Mr. Banks: to figure out what the money and banks ever did to the Mary Poppins author. Oh, and to figure out why she was behaving like a huge bitch.

Dat Face Doe
I didn’t think anyone could be mean to a face like that.

Saving Mr. Banks is supposed to tell the true-ish story of Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) acquiring the rights to a film version of Mary Poppins, from the author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson). Of course because it is a Disney movie about the creator of Disney, don’t expect that much actual truth in the movie.

The one thing that does appear to be truthful is that Travers was very very hard to work with. She was granted script rights, and she used the heck out of them. She didn’t want animation, didn’t want music, didn’t want Dick Van Dyke, didn’t want a lot of things. She was very peculiar over her character, and didn’t want Disney to mess it up.

Everything else that occurred in the film is whatever they wanted to say, presumably to rewrite history. For instance, Disney was a chronic smoker and he never hated it, despite it leading to his death. They made a few tiny references in the movie (a cough every once in awhile) but made sure they never showed him doing the deed. In fact, he had a line calling it a disgusting habit and one he was trying to quit. Riiiiight…

The movie is spliced with the tale of Travers’ early life, when she moved to the middle of no where with her family. She lived in a small house, but had a loving (yet alcoholic) father (Colin Farrell), and a quite annoyed mother (Ruth Wilson). Her stories were based on an actual nanny sent to clean up their home, after a few unfortunate events leaving it in disarray.

It should be obvious that most of her complaints with the original script, end up getting included in the final project. So something has to change by the end of the movie, but is it change that all parties actually agree on?

Also featuring Paul Giamatti as an optimistic driver (strange role for him), Bradley Whitford as the writer, and B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman as the song writers.

The Past
What? You didn’t want a farm story during a Mary Poppins movie movie? Too bad!

After watching the movie, I am unsure how much of it is true, and how much of it is just revisionist history. I mentioned a few discrepancies above, but I also don’t know if the back story on Travers’ early life is accurate. I loved the back story, loved it far more than the other part of the film. It was sweet and it was tragic. It made Mary Poppins make a heck of a lot more sense and give it a more powerful meaning. But given all the other changes, I can only doubt that the past problems are somewhat fabricated as well.

This film is also meant to be a pseudo-biopic for Walt Disney, but since it is such a small part of his wildly successful life, and full of inaccuracies, I wouldn’t be willing to label it as such.

My favorite actor from the movie is surprisingly Colin Farrell, playing the “real” Mr. Banks who needs saving. His performance was incredible, despite being a minor role. But hey, he has impressed me a lot over the last few years with a few of his role choices.

What this film taught me is that the real Travers was indeed really hard to work with, for potentially tragic yet inexcusable reasons. If our current pop culture network existed back then, there would have been tons of negative press thrown her way, with hardly any sympathizers.

Saving Mr. Banks itself will probably mostly just apeal to those who grew up with Mary Poppins in their lives and want to relive the magic in a completely different way.

Part of me was hoping at the end of the movie, when they did the premier of Mary Poppins, that they would show the entire film. You know, secretly turn it into a Double Feature. That would have been truly surprising. But Saving Mr. Banks on its own plays a relatively safe story: one that is very powerful, but also full of deceit.

2 out of 4.

Touchy Feely

Actor names can be hard to remember. In particular, Ellen Page is somehow a name that can constantly leave my memory. She is just Juno to me. Why would she dare have a different name than Juno?

I have talked before about watching a movie, thinking Ellen Page was in it, and then bam, its actually Juno Temple and I am not a smart man.

SO, when I saw Touchy Feely, really the only reason I decided to watch it as fast as I did was because Ellen Page was in it. A sort of redemption for my past dumb self. This may be one of the silliest intros I have done for a movie.

Hands
Don’t blame me, blame my very blurry hands.

As you may have guessed, this is a movie about touching. Kind of sexy, right?

Abby (Rosemarie DeWitt) is a successful massage therapist, so she touches people a lot. She believes in all that energy stuff to go with it, taught to her by her friend mentor Bronwyn (Allison Janney). She is a free, fun loving spirit.

Her brother, Paul (Josh Pais, who voiced Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…what?!), is a dentist at a failing clinic. His daughter, Jenny (Page) is his main assistant. But he is uptight and super serious.

The good news for Paul, is after Jenny brings a friend over for a free cleaning, somehow Paul is able to heal a condition he has. Just with a regular cleaning. Word gets out about Paul and his magical touch, and suddenly business is booming, despite no guarantees that he will fix anyone.

The bad news for Abby, is that somehow she has gained an aversion to bodily contact. It suddenly sickens her for any skin on skin contact. Not only is that extremely bad for her business, but also puts a strain on her relationships with friends and lovers.

Also starring Ron Livingston and Scoot McNairy.

Table
I am now betting they did all these hands scenes on purpose. I see you, film maker.

Touchy Feely has a decent story, but its extreme “indie-ness” kind of ruins the story for me. Indie meaning independent or low budget release, which stereotypically means the movie will move a lot slower and let the fantastic acting carry it through. This movie is incredibly slow, with a lot of silent and thought provoking scenes. Or at least, they are meant to be thought provoking.

I really like the idea of the switch of luck for these two, and the dentist part I find even more bizarre than the massage therapist part. But the rest of the movie is just blah to me.

If only I could talk more about it, but I already ran out of things to say. This movie moves far too slow, with not enough substance, for me to really care. Oh well. Another day, another movie.

1 out of 4.

Wrong

Very Wrong.

How Wrong?

This much Wrong.

Wrong is a film brought to us by Quentin Dupieux, who is famous for the movie Rubber. Rubber is famous for being completely absurd, and a strange movie, but I ended up liking it. Knowing that, you should know that he is going for a very similar style to Rubber. So if you hated Rubber, just don’t even try this one.

Rain
Same thing happens to me when I listen to Michael Bolton at work.

Poor old Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick). Sure, he has a bitchin’ mustache. But he woke up to a very not good day. His dog ran away! Or was kidnapped. Either way, his dog is no longer there, and the world he lives in appears to be quite bizarre. Like his neighbor, Mike (Regan Burns), who goes on daily morning jogs, now refusing to admit to it. He hates running, why would he ever do that?

That isn’t the only thing. Police officers are unnecessarily rude, which might be a normal real world thing. His work office has a downpour going on in the inside, but that is apparently normal too. He might not even work there.

But his dog is missing. That is what is important. Not his conversations with a lady working a new pizza place (Alexis Dziena), or his gardener (Eric Judor). It turns out that the dog may have been taken by a group who randomly steal peoples pets, to make them truly love them. Strange. Yes. But Master Chang (William Fichtner) insists that it makes peoples lives better in the end. Unfortunately, mid kidnapping, the driver got into an accident, and died, and the dog escaped. So the stolen dog is lost.

They hire a private detective (Steve Little, aka Stevie Janowski) to get on the case, and Dolph just has to keep on living.

Typewriter
The hardest thing to believe in this movie is that he would write a novel, on a type writer, by water.

At this point, I am not sure if absurdity is really a film genre, or if I like it. Anyone could come up with an “absurd” movie, and call it art, even if it makes no sense, with weak plot or acting, and just bizarre antics. I am not saying that is a good description of Wrong, but close. I would say Napoleon Dynamite was an absurd movie, and one I dislike for its lack of real plot.

I definitely think I got less out of this movie than with Rubber. Rubber draws you in with the strange sounded plot, and I believe, delivers an even stranger movie. The plot description for Wrong just sounds pointless, and probably the only thing drawing people to this movie is knowing he made Rubber. It definitely has its extreme moments of weirdness, but not enough for me to love the movie. There were some great scenes. I loved the scenes with the Private Investigator. The gardener had an interesting arc, but the ending of it felt a bit weak to me too.

For all I know, the entire movie was just made to troll people. It might be a test to see what people can draw from it, calling it a highly intelligent movie, so that Mr. Dupieux can come out in two years and go “hah, just kidding.” That would be fun.

2 out of 4.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

The boys are back in town.

The legend of Ron Burgundy continues, with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy came out in 2004, and from what I can tell, the first draft was horrible. So horrible that they had to rewrite and shoot the entire movie. The leftover original footage and other B rolls created another movie, Wake Up Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie, but people wanted a real sequel, because it quickly became a cult success after its initial success.

The sequel came quite easily! Just kidding, it took a lot of work, and lots of convincing. But eventually the money numbers worked, so they did it because people like money.

Jump
Money can literally elevate any person.

At the beginning of the film, Ron (Will Ferrell) and Veronica (Christina Applegate) are married and cohosting a news program in New York. Living the life! That is, until Ron gets fired and Veronica gets upgraded to hosting the prime time show on her own, a first of her kind in New York! This upsets Ron a lot, so they separate, and he starts living a shitty life again.

That is until he gets an offer he can’t refuse. Someone wants to invent a 24 hour news network channel, and they want Ron to fill in a time slot. What? How ridiculous. However, it pays well, so sure. He just has to reassemble the news team (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) and he is good to go. And win back his woman from the psychologist (Greg Kinnear). And get excellent ratings at the 2am spot to make Jack Lime (James Marsden) look bad. And survive his incredibly aggressive boss (Meagan Good).

And in the search for ratings, will he accidentally change the face of national new forever, for the worse?

Dylan Baker and Kristen Wiig and Josh Lawson are also in this movie. BUT SO ARE SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE. Oh my goodness, the cameos! I didn’t tag the cameos, but if you want to not know who to expect, skip the next part.

We have cameos from: John C. Reilly, Marion Cotillard, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sacha Baron Cohen, Harrison Ford, Kanye West, Kirsten Dunst, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey, and Will fucking Smith.

Sharks
And lets not forget this Shark based cameo.

I am a big fan of ridiculous comedies, and this one had me laughing a lot from start to finish. There was a part after the halfway point where I did find it a bit dull, one joke going to the extremes and lasting a lot longer than I would have liked. But overall, many jokes, much laughs, and a good continuation of the characters.

So here is my one real complaint. I am worried that this movie won’t be as hilarious for a long tim after watching, like the first movie. I was worried the sequel would be nothing more than a carbon copy of the first film, rehashing the same jokes but in different ways, playing off that nostalgia humor. I hate nostalgia/reference humor. To a certain extent, as expected, there was a lot of that. The film ended very similarly to the first one. There was a gang news fight. There was a singing scene. A sex panther joke. And there are more examples. Although I laughed during the watch, I would have preferred probably less references, and more original material.

But outside of that, this movie will make all of its production back and then some. Will hasn’t had the best movies lately, so hopefully this puts him back on the right track.

I don’t accept this as an end to the Mediocre Man Trilogy. Anchorman and Talladega Nights were the first two, with the third one rumored to be about a guy who works on porn, named Rusty Butte or something. The title themes should give it away, and the RB characters. I want that movie, damn it. Get to work, Will.

3 out of 4.

Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas

Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas is only my second ever Tyler Perry movie, the first one being Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection.

Well, second if you don’t include movies he has acted in (Alex Cross), movies he made without Madea (Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor), or movies he just presented (Peeples).

I do know that most of his Madea movies are released as a stage play version first and this play version came out a few years ago. At the time I worked at a Blockbuster and I was surprised to find it constantly checked out by customers. “Unfortunately” I missed out on the opportunity to see the play version first, so I will just have to go into this one blind.

Christmas Play
Clearly I was missing out.

For the general Madea (Tyler Perry) movie plot, I think it is assumed she has a lot of relatives and close friends, so every new movie will be a story about one of her friends/family. The only constant between them is Madea’s existence, and allows for a fresh new cast each and every time.

This time, it is Madea’s friend Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford) who requests her help. She is worried about her daughter, Lacey (Tika Sumpter), who has moved to a small area in Georgia and isn’t coming home for Christmas! Oh the horror. Lacey is a teacher at the elementary school. The small town is undergoing a crisis, because they have lost a lot of their water supply to a dam upstream, and they don’t have enough money to have their Christmas Jubilee party. Oh no! Even more horror!

Lacey also ended up marrying her college sweet heart, Conner (Eric Lively), a seed scientist, which is why they moved back to his old home in Georgia. He is a white man. That is the real kicker here. And that she never told her mother about Conner’s existence. Apparently she hates white people. Conner’s parents (Larry the Cable GuyKathy Najimy) already knew about the marriage and are fine with it.

So the main plot deals with Marie battling her very strange case of racism. Strange in that it is all based on one tiny event a long time ago. There are other side plots, like Lacey potentially losing her job, love interests, and adult and kid bullies. It also stars JR LemonAlicia WittChad Michael Murray, and Noah Urrea.

Cable Guy
Larry and Perry? Maybe a match made in heaven.

This Madea movie definitely went a different direction than I was expecting. It is about a very racist black woman, who was also one of the rudest characters I’ve seen in film. She was deplorable, nothing she did seemed to make any sense. I am almost certain that she never got over her racism by the end, either. The ending also came out of no where. It included a car explosion and then the Christmas Jubilee. At the Jubilee, a small speech happened, that doesn’t change anything in the film, but they use it as a conclusion nonetheless.

The more enjoyable parts of the movie come from Madea rambling, but Larry the Cable Guy held his own against her, with their conversations being the highlight of the film. Shout out to Kathy Najimy, who has lost a lot of weight and almost looks like a completely different person.

If I had to split it up, the comedy parts of the film are decent, but the drama parts are horrible. Unfortunately, all of the conflict comes from the dramatic parts, so the main plot lines just feel boring. The movie tried to argue the true meaning of the holidays, but did such a poor job that it felt like a convoluted mess.

Oh well, maybe next year the next Madea movie will be better.

 

1 out of 4.

Stalled

Where will you be, when the zombie apocalypse hits?

That is the question Stalled decides to ask. How I found out about it was basically just dicking around on Netflix though. It’s good to know there are still movies with toilet humor in them, on the internet.

Rage
I’ve definitely had poops like this before.

There are many bad places I can think I wouldn’t want to be during the apocalypse. Like, wherever ground zero is. I probably wouldn’t want to be in a super big city population wise. Just means more zombies. I definitely wouldn’t want to be on an island, unless there was a way to block the virus.

Basically, there are a whole lot of places worse than a woman’s restaurant, but not a whole lot weirder. Especially if you are W.C. (Dan Palmer), a janitor for a company, who happens to be in the restroom cleaning/working during the breakout. In a strange twist of fate, while hiding in the stalls because two women came in, one bites the other and it is extremely bloody and awkward for W.C.

What is even more unfortunate is that his tool box that he brought in doesn’t have any of his tools in it, just fat stacks of euros. This totally takes place in the UK, by the way. Strange. Money is good. But super useless now.

So now W.C. has to figure out how he is going to escape from this building, which has a holiday office party going on. At least he has company. It turns out a girl Eve (Tamaryn Payne) was also in a stall the entire time, hiding from when W.C. walked in. At least he has someone to talk to as the zombies prattle on outside of his toilet area. Also starring Mark Holden, as Jeff from IT.

Jeff From IT
Jeff from IT is pretty much a baller.

Shit. The idea behind this movie was brilliant.

Zombie movies keep trying to find new ways to spice things up. Sometimes they involve never done before locations, but a lot of them now are just changing either the fundamentals of the zombie, making it not really a zombie movie, or changing the genre into something else. Obviously comedy/zombie movies have been around for awhile, but Stalled ends up picking a location and idea never really thought of before. The number of potential sequels is astronomical.

This entire movie is like a Bottle Episode. But on purpose.

Dan Palmer also serves as the writer of this film, so it makes sense why he got the main lead. Overall, the character isn’t really likable. He seems somewhat scummy early on, lying to Eve and doing some pretty deplorable things in that bathroom out of selfishness.

But the movie itself is not only entertaining, but unique and different. And weird. Really, some of the only things I care about in movies. A random watch turned into a very interesting 90 minutes.

3 out of 4.