Tag: Comedy

I am afraid I am going to turn into a total fanboy of Richard Curtis. He is the director of About Time, but before that he also directed Pirate Radio and Love Actually. Two movies that I could watch again and again and gave high marks to. Let’s just say I went into About Time with a bit of a bias.

A bit of a bias, and a bit of a romance-boner. Mmmm, love.

Time travel in movies can be a hard topic to get right. There are many ways they can set up the time travel concept, but the hard part comes in being consistent and still following the rules they set up logically. Plenty of bad films fail at this, About Time keeps it consistent and follows its rules throughout.

Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) was living a loveless and sad life until he learned a family secret. Before then, he always felt like he was missing something. That is when his dad (Bill Nighy) informed him that the men in his family can travel through time once they hit 21. A genetic condition or something.

They can’t go to the future and they can’t travel anywhere in time, but they can revisit moments in their own life, as long as they can remember that moment. They can relive them just for the experience, or they can change their actions, if they dare. Pretty awesome, but also very dangerous. They have to worry about the Butterfly Effect, so the changes can’t be too drastic. Once Tim makes his first trip, he knows exactly how he will use his new power. For love.

He quickly learns that using time travel to make someone love you doesn’t really work. No, he still has to find someone who finds him generally interesting, like the American Mary (Rachel McAdams). For whatever reason, she thinks he is charming, he just uses the time travel to fix his awkwardness. After all, practice makes perfect.

The good news is that this movie deals with more than just romance. Traveling through time gives an individual a lot of power, the power to affect the lives of those around you in meaningful ways. But could you morally handle the pressure of interfering with your friend’s life, instead of letting them choose their own destiny? Can you cope with the death of a loved one, if you know you have the ability to just visit them again in the past over and over again?

On the other hand, if you had some really sweet cake, you could always go back to that too.

By the end of the movie, I found myself crying as it attempted to tackle these hard subjects. About Time doesn’t fall into the same cliches that other films of the genre get caught up with. A lot of comparisons are being made between this movie and The Time Traveler’s Wife, and not just because Rachel McAdams is the the main love interest in both. They deal with love and time travel, but in completely different ways. The Time Traveler’s Wife was sad, but purely a drama/romance. About Time has equal parts drama and comedy, while dealing with more than just love, but life in general.

Gleeson hasn’t been in a lot of movies, and he currently is known for playing Bill Weasley in the later Harry Potter films, but he was a great choice as the lead role. He had a lot of help of course, with Nighy, a staple in Richard Curtis movies playing his father, his guide to the world of time travel, and the main source of drama in the final act. McAdams is really sweet in this film, and plays a character quite different than any of her previous roles. I also enjoyed the mother (Lindsay Duncan) and the sister (Lydia Wilson).

Overall, I think About Time will turn out to be one of those films that I can watch again and again, possibly getting something new out of it after every viewing. My opinions on it will also probably change as I get older, and experience events that the movie touches upon. It is a charming movie in every way. Thank you Richard Curtis, consider me a total fanboy now.

Another day, another Milestone Review.

That’s right, welcome to my 950th review for the website! The only thing really special about this milestone is that it is super close to a real, actual, super duper milestone, at 1000! That review I have been planning for awhile now.

But for now, I am going to talk about Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. I did Journey To The Center Of The Earth as my 850th, because I am a Geologist, and damn it, I wanted to talk a lot about the bad geology and strangeness of that movie. But once a franchise gets suckered into the Milestone review category, it is really hard to get out. Thus a sequel! A third one is coming out eventually, so hopefully that lines up nicely for me.

Speaking of nice, this movie is about an island! Hell yeah. That means it won’t distract me with a bunch of bad geology. I might even be able to enjoy it?!

Oh for fucks sake.

This movie takes place a few years after the first film. Sean (Josh Hutcherson) no longer has to talk about his uncle, because well, he does’t live with his uncle. That was a one time thing. There are zero references to Brendan Fraser in this movie. So he is back to living with his mom, who has finally gotten married, to Hank (Dwayne Johnson). Probably one of the best possible upgrades for adult male star.

The thing is, Sean doesn’t want to hang out with him ever. He is getting into trouble in school, with the local lawmakers, you name it. But why?

Because secrets.

Turns out Sean has been hearing a signal broadcasted by satellite in a code, and he is pretty sure it is from his Grandpa, who hasn’t been seen in two years! He is now a full fledged Vernian, and by golly, Hank was an intelligence person with the Navy. So he helps crack the code, which appears to hint the location/existence of The Mysterious Island. Apparently the same island as Treasure Island and an island in Gulliver’s Travels! Whoa! Collusion between authors! So, fuck it, they somehow convince the mom to let them go and find the dang island, as a way of bring them closer together.

At the island, they find only one man crazy enough to take them. Gabato (Luis Guzman). What? How did Luis Guzman get into this movie?

[This space left intentionally blank]

Turns out he doesn’t have a boat, but a helicopter. Oh well, it will do. He also has a daughter, Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens), who also happens to be around the same age as Sean. How lucky!

Well, they get to the island, but through crash landing. Apparently there is a storm always around it or near it, hooray protection. Too bad they don’t have a way off the island. Looks like the only way they can think of is to first find the grandpa, and use whatever he has to get out. Right? Right?

Well they find him (Michael Caine) pretty easily, it will just be a few weeks before his transportation happens. Shit. Oh well, time to explore then, eh?

Aw yeah, mother fuckin’ ruins and shit.

Through whatever bullshit book source they decide to give us, not only do they determine that this island is home to Atlantis (see above), but it also sinks down to the bottom of the ocean every hundred something years. Of course, plenty of time to do research.

Until Navy Intelligence Speicalist Hank takes the case! No dog, there is salt water in the middle of the island in puddles around Atlantis. For it to get there, the sinking must be early. They probably only have a week or so to get off the island. Well shit. Better hurry on up then.

“No guys seriously, I was in the armed forces for my brains not my brawn!”

So they rush. Oh yeah, what makes this island actually magical or cool? Well, normally big things are small, like a tiny elephant, and normally small things are big, like bees or lizards. In fact, they can ride the bees and the bees are totally like “Oh yeah that’s cool, fuck it, hop on.”

Shit. Luis Guzman and The Rock share a bee. That is some strong bee muscles. Well, turns out after a night of sex appeal and Rock serenading on a ukulele, his calculations were incorrect.

No. They only have mere hours before the island sinks. Oh nooooo!

Not so subtle sex appeal for a PG movie.

So they search for The Nautilus, the submarine from that one book. You know the one. But other bad things happen, like getting split up, and getting greedy. Because shit, that volcano is over a huge gold deposit, and thus gold is all around the base. You will never guess which character makes it his mission to retrieve the gold before the island sinks.

To be fair, they have noble reasons.

Sean and Hank find The Nautilus, but it is off the coast and under water. Shit. Thankfully they can hold their breaths forever, and successfully get down to the submarine. But it won’t start. Oh man, its been inactive so long, it needs power.

If only there was some way for them to get power down there?

Needless to say, things work out, and we are set up for part 3.

So first of all, you can tell this movie really wanted to sell its 3D aspect to the viewers. I didn’t get to see it in 3D, just Blu-Ray, but they have a lot of silly shit fly at your from the screen, and it is really obvious even in the just Blu-Ray version.

Need an example? I found this awesome gif.

To be fair, that was also one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Kid wants to know how to get the ladies. Apparently the correct way is by flexing the pecs back and forth. True. I am falling in love the more and more I watch it, and that shit was hilarious.

I can say without a doubt this movie is better than the last. Now they have an established story line. The first film has the problem of trying to exist in a world where the book…exists. So it isn’t telling the same story, but still does a lot of the same events in that story.

In this one, they don’t worry about telling The Mysterious Island story, they make their own across multiple books. It is just a lot more interesting and less annoying scientifically.

For this one, science wise, it is a bit better, but of course none of the biological implications of the island are explained, the storm, or how it actually can just go up and down every hundred years with no one noticing. Outside of magic.

But it is a lot more amusing and a lot more pretty than the first one.

And again, sorry to Mr. Fraser, but Mr. Johnson is far better suited for this and interesting.

So yeah, this movie isn’t a complete shit storm? Go figure!

I really like hockey. Definitely my favorite sport to watch and cheer for. I also really like movies (you see where this is going?) So generally, hockey movies I am pretty fond of. Goon was fan-fucking-tastic, and Score: A Hockey Musical was so ridiculous, I couldn’t not enjoy it.

Well, the streak of great hockey movies is coming to an end tonight, unfortunately. Because I watched Breakaway.

I know what you are wondering. Yes, they do have helmets that can fit around turbans.

Rajveer Singh (Vinay Virmani) likes hockey. But he is Indian. Indian’s don’t play hockey. That is a fact! But her is actually good. All he does is play pick up with his friends, also all Indian, and they are looked down on by others. No, not by white people, just other older Indians. Indians don’t play hockey. Or Soccer. That is a movie reference of a movie with a similar plot, guys. Don’t make me spell it out.

Anyways, Rajveer had to leave college to work for his father (Anupam Kher), who really hates this hockey thing. He wants him to rise up in the family business that he created when he moved to America, but all Rajveer seems to want to do is play hockey and be a truck driver. No drive.

When Rajveer tries out for a local technically amateur but almost professional team in Toronto, he isn’t given a fair chance at all, despite being a great player. So he gets the idea. Why not just make a team with his friends? Then they can compete in the local tournament, win the cup, beat that other team whose name I can’t remember, and be heroes! Heroes to themselves at least.

Unless…unless the local Indian culture actually finds their tale inspirational and bands behind them? Just don’t tell Rajveer’s dad about it. No, the Speedy Singhs want to prove they can play hockey too. Also starring Camilla Belle as his love interest, Drake as the actual Drake (he likes Hockey, so what?), Russell Peters, and Rob Lowe as the local janitor turned their hockey coach.

Rob Lowe is LITERALLY the most famous person in this movie.

Oh goodness, the cliches.

Before anyone makes the claim, no I am not giving the movie a low rating just because of the first scene. Where our main character was imagining he was on the Toronto Maple Leafs and about to score the game 7 OT winner for the Stanley Cup against the Detroit Red Wings. Not the reason at all, but I did dislike it.

Unfortunately, this film is filled with all the cliches, even ones that are not about sports. There are other plot lines in here, outside of just Indians wanting to play hockey, but they weren’t as important, and just in general side plots. Because all the cliches happen, you will know already how it ends, and yeah, it does. There is even a chance when they might not get to play anymore due to a rule, but hey, they find a way around it. They even found an enforcer. They got it all!

The hockey in this movie isn’t really exciting to watch, and the story isn’t original. There was also a lot of Drake in this movie, more than I expected (which was around zero, I guess). It had some amusing moments, but not enough to make it worth ever watching again.

Every once in awhile I pick out bad movies to even out my website if I have seen too many good movies in theaters recently. I will at least try to pick a probably bad movie by knowing one of the actors in that movie.

Miss Dial is one of those movies, and also a great example of why I will watch random shit and give it a fair shot. Because somehow, despite everything, I really liked it.

No, this is not the people on the cover that made me want to watch it.

Erika (Robinne Lee) works for CPI consumer affairs. Who are they? They cover a lot of products, and take complaints and help answer concerns for people using these products. She can work from home, take calls via her laptop and all she has to do is follow a script and work blah hours a day, while multi tasking and doing whatever. What fun!

Well, except for she hates it. She also has recently heard rumors that her boyfriend, Alex (Jon Huertas) has been fooling around with one of his coworkers on the side. In fact, someone saw them together at dinner, maybe kissing, the night before. No. Not cool. Not cool at all.

So during a break she decides to call her best friend to talk about it but she accidentally dials the wrong number, and ends up having a conversation with some random guy instead. It felt like relief. She felt connected. She wanted to do it more. But with her boss constantly checking in (David H. Lawrence XVII), a queue of dumb consumers that doesn’t ever seem to shrink, and boyfriend troubles, she is having a very strange and confusing afternoon.

And when she calls Kyle (Sam Jaeger), a random NYC number, she feels more connected to him than anyone yet. And he is offering advice. He would be perfect, if she wasn’t so confused with hey boyfriend and you know, he didn’t live far from LA. Dule Hill and Gabrielle Union are also in this movie, but they are just two callers to the complaint department while the other events are unfolding.

Yet note their position on the DVD cover, and note Sam Jaegers.

Hint, Sam Jaeger isn’t on the cover.

Seriously. Dule Hill’s character name is “Popcorn Caller”. He has one scene, and so does Gabrielle Union. They are both famous kind of, but Sam Jaeger is also kind of famous. He is on Parenthood! And the second main character! But no cover. At least his name is on the top?

Despite that. Despite that glaring fact and awkwardly deceitful advertising. I liked the story. I really did.

First off, the movie was basically in real time, since it was mostly conversation, no other events really going on. Made it seem a lot shorter than it ended up being.

Second, a lot of clever shit happened by the end. The way they used phones and just normal conversation into tricking people to tell the truth. It was brilliant.

Third, the complaint people were hilarious. They really were. I knew a lot of people who ended up calling too, bunch of small time actors, getting a scene in to make us laugh. That is awesome.

And fourth, I really enjoyed the ending. I think that is point two. It had its ups and downs, but shit, I was entertained, and overall glad I saw this movie. Weird right?

I got to see the trailer for Girl Most Likely only once, and that was at an independent movie theater before I saw Fruitvale Station.

And I made plans to wait for it on DVD. Wasn’t an appealing trailer, looked super low budget. It looks like one of those stories, written by someone who doesn’t write normally, but is secretly writing about her own life, and this is a way of telling her story.

Yes, I determined that out a trailer once a few months ago. Shut up.

I said shut up, not hold open your mouth. That is just awkward.

Imogene (Kristen Wiig) is about to have a break down. She used to be considered very bright. She was a great writer. She won a huge grant for $30,000 to write a play and have it performed in NYC. But all of her dreams came crashing down and she has been slowly unraveling, enough to chase her long time boyfriend away. So she tries to kill herself.

Oh. Erm. Shit.

She isn’t too good at it though, so she gets hospitalized instead. Even worse than that, she has to be released from the hospital into a loving environment, which they assume is her home in Jersey. Nopenopenope. Her child hood sucked! She was in a single parent home, because her dad died when she was young and her mom (Annette Bening) was trash. Her brother, Ralph, (Christopher Fitzgerald) had it worse, having some form of autism. He is smart, just a recluse. At least he will be there when she moves back.

Oh, and her mom’s new boyfriend, Geourge Bousche, who talks about spirtuality and is quite mysterious (Matt Dillion). And some dude, Lee (Darren Criss), who she has rented out her old room too. Shit, she can’t even stay in her old bed. Oh well, she just has to survive three days until she can go back to her apartment in NYC. Or if her boyfriend comes to pick her up.

One of the two.
One. Of. The. Two.

Ah, Glee has turned Criss into a boy band member. That was unexpected.

Alright, my original thoughts may have been wrong, but I can’t get that same feeling out of my head.

The main character is a play writer going through a tough time. She has to get out of a slump, and is in freak out mode. Like every movie ever about a struggling writer, the events in the film eventually turn into inspiration, and aww, she is accepted again. That isn’t a spoil, because that is a stupid movie cliche, and it totally happens in this one.

So I feel like this movie of this happening is the third level of realization or something. A movie about a writer who writes a play about her life, and this movie might be about her life too secretly.

I think I am babbling.

This movie had some nice moments, I laughed out loud a few times. It also had a lot of whatever moments, like the first part, and the ending. It was just full of rookie movie mistakes. Things were cut oddly, and it all just felt like a lot of rookie movie making mistakes. Full of jokes that just fell flat.

So overall, it was okay. I enjoyed what they tried to do, and some of the things that were done, but thought a lot of it was just not up to par.

I will admit, when I first saw the trailer for Free Birds, I chuckled at a few spots. The nameless government entities making a pun and laughing throughout the trailer was great. A movie about a dumb animal trying to save the world with other dumb animals might lead to a lot of just tongue in cheek situations or rampant fourth wall breaking or who knows what. The possibilities are limitless.

But they also are including time travel, a known killer of many movies, if they define a version that doesn’t make much sense. None of this “its a kids movie!” bullshit either. No, the story has to be somewhat coherent, or else shit is going down.

“Down like a Tom covered in poults.”
“Hey, that’s not a joke, witty, or remotely funny.”
“It would be if we were dealing with chickens, not turkeys!”

Reggie (Owen Wilson) is a freak. He is a smarter than your average turkey, which isn’t hard, because turkeys are dumb. But he is too smart, and refuses to eat and get fattened up for Thanksgiving, which causes the flock to throw him out. Luckily for him, he gets pardoned by the President, which apparently means he can sit around all day, not worry about getting eaten, and just watch TV and eat pizza.

Well, his new awesome reality comes crashing down when Jake (Woody Harrelson) takes him from his home! Oh no! Another Turkey, not some random dude named Jake.

He wants to infiltrate a secret base in Camp David where there is apparently a time machine. He wants to use that time machine to travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving, to take turkeys off the menu. Err okay. Well they do that. And the time machine named S.T.E.V.E. (George Takei), which was built for humans, can somehow understand the gobbles from turkeys.

Then they get there. The turkeys are just extremely obvious metaphors for American Indians, being hunted by the colonists, for this important feasts in a few days. Except these turkeys are all smart. That is right, they are saying turkeys became dumb due to domestication and Thanksgiving. So we have a bunch of smart turkeys and really only one dumb one, Jake. CAN THE TIME TRAVELING TURKEYS SAVE THEIR RACE FROM DESTRUCTION? Will he be able to score with Jenny (Amy Poehler), a smart enough turkey to not believe he is from the future? WILL HUMANS BE CAST AS THE BAD GUYS?

Or you know, will anything really cool happen? Eh.

Does this turkey look high to you?

Man, Owen Wilson I tend to hate at voice acting. Aka Cars and Cars 2. But he was able to show some emotion this time. Well done. Woody Harrelson sounded nothing like himself, so I want to assume that means he put effort into his lines. Having George Takei as navigator of sorts was a “I see what you did there” moment.

But enough about that, lets talk about the plot and other things I disliked. The beginning of the movie is very fast, so much that I’d be willing to bet that 85% or more of the movie takes place in the past, whereas the trailer had mostly set just getting to the time machine. A little misleading. Most of the best jokes were also in the trailer, including jokes that weren’t actually in the movie (due to splicing of the trailer into new jokes, not taking them out of the movie). Meh. I don’t think I would have liked it more if I didn’t see the trailer, however.

Making the turkeys in the past smart is lame. That leaves only one stupid character, and not the hordes of them that they implied in the trailer. That would allow it to have a lot more zany shenanigans! So, overall, the humor in this film isn’t really existent. The theater was practically silent for the most part.

The time travel itself is super sloppy. It was fine early on, but they went back to the present, and all sorts of stuff started to occur that don’t make sense based on how they defined time travel earlier in the film.

The ending is horrible. It just…it just isn’t good. The conflict doesn’t happen, despite a resolution. The resolution leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

So we got an unfunny movie, that breaks its own definitions of time travel, and has a shitty ending. Yawn. Let’s just wait for Frozen at the end of this month.

Bad Grandpa, Bad Grandpa, Bad Grandpa…

Well, it is presented by Jackass, and I can say I have never seen one of those movies in full, or the TV show, just random skits before that people have gone out of their way to show me. And this music video by Andrew W.K.

I literally have no desire to see people hurt them selves and do stupid things for amusement. Like, none. I am not high brow at all, not in the slightest, it just doesn’t seem appealing to me.

But this movie is different. So much different.

Like, this kid, who was the best part of Fun Size.

The “plot” of the movie is that Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville) is old, his wife just died, and he is stoked. Too bad his only daughter is going to prison, and her son, Billy (Jackson Nicholl), needs someone to watch him and take him to visit his daddy in Raleigh, NC.

But Irving lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. That is far away. Fuck all that noise.

Well he does it anyways, and that is the backbone for this roadtrip film, which has the main goal of just doing ridiculous things and providing shock value to real people and our enjoyment.

And some stunts too.

Or fabricated little girl pageants in Raleigh just to confuse and bewilder people.

In case you can’t wait for the ending, I am giving this a 2 out of 4 for a few reasons.

Yes, it is at times entertaining. Some of the stunts/interactions are really creative. Nice moments. But a lot of the time they feel too far in between, or the joke takes too long to set up (so instead we are just given a lot of diatribe between Johnny Knoxville pretending to be a mean old man.

Speaking of that, this may be the only time I say this in a review but…

This movie has too much plot.

To be more entertaining, we need more skits, more hilarious interactions between real people and the actors. We have a lot of scenes just between Knoxville and Nicoll who in the car talking. And it is all bullshit, all stuff we would expect to see in a real movie, that feels just completely unnecessary in this film.

Similarly, because a lot of these scenes are so detailed, like the pageant, and that machine that crashes through a store window. That wasn’t just random, other people had to be in on it. So some of those other people are in the shots too, doing reactions as if its real, but you know they know its about to happen.

So to recap, this movie would have been a lot more entertaining overall if they just made more of it be real skits and less plot, and reduced the number of people who knew what was going to happen. Here is one thing I learned from the movie: The Guardians of the Children, a bikers gang, is incredibly fucking awesome, and they really believe in their cause.

Here is a true story. I was slowly trolling down the aisle at the local video store, when I ran into the movie Crazy Enough. I saw that there was only one copy, despite being a “new release,” saw who was the star, saw the ridiculous of the cover and thought “Hey, I should totally watch that movie. Right away!”

This is how I learned that when I walk near movies, I get controlled by a puppeteer and make awful decisions.

I saw this cover and thought “THAT’S THE ONE!”

Fred Mulberry (Chris Kattan) is a psychiatrist, has a doctorate, and a loving family. He is kind of spazzy though, and his kids might not look up to him.

Either way, he has to head over a few hours to a mental hospital to sign some forms for a new patient to go there. Tough part of the job. Well, as fate would have it, his identical twin brother Teddy, is a resident at that hospital. They were both adopted at birth, one raised to be a scientist, one who unfortunately went a bit insane. Luckily for Teddy, everything works out perfectly for him to steal Fred’s wallet and items while he isn’t looking and make it out of the hospital, making the hospital think it Fred is Teddy and lock him back up instead.

Hooray! Oh what zany adventures they can get in to, a sane man trying to get out of a hospital that assumes he is crazy, and a crazy man trying to act like a dad and raise his family.

Hyuck hyuck hyuck. Susana Gibb plays the wife, Brooke Anna Leedy is another patient at the hospital who claims she doesn’t belong. There might be some fishy stuff afoot here, it turns out!

I can’t believe a movie starring Chris Kattan twice could be considered bad.

I am not going to bore you with more words than are necessary at this point.

I didn’t laugh once. Parts made me more sad, because shit, being improperly imprisoned in a place where people assume you are not all there in the head. That sucks. It could be used for comedic purposes, but it was just done badly. On the other side of the coin, crazy guy in the real world. Some shenanigans, but most of them fall flat too.

There is also mixed messages. While he is trapped inside, he realizes that these people are nice people, and most of them could easily live in society and not be shunned. But the other side of the story, Teddy, yes he is nice guy, but they kind of imply that he really cant function in society and the hospital makes sense for him. Well, minus the cheesy ending where they ignore it all.

Blah. Just blah. Dang it Chris Kattan. Dang it Chris Kattan. That is for both of him in this movie.

I only saw the trailer for The Spectacular Now once, but I knew immediately I just had to see it. So many reasons really, but I could tell ahead of time it might be something that I would enjoy.

Damn it, now my bias is showing. I am so embarrassed.

Not as embarrassed as these two when they realize that car is rolling down hill.

Teenage romance. A typical film plot line, but maybe not so typical in this film.

We have Sutter (Miles Teller), life of the party, everyone’s favorite joker, he lives in the NOW. Oh hey, movie title. He could apply to college, but that can happen later. Not like college is anything special. His girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson) was one of a kind, and everyone loved them and they loved each other. Until his easy goingness got him in trouble and she dumped his ass, this time for good.

So Sutter does what Sutter does best. He drinks away his problems, and has the night of his life, maybe. He passed out, waking up on a lawn thanks to Aimee (Shailene Woodley) with his car no where in sight. Also, who the fuck is Aimee?

Some girl in his grade, he doesn’t really know her, but she knows him. Life of the party. Well, Sutter is on the rebound, and thinks he is a nice guy, so he starts to hang out with her and invite her to things. But that dang alcohol keeps going down into his stomach, so next thing you know, he has kissed her and invited her to prom. Did I mention he still kind of likes Cassidy still? Yeah, he is a jerk.

Broken homes, broken dreams, Sutter has a lot of growing up to do. He is going to be eighteen soon, and his life needs to change for the better before it is too late.

His family is played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, mother, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, older sister, and Kyle Chandler, missing father. Shit, even Bob Odenkirk is in this movie, but just a little bit.

Huh, I wonder if she made her prom dress out of the same material of that shirt? Or I guess she really likes yellow.

Ughhh. Fucking movies these days going for realism. A different amount of realism than they were back in the day. Back in the day, actors might have mumbled their lines, or messed up their words, and they would keep them in the take, because that shit is natural. That doesn’t happen as much anymore.

No, this is realism in a different way. I am sure each take took multiple times, but more ad libbing or something is now allowable for these actors. There is no way a lot of these dialogue scenes were read word for word, it just can’t be true. They flow really well and they all seem like things people of that age would say. I know its hard to understand, but it is hard to explain. I smiled throughout the film, due to the realism of the characters and the dialogue.

The film shows drinking in a negative light, but they also explain why the drinking happens, and you don’t hate the main character, you feel sorry for him, and you understand. Until he is a dick to Aimee, no, then you hate him again. So much rage.

The film doesn’t follow the standard path films of this description tend to take. There are some obvious moments, but there are other moments that come out of no where, like a bus from Mean Girls. The acting by our leads was fantastic, and I was also impressed with Kyle Chandler in his smaller role. Shit. It had a lot of stuff going for it. I am worried I might start thinking Miles Teller is a real actor now.

Small Apartments is another example of a film I picked to watch merely on the bizarre cover. Nothing really out of the ordinary in terms of subject matter, it was just faces of a few cast members. But those faces? Those faces were weird looking.

A bunch of actors I recognized, just all slightly off. I was ready for a dark comedy, or just strange film. Or at least, I thought I was ready for that jelly.

Basically the first scene of the film. I WASN’T READY!

Franklin Franklin (Matt Lucas) lives alone in his apartment, in an apartment complex of weird people. He isn’t any different. He really loves Switzerland, wants to go there, has the giant fucking horn thing and everything. He also is hairless. Relevant? Not sure. He also has the dead body of his landlord (Peter Stormare) on his floor.

He is surrounded by other odd folk, like Tommy Balls (Johnny Knoxville), a junkie with an almost philosophy degree (who is banging Rebel Wilson on the side). There is Simone (Juno Temple) who sometimes spies on Franklin, and flirts with the local convenience store employee (DJ Qualls). Let’s not forget about Mr. Allspice (James Caan) who I guess is just mean. That’s not really weird.

Shit, I could tell you more, but its just…Weird stuff. Weird stuff happens. Conspiracies, and investigators. Burned bodies and burned bridges (that second part is a metaphor, but the first part is literal). We also have James Marsden, Billy Crystal, and Dolph Lundgren.

I never realized Knoxville had the eyes of an angel.

I think I already said this, but man, this movie was weird. I really wasn’t prepared for it in any way.

Everyone was so odd, I just had such a huge quizzical look on my face the whole time, wondering what was happening and why. This is based on a book. I am going to assume the book is equally odd.

I am going to say that based on how rustled my jimmies were, the movie did its job. The actors, in particular Matt Lucas and Johnny Knoxville, were really excellent in this movie.

The issue is, because of its weirdness, I never really felt like I could get behind it. It didn’t really interest me in watching for a movie, it just piqued my curiosity a little bit. A movie I will remember for a little bit, but forget unless it is specifically brought up. A shame. And I feel weird saying the only reason I dislike it is because I couldn’t really get into it, but hey, it’s my website, so sometimes I have lame reasons. Hah!