Movie Review: Role Models

Seann William Scott is often entertaining, though he is prone to the occasional Evolution (2001) or Dude, Where's My Car? (2000). Still, even in those train wrecks he was entertaining, they just had horrendous scripts. 

In Role Models Scott plays Wheeler, the costume wearing representative for Minotaur energy drinks. His partner Danny Donahue (Paul Rudd) is a guy with a gorgeous girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks), a job as spokesman for Minotaur, and a hatred for everyone and everything in life.

In his best scene in the movie, he says what we are all thinking about the names for the drink sizes at certain nameless coffee shops. Enough of the Venti nonsense. Really. 

Unfortunately, he does so in rather annoying ways. As likable as Wheeler is, Donahue is exactly that annoying. The only mystery about Beth breaking up with him is not why she did not do it sooner...it is why she ever got together with him in the first place.

So when Donahue throws a fit on-stage and follows it up by driving the Minotaur truck onto a school statue, he and Wheeler are sentenced to community service. Inexplicably, 2 guys who committed their crimes in and around a school are allowed to perform their community service around children. 

Wheeler is matched up with foul-mouthed Ronnie Shields (Bobb'e J. Thompson) while Donahue is matched up with fantasy geek Augie Farks (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). 

Numerous jokes follow, but unfortunate numbers of them come back to 2 things; 1) Ronnie saying inappropriate things which apparently are funnier coming from the mouth of a 10 year old, and 2) Augie plays live action medieval war games.

The funniest role belongs to ex-(?) cocaine addict Gayle Sweeney (Jane Lynch), the founder and directer of the organization Sturdy Wings that puts the criminals and the kids together. She gets off some very funny lines and pornographic bits involving wrapped hot dogs.

At some point Wheeler and Donahue make the predictable switch from "just doing time to stay out of jail" to actually caring about the kids. 

Over-all, if you think profanity from little kids is a joke in and of itself, think 30-somethings being jerks is funny, and like lots of drug use jokes, this movie will hit your funny bone hard. If not, maybe wait for the next effort. 

Movie Review: Madagascar:Escape to Africa

Every so often there is a movie preview that has you laughing, has you thinking, "This is going to be a great movie that I will love!" Then the movie comes along, you watch it, and head home for a long bath as you try to clean off the stench of the disappointment. Meet Madagascar (2005), a movie that had tremendous vocal talent, a good premise, great trailers, and a horrible script. It was lacking laughs and, while on a later viewing may not cause me to want to gouge out my eyeballs for merely having seen it, was at first blush a huge, Shrek the Third-like disappointment, though it did precede the latter title which shall not be named again here.

The previews for Madagascar:Escape to Africa (2008) were merely okay. Maybe my standards of expectations were lowered by having seen the first train wreck, but be that as it may, this was a movie I wanted to see. 

The best elements from the first movie were not only retained, they were turned into the focal point. We got to see much more of the Penguin commando team, the debonair-yet-repulsive monkeys, Melman's (David Schwimmer) compulsiveness, the interplay between Marty (Chris Rock) and Alex (Ben Stiller) with the fun-loving nature of Marty in full effect full effect full effect full effect...see the movie, that joke actually makes sense. 

Even Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen) gets an expanded role, and it is much funnier than his first, though I do not know there is another "I like to Move it move it" song in this one to catch people's attention.

This movie has some killer visuals, with great animation, tight dialogue, a good story that will keep you interested and entertained. There are some great cameos from the first movie you might not expect and ultimately the simple yet heart-warming story comes to a nice conclusion. This is definitely a sequel that blows away the original from an entertainment standpoint.

Movie Review:Zack and Miri Make a Porno

For some inexplicable reason, the marketing campaign for Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) has had a hitch in its giddy-up. Apparently someone, somewhere thinks "porno" is a dirty word that cannot be said on television. I am guessing they missed the Season 11 Simpsons episode with the following exchange:

Homer: "So what are you working on?"

College Nerd: "A device that lets you surf for porn a million times faster."

Marge: "Why would anyone need that much porn?"

Homer (drooling):"Mmmmm....million times faster."

Furthermore, if porn/porno is not able to be said on "free" television, they apparently missed the entire run of Friends in which, if it did not show up in EVERY episode, one suspects the word did not miss that frequency by much, thank you Joey. 

Anyhow, if you don't know what to expect from a movie made by Kevin Smith, perhaps knowing Seth Rogen of the Judd Apatow movie factory is involved. Anytime Rogen or any of the Apatow crew is involved, here is a handy checklist of things you can expect to see/hear/experience:

- gratuitous nudity, both male and female

- celebration of same

- a wide vocabulary used to refer to genitalia, sex acts, sex desires, sex, sex thoughts, sex positions, sex....well, I think you get the point.

- a boat load of profanity

- crudity

- more gratuitous nudity

- celebration of drug or alcohol use, or both

Anyone who has not figured that out yet has not been paying attention. Of course, one other thing they do is make stuff people like to laugh at. That is their specialty.

So with that in mind, we get Zack and Miri. It is the story of two room mates who have been friends for decades, but just platonic friends. They both work minimum wage dead-end jobs, just killing time. But they are getting deeper and deeper in debt. 

They are in such dire straits that their water and electricity gets turned off. 

After a disastrous trip to a High School reunion they return home and decide to make a porn movie as a way to make some easy money. First, they talk about how having sex with each other will be "just business".

The heart of the comedic portion of the movie has to do with finding a location, camera, and actors, making a script, and shooting the movie. Along the way a variety of problems crop up. Among the problems is a growing jealousy as Zack and Miri each separately realize they don't want the other to have "random, meaningless sex" with someone other than them. 

You have seen this movie before. You have heard most, if not all, of these jokes before, although perhaps not in this order. Ultimately, there are a decent number of laughs, though not as big as you might expect, and a predictable love-story ending which is not necessarily a bad thing. The Break-up ending was not predictable...and not very good, either. It actually kind of killed the movie. So yeah, sometimes predictable is good.

Overall, this movie had a lot of promise and it is possible big Kevin Smith or Seth Rogen fans will love it. As a casual observer of their stuff, I think I was actually disappointed. 

Movie review:Tropic Thunder

Parodies run the gamut. They can be anything from something where they actually develop a story and let the jokes flow out of that, but work in a lot of belly laugh jokes...say, the Airplane or The Naked Gun franchises, to something where simply referencing another movie is thought of as the joke. Somewhere in between are movies that are so full of inside jokes that they end up being at best marginally funny and at worst painful experiences that bring regret to all whom see them. Where does Tropic Thunder fall within this pantheon? It is hard to tell.

It partially depends on how knowledgeable the viewer is about "Hollywood insider" type stuff and how humorous he finds parody. Tropic is full of parody. It starts with some trailers that parody everything from sequels of sequels of sequels that carry on because the former one was successful rather than because it had a story to tell,  to movies that are supposed to be funny because one guy plays multiple parts and farts a lot to movies that use heavy-handed emotion to fool people into thinking a story is actually good.

Then it parodies the over anxiousness of special effects coordinators, the 'star behavior" that is often credited for ruining movies, the overpowered producers, the callousness of Hollywood, the way fictional books are presented as truth and true books are fictionalized, the attempts of actors to win Oscars by playing disabled people, and more. 

At some point you realize the actors are playing to the camera as much as they are to the Tropic Thunder camera. It is a movie within a movie within a movie. They have statements to make about how Hollywood takes itself way too seriously...but they do it by taking themselves too seriously sometimes. Which is odd, because virtually everyone in it parodies himself and is having fun with it.

There are a few laughs in the movie but they are mostly the type where you mainly smile inwardly and move on. 

This movie could have been great and no doubt many people will think it is but if you don't like to look beyond the service this is not the movie for you.

Movie Review:My Best Friend's Girl

Dane Cook is a polarizing figure for comedy fans. Some love him, think he is hilarious, and will see anything he is in. Others regard him as an unfunny jokeless "comedian". I fall somewhere in the middle. I think he could be funny and does a good job of acting...he just has made poor script choices in his movie roles. And yes, I realize the movie roles are different than the critiques of his stand-up.

In My Best Friend's Girl (2008) we meet Tank (Dane Cook), a guy who embodies every stereotype of the arrogant male...interested only in sex, doesn't care about the girl, has no comprehension of how to treat her nice. Theoretically it is a role for Tank. It is his job. He gets paid by dumped boyfriends to show their girlfriends how good they had actually had it with their ex-boyfriend, and then of course the girls would run back to their spurned boyfriend and end up marrying them.

Unfortunately, his over the top crudity does not come across as Jackass funny...it just comes across as jackassery. It is not funny. It still manages to be repulsive.

His roommate is Dustin (Jason Biggs). In theory, Dustin is the prototypical "nice guy". When he is given the "let's just be friends" spiel by Alexis (Kate Hudson) he turns to Tank to do his magic. Naturally, Tank and Alexis fall for each other and hilarity ensues. At least, that is how they drew it up. They just forgot to include the hilarity. Or to make Dustin sympathetic.

Actually, he comes across as pathetic. Cloying. Obnoxious. Irritating. Unworthy even of Alexis who is none to desirable herself as portrayed in this film. You kind of get the feeling Tank and Alexis deserve each other. And that Dustin deserved nobody. 

So as the story goes along Tank and Alexis are mutual booty calls who somehow fall in love, Dustin and Tank fight over it, then get back together as friends and the movie (thankfully) ends.

Probably the most interesting thing about the movie was watching the people change into each other.

At the beginning of the movie, Dustin wants a relationship, not sex. He chases Alexis at every opportunity for this very purpose. Yet at the end of the movie he could not care less about building relationships, being a nice guy, or anything like that, he has become Tank in that he is pretty much a random philanderer.

 At the beginning of the movie Tank is quite the philanderer who has a rule; none of the skanks he brings home for sex can stay over;they have to leave after the sex. He says horrible things to the girls he wants to sleep with. And it somehow works for him. Alexis is very sweet, prim, and proper. 

Yet by middle of the flick it is Alexis who, after sex, tells Tank to leave because tomorrow is a work day, using almost the same words he used to kick out girls. Tank has become both the girls he used and also Dustin, the sad, pathetic, guy who wants a relationship, not just sex.

Alexis starts out wanting a sweet relationship, just not with Dustin...and ends up becoming a Tank clone in many ways.

What was the movie trying to say with the inversion of roles? Frankly, the movie was so boring it never really mattered. It was unfunny, uninteresting, and I would have felt ripped off if I had seen it via a free Red Box rental. Spare your eyes from this travesty.