Films where one line of dialogue can solve every narrative problem are always an uphill climb. We, the audience, know the solution early on, but we’re stuck watching tongue-tied actors pratfall their way through a script that depends upon that key line of dialogue to not be spoken. Otherwise we… Continue reading
RED, standing for Retired Extremely Dangerous, is one of the most preposterous films of the year, filled with a “how did they get these people to do this?” cast. It’s also one of the more entertaining; a celebration of crazy action and sly dialogue that has enough crossover appeal to… Continue reading
Life As We Know It contains what has to be the most unappetizing setup in romantic comedy history. Usually people bump carts at the grocery store or trip over each other on a New York City street. It’s what Ebert calls the “Meet Cute.” We have the two young and… Continue reading
The Switch, originally titled The Baster (how’s that for a mental image?), is a surprisingly effective and genuine romantic comedy. You’d never guess it from the premise, which with just a few rewrites could have been turned into one of the raunchiest comedies ever made. A shaky first act settles… Continue reading
In a sea of sameness, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World emerges as a fine work of originality and energy. It merges everything that twenty-to-early-thirty-something men have ever loved in life: video games, crazy action, humor, and the pursuit of women. While the core story is hardly anything special, director Edgar… Continue reading
The Other Guys has, arguably, the funniest first thirty minutes of any film this year. Had the rest of the film been as consistently funny, I may have needed oxygen. The problem: the following hour isn’t nearly as funny, or even as clever. The screenplay doesn’t have enough gas, resorting… Continue reading
It’s hard to escape the feeling that the script for Grown Ups was left in someone’s desk drawer for about the past fifteen years. We’re talking about a script that contains not one, but multiple O.J. Simpson jokes. Given the cast, made up mostly of 90’s SNL veterans, one would… Continue reading
Toy Story 3 is a masterpiece, not to mention probably the greatest movie ever made with a title that ends in “3.” This series has always stood for never losing the kid within us all, but here the Pixar team has outdone themselves with adventure, comedy, and a sentimentality that… Continue reading
Looking back at the archives from my review of 2008’s Sex and the City film, I came across this sentence: “the fact of the matter is that this review doesn’t matter.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement for my writing, but it’s still how I feel about this series. I bent… Continue reading
The bar for Saturday Night Live-inspired films is set appropriately low. After all, for every Blues Brothers or Wayne’s World (the diamonds of the genre), there’s a The Ladies Man, Superstar, A Night at the Roxbury, Coneheads, or many other failures. That MacGruber is as consistently funny and inspired as… Continue reading