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jimmymoog
Reviews
Happy Feet Two (2011)
Didn't even keep my toddlers happy.
When I was unsubtly hit over the head with three (3!) different "messages" in the first fifteen minutes, I was worried. As soon as the popcorn ran out, my three year old wandered out of the room, and actually put herself down for a nap, rather than finish watching. (She hates naps. And she was the one who picked out this movie.) That really had me worried. My four year old son left not long after his sister, to go play in his room. My wife and I finished watching the movie, and at the end, I was struck mainly by how much was wrong with it. There's the fact that it doesn't even seem to know what point it wants to make. Should I be an original? Is it okay to be different? Are people evil and ruining the planet? And all of these themes are approached with a total ham-fisted lack of care. And speaking of a lack of care, the music was basically chosen at random, tossed into a blender, and then crammed into the movie, seemingly at random. Gone was the masterful interweaving of various genres seamlessly into the film. This was more like somebody learning how iMovie works. There was an entire second story going on which A) had nothing to do with the first (until the end, when it was crammed into the second and glued together using the uneven environmental message the film pretended wasn't a real agenda.) And B) was far superior. Frankly, I think I could have watched a whole movie based upon the krill. The penguin portion meandered around without a real plot for quite awhile, and it retcons the first film repeatedly. Mumble has more down than he did at the end of the first film (and he should have lost all of it by now) the Adelie penguins claim singing is foolish in the first, but have no issues with it at all in the second, etc, etc. And then, about halfway through, **SPOILER ALERT** (but not really because, by the time you make it this far, you probably don't care anymore) the film reverses the "Mankind is bad, and is screwing up Nature, by having Nature stop men from saving the penguins.**END OF SPOILERS** Seriously, there is more wrong with this movie than right. My advice, watch the first one again, and imagine what the sequel should have been. Yours will be better.
Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009)
An experiment in misery
Want to save yourself some time? You can avoid watching the movie (or even reading this full review,) by recreating it here! In just 2 simple steps. All you need are some people of varying ages who will pretend to be teenagers, a super soaker, and red food coloring. Step One: Have the "teenagers" read the following "dialogue:" It's just like, you know? It's like, like, I was just like, you know? etc. etc. Oh yeah, and f-bombs. Constant f-bombs. Step Two: People open their mouths, while your special effects wiz stands behind them and fires the super soaker, filled with red water. Bam! You just made Cabin Fever 2.
Okay, I know that it isn't totally fair to judge this movie based upon the first one. But it's a sequel, you can't totally escape comparison. The first was a brilliantly written and executed horror comedy, which set Eli Roth up as the heir apparent to Sam Raimi. I had never seen a movie which blended pee-your-pants hilarity with puke on your shoes gore so well since the Evil Dead films. (Well, until he went and made the ham-fisted Hostel films. But whatever.) Well. Then there is Cabin Fever 2. For one, it suffers the fate of many sequels; it takes place at a prom, not a cabin, so the title makes no sense. This will prove to be the first of many problems. The acting was ridiculous. Not over the top, intentional ridiculous. "A very special Lifetime movie..." ridiculous. The effects were terrible. The direction was... well, it seems like somebody just left some cameras running, and went out for a sandwich. The dialogue actually follows the pattern laid out above almost all of the time. To call the writing counter-intuitive is paying it too high a compliment. Because the word "intuitive" is still included in that description. And finally, a word to all those of you railing against me, shouting from your armchairs "It's just supposed to be a stupid, entertaining movie!" Well guess what. I love Godzilla movies. I loved and own Snakes on a Plane. Sharktopus is saved on my DVR until I physically delete it. There are plenty of movies that are so bad, they are awesome. CF2 is not. It is just crap. In fact, in the girls shower scene? I am pretty sure what was really in the trash can was the print copy of this movie. Which would have been existentially brilliant, if only it were true.
Employee of the Month (2006)
Really only one thing wrong with it.
Okay, so they assembled a cast of mostly known comic actors, with up-and-comer Dane Cook at the helm. (Note, this is before everyone realized he is just an unfunny hack.) Punk'd alumn Dax Sheppard gives "street cred," Harlan Wilson brings in the stoner crowd, Andy Dick is Andy Dick*, so you should know if that appeals to you or not. They put together a workable, if derivative and not terribly developed scenario. They only seem to have forgotten one thing.
To put in any jokes. I counted a total of 5 slapstick moments, 3 of which were passably funny. There were multiple abortive attempts at one-liners, too few of which were recognizable enough to give an accurate count. All Ad-libbing seemed to consist of random words strung together by Wilson and Dick, with no real attention to humor. Ultimately, a waste of an hour and change, but not an excruciating waste. This movie is like a place-holder movie, what you watch when you don't have the movie you meant to watch, but still need to kill a little time. Later, you can pretend you saw what you meant to.
*For those who think he's never been funny, his appearance on Spaceghost Coast to Coast was brilliant. Anything else is a tossup.
Juno (2007)
Bland and unrealistic
I just had the chance to see the multiple Oscar nominee, Juno. In a word; underwhelming. This film can be summed up easily by the snarky slogan "Just because nobody understands you, that doesn't make you an artist." This was a Lifetime movie written by someone with a serious Fargo fetish. It had all the quirkiness and sporadic dialogue with none of the art or nuance of the Coen brothers. And I didn't even like Fargo. (For my own reasons; I can still recognize the skill with which it was made.) Add a little Napoleon Dynamite to the mix, and bam! obviously it must be great. After all, the movies it is derived directly from were. The dialogue is uninspired, the "comedy" is mostly nonexistent, (and I'm aware it was not 'Dude, Where's My Car;' I never expected it to be.) Additionally, it is an unrealistic and a bit dangerous portrayal of teen pregnancy; this is where the Lifetime filter comes into play. In short; the comedy is bland and substitutes quirkiness for writing, and the drama is bland and uneven. A vastly overrated film.
Lost and Delirious (2001)
Lost and Deletrious
Well, that's what this should have been called, anyway. Mainly, due the the ridiculous, ham-fisted use of what can barely be called symbolism by the director. It would not have surprised me to find out that this was A) One of Lea Pool's earliest efforts, and B) at least semi-autobiographical. Turns out A is wrong, although I don;t know about B. I will bet she attended boarding school, though, and had a rather terrible same-sex relationship of SOME kind. This is the message that was beat down our throats by this film, and the short film which preceded it, the name of which I no longer recall.
At any rate, the character development was clumsy (Who introduces herself by saying what her name means? Nobody.) the symbols were about as subtle as an all-glass elevator full of teen-age girls losing a cable and plummeting eighty stories. All over a loudspeaker. Honestly, the cry of a falcon when Perabo declared she was a raptor and leapt off the table? That was ridiculous to the point of parody. And it was only one of far too many symbols meant to show even the dumbest of viewers what her point was. And that was that she had a crappy childhood and feels the need to make movies about it, ala Vincent Gallo, instead of seeing a therapist, ala all of us who get on with our lives. There was nothing tender, nothing sweet, and nothing moving about this film. It was poorly enacted trash, and the actors could not save the Brett Ratneresque over the top "HEY THIS IS MY POINT IN THIS MOVIE" use of film techniques, writing, and acting. Sorry, but it was terrible.