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Rape is no laughing matter...unless you're raping a clown!Adventureland (2009, Greg Mottola)
Is there some sort of wellspring of goodwill behind these types of films that excuses poor performance? Greg Motolla's Superbad had annoying loser protagonists, but it was also a perfect synthesis of outlandish comedy and honest, clever and genuine insight into teenage life and the act of 'growing up'.Adventureland has occasional small moments of that, but on the whole, ends up with a shockingly large amount of completely tired, cliche coming-of-age, romantic comedy sitcom tropes that just make so much of this film a trying bore. I mean, the "climax", if you will, hinges on that oh-so-fresh writing move of "seeing something and mistaking it for something else". I mean, my god, it even does the "someone sees another ends an affair just as that someone finds out about it, and they're angry". The "disappointing teenager" plot, the absent parents, the dead mother, the "true love is interrupted because the hero thought he saw the affair and went out with the rival girl", the sh-tty job, there's not a single MOMENT in this entire film that hasn't been done to death by every crappy '80s comedy or weak ass sitcom. All that was missing was the late jilt and the reconciliation in an airport just because she gets on a plane to Paris.
A film can be carried through a lame, tired plot with their characters. If the characters are identifiable or entertaining, a lot can be glossed over. But these characters are none of those things. Jesse Eisenberg is obnoxious and unpleasant as a protagonist, the rest of the characters are either generic or unremarkable, so it has no sizzle in the toppings, and the meat's got maggots in it. The film has no energy, no originality and no interest. Almost Famous is probably more of an accurate contemporary than Superbad, but this film doesn't deserve to even be talked about in the same breath. And I thought I Love You, Man was the "Apatow-style" letdown of 2009. This film has no laughs, no fun and nothing new or interesting to say. I know a lot of people liked it, but outside of a moment here or there, Adventureland left me in nothing less than stone-faced agony, with occasional bouts of eye-rolling when the stink of "same ol' same ol'" hit my nostrils.
Hey, at least it's ahead of Transformers 2, although that's mostly just because this is an hour shorter.
[Grade: 4/10 (C-) / #15 (of 23) of 2009]
Watching Zombieland, I was struck with the notion that apparently, there are only two types of zombie films: films where people are staying, and films where people are going. Most are about staying, holing up in random places trying to survive: a shack, a mall, an underground bunker, a high-rise hotel, another mall, and even a pub. That last one is easily the most thematically relevant here, as Shaun of the Dead is a mindbogglingly perfect synthesis of horror and comedy, with a couple genuinely intense moments mixed with its perfect timing, flat-out hilarity, and uniquely British deadpan delivery.
What Shaun of the Dead didn't have was a long-winded, non-stop voiceover from its protagonist. Cinema has always run on the edict of "show, don't tell", and Edgar Wright and company informed us of everything we needed to know about Shaun and his cohorts by depicting his natural habitat and his regular world, and then how they react (or, in the issue of humor, DON'T react) to their land being progressively overtaken by zombies. This is the first strike again Zombieland, which follows Shaun of the Dead's disposition but 28 Days Later's plotline: two individuals matched together, one meek and initially overwhelmed, and the other a hardened, rugged individualist, running into two other people, one an adolescent girl, and journeying together to a fabled zombie-free area. Obviously, the little details are different (Woody Harrelson is not a black woman, and Emma Stone looks nothing like Brendan Gleeson, thank god), but that's the plot they decided to hang their gags on.
From the little I've seen of him, Jesse Eisenberg might be my least-favorite actor since Paul Muni. He does the mousy poor-man's-Michael-Cera routine, but Cera always manages to tightrope that line between relatable and obnoxious, and Eisenberg always seems to plummet to his doom. This, combined with his logorrheic, superfluous voiceover (do we really need the poor man's Michael Cera telling us over and over that he's an introverted virgin?), and the film's habitual penchant towards relying on easy, elbow-to-the-ribs yuk-yuks, really looked like it spelled out doom for me. But preposterously, the man who manages to save it is the man tasked with delivering most of the cheesy lines. Woody Harrelson does a marvelous job keeping his unhinged, one-note character in the realm of the living (in more ways than one). He makes a character who could easily have become a caricature into someone you might believably run into at a bar. It's very impressive to see, especially when the only people he has to play off of are obnoxious, pretty girls or the undead.
Speaking of those pretty girls, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin are two actors I'm a big fan of as far as their age group goes. I've always found both adorable (Stone in an attraction-based way, Breslin more along the lines of "cute little girl"), and here, neither is given much to do, but they do what they can to humanize themselves (that's two unintentional anti-zombie puns in one zombie movie review, are you happy?) You know that our annoying protagonist is going to fall for The Girl His Age, and that it is going to be eventually reciprocated. You also know that there's going to be bonding on the road (leading to some nice moments, partly spoiled by the fact that we don't need Eisenberg telling us what we're already seeing), and you know that wherever they're going (in this case, an abandoned California amusement park) is going to have zombies there already. So it comes down to execution and the occasional surprise.
You may be wondering what I thought about the surprise that had all the little ones giddy: I actually already knew the identity of the famous actor who shows up, but I'm rather unimpressed with celebrity cameos, and I don't imagine I would have found it particularly funny on principle in any situation. But I didn't know he wasn't dead, and even if his dispatch is almost offensively stupid (not quite pulling a Llewellen, but still, what did he think would happen?), this sequence has some fun moments. Also fun, and nearly singlehandedly saving a half-point in its score, is the climax in the amusement park. It's pretty obvious stuff, yes, but it's more surprising that no one thought to do it before, because it's a wonderful little sequence, with an energy that a good part of the film lacked (they try to tie it all together thematically with his "rules", but it just becomes sort of aimless and distracting, akin to the joke repetition of something like The Love Guru, if nowhere near that grating).
It almost never went anywhere you wouldn't expect it to (the sojourn to Murray's house being showy but solidly effective), and it might have been led by an actor I can't stand who isn't good at voiceover work and yet does it nearly non-stop, but I didn't hate it. It had far too much time where I wasn't enjoying myself, but in the end, I don't think it's fair, despite its shortcomings, to give it a negative score. I reacted positively to a handful of scenes, and it leaves on a nice note, set to Emma Stone's nice smile. Zombieland pales in comparison to real zombie films, and real zombie comedies, and even to the other 2009 horror comedy, Drag Me to Hell, which was much more subtle and MUCH more genuinely enthralling, but hey, I've seen how bad zombie movies can get (even in Romero's wheelhouse, Diary of the Dead is one of the worst films of the decade), and I've seen how bad a grating protagonist can ruin a film (Charlie Bartlett, looking at you), so despite all the consternation, Zombieland left me with a smile at the end of the night, and for that, it deserves a toast. Or at least a Twinkie.
[Grade: 6.5/10 (B-/C+) / #14 (of 34) of 2009]
The kind of cutesy quirk teen school-based comedy that I dislike. This isn't like Juno where it's falsely quirky in a style of speech that teenagers actually USE, this is someone who is just an outgrowth of the Overly Intelligent Child Syndrome.
Also, does these sort of things really happen in high school? Do people really just get randomly beat up on their first day of school? I mean, this never happened in any school I went to, but then again, I live in the real world.
Does anyone else think that the director and star just watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Rushmore and beat off three or four times a day on set? Ferris Bueller never got beat up, because Ferris Bueller kicked ass. He was smarter than everyone else, but he didn't flaunt it, he just used it to get what he needed. Charlie Bartlett is a writer's construction of someone who is supposed to be endearing but just...isn't.
The most notable thing about the film is that it gave me a new appreciation for Rushmore, because, from my memory, Anderson didn't ask you to LIKE his main character. His main character was obnoxious, overly intelligent and completely smug and full of himself, but you weren't being begged to find him charming and witty. If you happened to like him, that was fine, but he wasn't a sympathetic character, just as you weren't asked to like Napoleon Dynamite. It was just a look at this kid.
I really sort of wish I hadn't watched the entire film, because it was staggeringly predictable and painfully poorly made. The film was in several files, and I really seriously had to force myself to make the next clicks, and contemplated just not watching the rest of it after everyone.
Sadly I did, and honestly? I'd rather watch Fool's Gold again. ]
[Grade: D+ / #10 in my Eleven of 2008]
Earth vs. the Spider (1958, Bert I. Gordon)
[img]http://odgie.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/spiderposter.jpg[/img]
The, um, legendary production company American International Pictures settled on a pretty successful formula on how to get people into the theaters to watch their plodding, inept, padded-out crap. Their method of operation: you gotta get a great title, vivid, memorable, outlandish. Then you gotta make up a poster that promises really spectacular things related to that title. Then as you get the production together, you can come up with a premise, and some characters or something, it's not important, because the poster already caught their eye, and the title already got them inside, and they already paid their money, so we're all straight. Earth vs. the Spider, from infamous Z-movie auteur Bert I. Gordon, exhibits all of these tendencies in spades.
[img]http://i463.photobucket.com/albums/qq354/the-celluloid-tomb/spider4.jpg[/img]
As the film opens, a man driving a truck is attacked by the puny puppet-sized arm of what is apparently a giant spider. He screams, now covered in blood. The next day, his daughter Carol (June Kenney) decides that, instead of calling the cops and reporting him missing, she and her boyfriend Mike (Gene Persson) will just go drive around aimlessly, then wander around aimlessly on foot. They end up galivanting about until they end up inside a laughably well-lit cave (which they explain away with one throwaway line about glowing algae), stumbling upon a large mass of netting tha--what? That's supposed to be a spider web? Well, I guess they sort of talked a little bit about it being "sticky", but it didn't appear to be in any way. Anyway, they eventually come across a giant spider, which, I guess, attacks them. They call the cops, and you realize why they didn't go to them earlier: they're giant, incompetent *beep* They scoff and mock the "giant spider" talk, but a local high school biology professor (Ed Kemmer) who buys into the unlikely story immediately points out that, giant spider or not, the man is still missing, so perhaps the cops should, I don't know, go check?
[img]http://images.chron.com/blogs/blog9/kkong.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i463.photobucket.com/albums/qq354/the-celluloid-tomb/spider1.jpg[/img]
When they go, they find the father's body (hilariously, there's copious amounts of skeletons just randomly lying around the cave, but neither the cops nor anyone else seem too concerned about their identities), and they all stumble upon the spider. Amazingly, the old ignorant standby of "just fire a pistol at it" ends up having a modicum of use, combined with an indiscriminate outpouring of DDT. They haul the presumed-dead spider out, and, amusingly, they decide to display the corpse at the local high school gym (!), and after a public viewing, it twitches and slaps a fellow teacher in the face, But what drives it to come back to life? That's right, a *beep* school dance party! One of the most egregious tropes that come with this era of bad movies crops up here: dancing with a number of the teenage girls is a rather rugged, barrel-chested middle-aged man that I at first assumed to be the gym teacher, which made his interactions rather creepy. Then, through dialogue, I discovered this man is supposed to be a student! The actor playing this man is Troy Patterson, who, as I suspected, was *beep*
[img]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IiTtN2Sjij8/Swh8Rxi7okI/AAAAAAAAArg/BqXVjU3MLV8/s400/DeadlyMovies_JoeSpider.jpg[/img]
PICTURED: TWO ORDINARY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
Anyway, blah blah blah, the spider wakes up and wanders around town (humorously, the spider seems to be doing just that: wandering. Most of the violence and desolation in town seems to be caused by fleeing, panicking townspeople, not the spider, but it's not like B.I.G. was making any sort of proto-Monsters are Due on Maple Street social statement, so it's just funny). In a bizarrely transparent script maneuver, screenwriters Laszlo Gorog & George Yates sequester our apparent protagonists, Carol & Mike, by having them go back in the caves, ostensibly to look for some *beep* bracelet or something, but for all intents and purposes, they're just hanging out doing jack *beep* for the last 40% of the movie, so they can have them get trapped in those caves when the spider ambles back in and the cops blow up the entrance. Obviously they survive and they kill the spider, yay, another innocent American teenager saved from the disgusting advances of lecherous octopeds (okay, I don't think that's a word either, but you know what I mean).
[img]http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/12.2/images/tsutsui_fig04b.jpg[/img]
Yeah, this wasn't much of a review. But that's because it's not much of a movie, and the rules apply in different ways. I didn't watch this because I hoped it was good, and a dry, straightforward review (not that I do dry either way) just isn't as fun as telling you the wacky *beep* that the machinations of the plot entail. I could comment on the direction, but why? You know it's bad. I could tell you about the acting, but what purpose would that serve? Of course it's flat and emotionless. I could point out that the effects are bad, but of course, what else would they be? The chief conceit is just a tarantula filmed up close projected over shots of caverns, which severely limits the possible interaction with people or establishments, because spiders are so gentle on their legs that it's not like a dog (or a giant killer bunny) that would at least knock stuff over. It just moves slowly, and locals patiently wait as the POV camera devours them. Also, it growls, like it's chugging Dran-O.
[img]http://www.bmoviegraveyard.com/reviews/E/EarthvsTheSpider/earthvsspider025.jpg[/img]
I hate watching movies on AMC. As a result, this 73-minute movie ended up taking nearly two hours. That's way too long to spend on a movie called Earth vs. the Spider, especially when it's more like One Little Rural Community vs. the Spider, and especially when it's punctuated with the ghost of Billy Mays screaming at me in between people getting bitchslapped by a tiny spider leg. But I didn't have any blatantly awful films shoring up 1958 (my worst was Terror from the Year 5000, which was so solid in its set-up that it raised my expectations to disappointment when it turned out to be ordinary *beep* and I knew I could count on the notorious B.I.G. (and the even more notorious A.I.P.) to do me proud, with a stupid, cheesy, terrible little movie to round out my list. Thanks, guys. You're a peach. Yeah, all of you. One...giant...peach. Hey, I've got a great idea for a new movie!
[Grade: 2/10 (D) / #28 (of 28) of 1958]
theskull42 (12:38:29 AM): what he said in his short take: One reason I took so long getting to see this movie was the number of friends who assured me it was nothing special. Most of them seemed to go along uncritically with the publicists’ claim, echoed by reviewers, that it was a simple point-by-point pastiche of three late-50s and early-60s comedies starring Rock Hudson, Doris Day, and Tony Randall: Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964). These films have never appealed to me in the slightest
theskull42 (12:38:38 AM): But Down With Love is also an affectionate satire of late-50s and early-60s studio glitz that often contradicts the pastiche. The filmmakers, who were too young to experience this era themselves, make plenty of errors, starting with a Fox CinemaScope logo (wrong studio and too late for that logo) and the snazzy rainbow credits (too hyperactive for the time). Then we get palatial Manhattan apartments (much more identified with How to Marry a Millionaire in 1953 and The Tender Trap in 1955) and bubble-gum-colored media blitzes (as in Funny Face and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, both 1957), and culminating in the visual and verbal double entendres, anti-smoking gags, and overt references to feminism and homosexuality that are more identifiable with subsequent decades, all the way up to the present.
theskull42 (12:38:45 AM): Furthermore, these subjective errors—coming from people too young to have encountered the period directly, characteristically collapsing and scrambling two decades into one, and therefore winding up with a hyperbolic dream of a dream—–made the movie more fascinating and touching rather than less. By expressing a yearning for what’s perceived (with debatable accuracy) as less cynical and more innocently romantic times, Down with Love has a lot to say about today. It also conveys an aching sense of absence that’s too definitive to qualify as nostalgia. Nostalgia tends to shrink our image of the past into cozy pocket-size dimensions, something we already know, but this movie expands that image temporally as well as spatially—suggesting that in some ways the past is more sophisticated than the present, even if we can’t say exactly how. It hovers ambiguously over a stupid and tacky trio of hypocritical comedies as if they contained awesome and precious secrets, and even though I can’t quite swallow that premise as film criticism, I treasure its creative and poetic insights into the present. share