Hey, movie reviews!
Apr. 22nd, 2008 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficThe Forbidden Kingdom - It's actually pretty good, especially once you realize that both Jet Li and Jackie Chan are playing their own versions of Wong Fei-Hung (just with the serial numbers filed off). As just an action movie that happens to star Jet Li and Jackie Chan, it's good, but as "THE FIRST TEAM-UP BETWEEN JACKIE CHAN AND JET LI!"... errr, there's a lotta "The Chosen White Guy" to sell all those stupid fly-over country white people on the movie... then the film's entirely marketed as Jackie Chan meets Jet Li, and it still gets butts in theaters. As it turns out, Jackie Chan and Jet Li are bigger box office draws than some white kid. Who'd a thunk? I mean, you can't even have the excuse for Transformers where the Autobots cost money to have on screen (well, and Megan Fox is the best special effect you can ever show... rowr). Just point the camera at Jackie Chan and you're done.
The plot's basically nonsense, as it should be, a combination between an old Shaw Brothers kung-fu fic (as it should be) and the old Never-Ending Story "angsty teenager goes to fantasy world to find the discipline to survive in real world". But at least the screenwriters were smart enough to realize that prolonged background exposition goes down a lot easier if people are kung-fu fighting during the narration. And it has the very American "superheroes battle each other before realizing they're on the same side." Although there's no scene where Jackie Chan turns to Jet Li and says "I need your help to take out... you know... the bad guy... whatever his name is... the guy who always dresses in dark armor and likes to kill people, that guy?" Which makes the climax a lot less fun than it has any right to be.
Street Kings - If I had a dime for every movie where a badass supercop-detective went for months or even years without figuring out that his closest friends are really raping, murdering, mustache-twirling nogoodniks... the problem I have with films like these is that the screenwriters just throw up their hands. They've gotta know how obvious the "twist" is. Like, what, do they think the audience hasn't seen a movie before? The obvious thing to do is to move the twist forward in the story, so that the audience isn't so far ahead of the hero -- which just makes the hero look stupid (when he's played by Keanu Reeves, that's just asking for trouble). Give the bad guy an evil plot so that when the hero finds out who the bad guy is, he has more to do than just walk up to the bad guy and killinate.
Keanu Reeves isn't exactly miscast, but when you see Forest Whittaker and Hugh Laurie squaring off each other with him in the middle and Neo is... just kinda there? Yeah, it really makes you want to see what another actor could do in his place. Any other actor. Leighton Meester, maybe. Who wouldn't want to see Leighton Meester as a hard-drinking rogue cop on the edge? That's gold, Jerry, gold!
Oh, and in addition to Sucre from Prison Break (who seems to have become the go-to token Latin guy for Hollywood, sorta like a prettier Lou Diamond Philips), the guy from House shows up. Using the exact same accent and most of the mannerisms. He's even introduced in a hospital. So the movie is a lot more fun if you pretend that House has suddenly become an IA cop. Or if you ever wondered what House would be like if the writers were lazy monkeys...
Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Yes, some dude's penis is in it. It's about average size. I think it's actually used as a bit of a crutch, like "here's a generic break-up scene, but it's funny because he's naked!" And it kinda is. But not very. Things pick up a bit when they get to Hawaii and the film starts establishing a very nice "universe" of side characters and subplots so it's kinda like Crash with sex instead of racism.
Anyone else surprised that Crash with sex isn't Crash with sex instead of racism? Two different films. Oh, that Cronenberg... he was in Jason X, you know. Really tied the movie together.
So, anyway, it's very good, very funny, gets you to root for the characters without making anyone the "bad guy" (which makes that obnoxious marketing campaign even more stupid) except for one scene where the lead is justifiably angry at Sarah Marshall and she turns it around by criticizing him for his hithertofore undocumented slackerness, revealed by a flashback. Making this yet another "slacker gets his life on track for the love of a good woman" movie for Apatow. I wonder if that's going to become as tiresome as Will Ferrell sports/period comedies ("This summer, Will Ferrell as you've never seen him before... playing Cricket in the 1960s!" "Oy, guv'nor, can you step aside, I need to hammer my balls!"). It wasn't even hinted at before. What is this, fucking... Smokin' Aces? It's frustrating because there he totally backs down, but later he has a big blow-up at her while you're thinking "actually, she's not that bad, she doesn't deserve that."
Horton Hears A Who - Don't laugh, okay? I'd say it's okay, although they unfortunately went down the Shrek/Aladdin road of having a bunch of obnoxious celebrity voices/pop culture references. Which is just stupid, because what makes Dr. Seuss so great is the otherworldiness, which makes his work a timeliness that some dated jokes can't touch. Really, who in fuck reads Dr. Seuss and thinks "you know what this needs... is a Facebook joke." Still, at least it's better than the last time Jim Carrey did a Dr. Seuss movie... which we will not speak of, lest I once more test the limits of my restraining order. (I swear, guys, the rock slipped from my hand!)
The plot's basically nonsense, as it should be, a combination between an old Shaw Brothers kung-fu fic (as it should be) and the old Never-Ending Story "angsty teenager goes to fantasy world to find the discipline to survive in real world". But at least the screenwriters were smart enough to realize that prolonged background exposition goes down a lot easier if people are kung-fu fighting during the narration. And it has the very American "superheroes battle each other before realizing they're on the same side." Although there's no scene where Jackie Chan turns to Jet Li and says "I need your help to take out... you know... the bad guy... whatever his name is... the guy who always dresses in dark armor and likes to kill people, that guy?" Which makes the climax a lot less fun than it has any right to be.
Street Kings - If I had a dime for every movie where a badass supercop-detective went for months or even years without figuring out that his closest friends are really raping, murdering, mustache-twirling nogoodniks... the problem I have with films like these is that the screenwriters just throw up their hands. They've gotta know how obvious the "twist" is. Like, what, do they think the audience hasn't seen a movie before? The obvious thing to do is to move the twist forward in the story, so that the audience isn't so far ahead of the hero -- which just makes the hero look stupid (when he's played by Keanu Reeves, that's just asking for trouble). Give the bad guy an evil plot so that when the hero finds out who the bad guy is, he has more to do than just walk up to the bad guy and killinate.
Keanu Reeves isn't exactly miscast, but when you see Forest Whittaker and Hugh Laurie squaring off each other with him in the middle and Neo is... just kinda there? Yeah, it really makes you want to see what another actor could do in his place. Any other actor. Leighton Meester, maybe. Who wouldn't want to see Leighton Meester as a hard-drinking rogue cop on the edge? That's gold, Jerry, gold!
Oh, and in addition to Sucre from Prison Break (who seems to have become the go-to token Latin guy for Hollywood, sorta like a prettier Lou Diamond Philips), the guy from House shows up. Using the exact same accent and most of the mannerisms. He's even introduced in a hospital. So the movie is a lot more fun if you pretend that House has suddenly become an IA cop. Or if you ever wondered what House would be like if the writers were lazy monkeys...
Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Yes, some dude's penis is in it. It's about average size. I think it's actually used as a bit of a crutch, like "here's a generic break-up scene, but it's funny because he's naked!" And it kinda is. But not very. Things pick up a bit when they get to Hawaii and the film starts establishing a very nice "universe" of side characters and subplots so it's kinda like Crash with sex instead of racism.
Anyone else surprised that Crash with sex isn't Crash with sex instead of racism? Two different films. Oh, that Cronenberg... he was in Jason X, you know. Really tied the movie together.
So, anyway, it's very good, very funny, gets you to root for the characters without making anyone the "bad guy" (which makes that obnoxious marketing campaign even more stupid) except for one scene where the lead is justifiably angry at Sarah Marshall and she turns it around by criticizing him for his hithertofore undocumented slackerness, revealed by a flashback. Making this yet another "slacker gets his life on track for the love of a good woman" movie for Apatow. I wonder if that's going to become as tiresome as Will Ferrell sports/period comedies ("This summer, Will Ferrell as you've never seen him before... playing Cricket in the 1960s!" "Oy, guv'nor, can you step aside, I need to hammer my balls!"). It wasn't even hinted at before. What is this, fucking... Smokin' Aces? It's frustrating because there he totally backs down, but later he has a big blow-up at her while you're thinking "actually, she's not that bad, she doesn't deserve that."
Horton Hears A Who - Don't laugh, okay? I'd say it's okay, although they unfortunately went down the Shrek/Aladdin road of having a bunch of obnoxious celebrity voices/pop culture references. Which is just stupid, because what makes Dr. Seuss so great is the otherworldiness, which makes his work a timeliness that some dated jokes can't touch. Really, who in fuck reads Dr. Seuss and thinks "you know what this needs... is a Facebook joke." Still, at least it's better than the last time Jim Carrey did a Dr. Seuss movie... which we will not speak of, lest I once more test the limits of my restraining order. (I swear, guys, the rock slipped from my hand!)
