A Million Ways to Die in the West Review
Something died on that screen.
I am not feeling good about doing this review. The fact is I love most of Seth McFarlane’s work. Family Guy is awesome and I kind of man-crushed Seth when I reviewed Ted. I even love American Dad (we don’t need to talk about the Cleveland Show). Like a gangster slowly feeling his cement galoshes harden as the movie progressed I had a slow sinking sensation that I was going to have to come home and dump on a guy I really like.
However, honesty is my middle name (unless you are a hot chick, in which case it’s danger. Dave Danger Inman) and I owe it to you, my beloved readers, to tell you my honest opinion and that is this movie kind of falls on its face. There were a few really funny moments but the humor was either amazingly funny or just plain lame with no middle ground. Like a skinny kid and a fat kid on the same teeter totter the massive weight of the lame side kept this film from going anywhere. This issue was not aided at all by the fact that all the best jokes I have seen in about 5,000 trailer showings. Kudos to studio marketing department. I mean that sincerely. They really picked out the best meat for the trailers and left the rest for the carrion (i.e. the audience).
Like I said when I reviewed Ted Seth is really good at writing what are essentially clones of Family Guy but falters when he branches out from his preferred genre. In this film you can almost see him struggling against the restrictions of having to write a story that goes more than 22 minutes and being forced to adhere to some form of continuity. Pacing and editing were serious issues. 117 minutes is an awfully long time to assume you will keep your audience engaged in a comedy. You’re not showing the Lord of the Rings here.
Blended Movie Review
You’ll want to stick your head in a blender after this one.
I like to think of myself as an everyman when it comes to movie reviews. I mean, sure I’m probably smarter and better looking than most of you (or at least so my mother keeps telling me. I just wish single women of appropriate dating age would figure that out) but grew up poor working class and get a real kick out of most low brow humor. My father was the king of the fart jokes (you main glean some insight into the origin of my own sense of humor there). I nearly hurt myself laughing when I saw the first Jackass movie and am willing to see any Shemp- or Curly Joe-less Three Stooges. In my mind there is no better Friday night than drinking beer and doing donuts in the parking lot of the local bowling alley while my friends shoot guns into the air.
Well, maybe not that last part. But the point is when I review a film I find I tend to be more in line with the average American movie goer than some other reviewers. However, when God was handing out senses of humor I got shorted in my ability to enjoy Adam Sandler’s current style of movie humor. It’s weird. I sat in the theater alternately groaning and holding my breath in hopes of passing out into a restful coma while the rest of the theater was laughing their collective asses off.
This movie was pretty mediocre. However it was not as bad as the last Sandler joint I reviewed, Jack and Jill. This film didn’t have me praying for an asteroid to destroy the earth to save future generations the pain and embarrassment of having to see what we were up to in the early teen years. In fact, I hardly prayed for death at all (great sound bite, in case the producers of this film are looking for something for the Blue Ray box art. “I hardly prayed for death at all!” -theNerdBlog). There were some funny moments and there is no denying the humorous chemistry that Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore enjoy. This film actually found a tone and maintained it. Unfortunately the good elements were mixed in (blended, almost) with dumb humor, horrible stereotypes, fake settings, bad cliches, uncomfortable situations, and metronomic predictability into a sewage runoff like mixture.
Maleficent Review
Kind of OK.
The day will come when I finally learn to not get excited by good trailers but that day is not today. (I also like to tell myself that the day will come where I win the lottery, get Congress to pass my mandatory death penalty for Mimes and Clowns law, complete my unstoppable world conquering army of mutant atomic super men, and get a girl to go on more dates than I have fingers on one hand but that day is also not today.) I have been seeing Maleficent trailers for months and each time I get more and more excited. Angelina Jolie as an evil fairy with horns and wings? A clever re-imaging of a classic fairy tail? A battle between what we in the Warhammer world we would call the Wood Elf Forest Spirits and the Bretonians? Amazing special effects and CGI? How can this be anything less than amazing?
Then I see the movie. I’m not going to disparage it. It’s not bad. It’s just not great. It’s more or less just…there. It really tends towards the standard design-by-committee take no chances pap that every other main stream movie is, counting on visuals and star appeal to make up for the lack of creativity and quality writing. Angelina Jolie is pretty amazing and more or less carries the whole movie on her sexy shoulders but her character is so watered down that everything she does leaks impact from every seam. The CGI is as amazing as a $200,000,000 budget will get you (in case you were wondering, $200,000,000 is enough to send 307,692 children to school in Africa. I’m just saying) and there is not a hint of bad acting. It’s just clear that this film was paralyzed into mediocrity by a fear of doing anything outside of the formula.
In truth I am pretty disappointed by Hollywood’s inability to do the whole fairy tale redo thing and have it do more than just suck. I really want to see some cool stories come from the classic Brothers Grim but instead we are fed dross such as Hansel & Gretel, Snow White and the Huntsman, Jack the Giant Slayer, and Mirror Mirror. They didn’t all totally suck (well, Hansel & Gretel did, and Jack the Giant Slayer will put you to sleep in the veterinary sense. Image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category) but every time they come out all I see is more wasted potential. It’s like the goal is to come out with the blandest porridge possible, fulfilling all the minimum nutritional requirements but not much more. Pretty much the gruel they ate in the Matrix. I’d put this movie at the top of that list of films but not by more than a nose.
X-Men: Days of Future Past Review
X-tremely good.
First off, sorry I have been so lax on my writing lately. I have had two back to back shows and am still up to my neck in work. However I have nothing lined up for most of June so I hope to get caught up on my movie reviews, as well as Star Trek and the occasional true nerd rant.
So X-Men: Days of Future Past. I loved it. Veteran readers of my blog may see some irony in that statement as I have said that time travel as a plot device is the tool of the amateur scriptwriter (one could also say that sarcasm is the tool of the amateur movie reviewer, but that’s neither here nor there) but I have seen a few films (Looper, for example) where it has been used effectively and this is one such film.
I think it boils down to two factors: how it is used and how it is explained. If you use it as a non-pivotal plot point that propels the story without dominating the flow I think that is good. If you use it as a tool to avoid actually writing a story and/or and carte blanche to destroy a story that is already flowing that is bad. Time travel used poorly is a non-religious version of deus ex machina (another writing tool I rail against). As for the explanation, time travel is constantly rife with plot holes and gaps. This is one of the few times I will say that a major plot point is better used with a minimum of explanation as to how it works, or what effect it can have on the timeline.
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Godzilla Review
Too much humans, not enough Godzilla.
This whole “fill the screen time with lame humans instead of expensive CGI” is something of an ongoing issue with movies involving really cool giant whatever. Maybe it’s just me. I bitched about this in Transfomers. I bitched about this in Pacific Rim. I even kind of bitched about this in the Avengers. To me it is the curse of Hollywood these days that a film titled “The Super Awesome Nostalgic Icon We All Want to See” will feature about 10 minutes of SANIWAWTS and 140 minutes of some early 20’s douchebag all true nerds learned to hate when he was getting laid in high school and we were playing Car Wars until four in the morning running around doing crap no one cares about.
To be fair to my own opinion any amount of screen time 0< dedicated to Shia LeBeouf is a waste of time, film, and brain cells. Michael Bay I want about 50 minutes of my life wasted on him in the last Transformers movie refunded please.
So it is with this film. The moments with Godzilla or one of the other monsters on the screen were like playing with a kindle of the cutest kittens ever but as soon as the camera switched to a non Godzilla scene the kittens morphed and merged into a 15 year old smelly bloodhound laying on the porch too lazy to do more than breath and fart. SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT BIG SPOILER ALERT DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU I had real hope for this film giving me someone to engage with outside of Godzilla when they cast the great Bryan Cranston (and featured him extensively in every single trailer) but his character dies after like 25 minutes, leaving us with hunk-of-the-month Aaron Taylor-Johnson to carry the entire rest of the film on his woefully inadequate acting shoulders (that’s not really fair. He has done some decent work but this film did not give him any kind of depth to sink his teeth into).
So about halfway through the film you realize you care more about Godzilla and the other monsters than any actual human on the screen. This has the net effect of making you resent any time spent watching humans without a giant monster turning them into toe jam. That being said the scenes with monsters were freaking amazing. The one thing this movie did better than any I have seen in a long time is it really made you feel what it would be like to be a human running around while Godzilla stomps through your local Pick N’ Save. More than ever I felt what it must be like to be so insignificant that the monsters don’t even notice you. Normally to feel that insignificant and disregarded I have to go out trying to meet women. Truly effective.
Plus the action was amazing, although they did a lot of it at night and obscured by smoke, clouds, or random debris. I got frustrated a couple times when they were lining up for a major battle only to show it for 10 seconds before cutting to video footage on a newscast. They did however push the PG-13 to a level I found acceptable. There was no shortage of destruction, death, and mayhem. I mean, we aren’t going to a Godzilla film to see him destroy an abandoned tenement block and then sort the wreckage into the worlds largest compost pile. When I think of Godzilla I want to see skyscrapers crumbling on top of thousands of screaming humans. Godzilla is serious business. Of course since 9-11 it is super bad PC karma to show anything destructive happen to New York the go to city for mass destruction is San Francisco. I naturally felt an even closer connection to the action when I saw Godzilla stomp on a bar in Chinatown where I have seen a friend of mine puke on the sidewalk.
Some more spoilers incoming so if that is a problem maybe skip the story recap. Five paragraphs. SPOILER ALERT It starts with two Japanese(ish) scientists of some kind (actually if any of you can figure out what they were will you let me know? Were they paleontologists? Biologists? Geologists? Seems like they were whatever the plot needed at the moment. Ken Watanabe-Inception, the Last Samurai, Batman Begins and Sally Hawkins-Layer Cake, Blue Jasmine, All is Bright) being called in to look at a giant sink hole. They climb inside and discover the massive bones of some gigantic monster. Skip a few miles away to a Japanese nuclear reactor and engineer Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston-Breaking Bad, Argo, Drive) living with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche-Dan in Real Life, The English Patient, An Open Heart) and son Ford (CJ Adams-the Odd Life of Timothy Green, Dan in Real Life, Against the Wild). There is some kind of seismic activity that seems to be traveling towards their reactor. Joe sends Sandra into the reactor to do something and she gets cooked when the whole thing melts down.
Skip ahead 15 years and Ford (now Aaron Taylor-Johnson-Kick Ass, Savages, Kick Ass 2) is now a navy lieutenant in charge of bomb disposal and Joe a weird conspiracy nut, convinced that the reactor meltdown that killed his wife had some kind of other cause than just an earthquake. Ford rotates home to be with his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen-Silent House, Oldboy, In Secret) and son in San Francisco only to find out his father has been arrested again by the Japanese for trying to sneak into the radioactive quarantine zone. He has to fly to Tokyo to bail Joe out.
Once there he gets sucked into Joes conspiracy world with little effort and together they sneak into their old home to recover some old floppy disks of data. Joe is convinced whatever happened before will happen again. They get arrested and taken to a secret compound where something in the ground is being studied.
Honestly you don’t really need to know a whole lot more. The thing in the ground is a gigantic monster called a M.U.T.O. (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) that jumps up and wrecks most everything, including Joe. At that exact moment all the character development and story that had been written into the first 40 minutes of the film more or less flies out the window. The Muto also flies off into the night and wrecks Tokyo. Meanwhile another monster is being tracked and turns out to be Godzilla, somehow tracking the MUTO (?) and rapidly identified by the Japanese scientist as an Alpha predator. They fight and the MUTO flies off towards the US West Coast, followed by Godzilla. It’s mate surfaces in Nevada and wrecks Las Vegas (I found that very amusing. I spend way to much time in Vegas for work to have anything other than contempt for the Strip).
During all this Ford is getting involved mainly by hitching a ride on different military transports without any orders. All the monsters seem to be headed towards San Francisco. The military comes up with a plan to lure them together and nuke them all in one fell swoop (I guess they were short on nukes? Seems the prudent thing to do would have been drop three separate nukes on each of the monsters while they were in the in the middle of the ocean or desert but I guess I’m not Sun Tzu). Because the MUTO puts out an EMP pulse they have to put in a mechanical countdown clock on the nuke. The MUTO steals the nuke (oh, yeah, they eat radiation. No violation of the laws of conservation of mass to see here folks. Move along) to feed it’s clutch of eggs. Ford has to parachute into the heart of San Francisco to disarm the nuke now. Godzilla shows up, kicks ass, and leaves San Francisco a physical wasteland to match the cultural wasteland that the tech yuppies are turning it into.
The stars:
Duh. Godzilla movie, and not the god awful Godzilla 1998. Two stars. When you could finally see him Godzilla was the classic, awesome monster. One star. What action there was was really great. Two stars. Bryan Cranston and the first 40 minutes with him was a really interesting, in depth story with great characters. One star. Amazing CGI and effects. One star. Camera work was superb. One star. The film really made you feel like you were in the movie during the action scenes. The term to use is immersive. One star. In truth a really fun movie experience well worth your time. Three stars. Total: twelve stars.
The black holes:
Our time with Godzilla was limited, and a lot of it was really murky and hard to see. The rest of the film was filled with people who might have just been little Godzillas in rubber human suits. One black hole. SPOILER ALERT Once Joe dies all the time spent trying to get us to engage with the characters was totally wasted. One black hole. SPOILER ALERT Also once Joe dies what was a fairly well written and professional story turned into a lazy mishmash of random crap that only distracted us from what was going on. Can someone tell me the point of the little Japanese kid on the train who appeared from nowhere and ten minutes later disappeared like a rogue Spanish swashbuckler from a heaving bosom romance novel? One black hole. With the exception of Bryan Cranston pretty much every scene involving humans was boring military crap or even more boring exposition. One black hole. SPOILER ALERT While I think Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a talented actor his character was really pointless. He treated the death of his father like the passing of a neighbors pet guinea pig and dropped the very interesting obsession with finding what killed his mother in order to become a very boring military guy. I felt a stronger connection with his wife, who spent most of her time starring at a phone, the Japanese scientist of indeterminate nature who spent most of his time off center looking fretful, and Godzilla who spent most of his time underwater. When the guy in the rubber suit has a stronger connection to the audience than your protagonist you need to look at your writing again. One black hole. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself: the “science” in this film makes applying leeches to bleed illness out of you look like a valid medical treatment. (I’m just too big a fan of science to let really bad stuff slide. Science is Awesome image from the funny t shirt category) One black hole. Total: six black holes.
So a total of six stars, a solid score from me. Could it have been better? Absolutely. Should you see it anyway? Absolutely. See it on the biggest screen you can find to maximize the insignificance you will feel as another potential grease stain under Godzilla’s might foot. Date movie? If she’s into it. If not she will (correctly) determine that you are subjecting her to your interests and really don’t care what she wants to see. See it with some dudes, dude. Bathroom break? Any scene sans Godzilla or MUTO is a good candidate. There is a scene where they are all standing around planning on how to detonate a nuke that should work pretty well. Also most of the train business could be missed easily.
Thanks for reading. I’m seeing Million Dollar Arm tonight so let’s see if my love of sports films while hating actual sports has me enjoying this one. I’m also a fan of Indian culture (and by “culture” I really mean “women”) and hope to see some good stuff tonight. Disney doesn’t screw up too often so it should at least be fun. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Post a comment here if you have a thought on this film or my review and email me at [email protected] if you want to ask an off topic question or make a suggestion. Talk to you soon.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 39 Journey to Babel
This is one of the episodes that as a kid I found kind of confusing and as such have a less than fond feeling for. I couldn’t figure out who all these aliens were and why they were on the Enterprise. I liked Sarek and thought the Andorians were cool, but then one of them turned out to be a spy and I thought the fake antennae kind of gross. Also I never liked the Tellarite. Sorry but pig+man=/=great alien in my book.
(Episode image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirt category)
As an adult I get more from it. I appreciate the sacrifice Spock is willing to make for his duty and the effort Kirk put into getting Spock down to sick bay. I’m still not sure how Thelev knew how to perform Tal-Shaya when he killed the Tellarite. Was he a surgically modified Vulcan? Did he receive training in Vulcan martial arts, like when we study Kung Fu or Krav Maga? Given the differences in alien physiology how did Spock even know that Tal-Shaya was used? If someone were to kill a Horta with Tal-Shaya would it be instantly obvious to another Vulcan? Maybe Tellerites just have naturally weak necks and Gav snapped it when he tripped on his shoelace. What if Thelev just hit Gav in the neck with a big spanner and it looked like Tal-Shaya?
Also I’d like to point out that the trick of shutting down all internal systems to suck in an enemy ship closer had already been used in Balance of Terror. This episode was in the middle of Season 2, so really they should not have been recycling stuff quite so soon. Still, some great entertainment to be had here. If you are clever you can see the changes they made to the Andorian costume from this episode and the one in Enterprise.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 40 Friday’s Child
Another one I actually quite like. I thought the Capellans were pretty cool and the story great. From a social perspective it nicely explored cross cultural negotiations as well as honor and honestly. I also like the idea that bows, having never been invented on Capella, gave Kirk and Spock a distinct advantage (although technically introducing an unknown technology is about as flagrant a violation of the Prime Directive as having the Enterprise lift out of the ocean in plain sight of a primitive species and giving them a brand new god to worship after defiling and robbing their old temple.
However, let’s talk about one of the greatest unacknowledged tools of the the original series: rubber boulders. Yes, these old friends showed up so often it was almost like the Enterprise would seed the transport area with them in order to give Kirk and crew an emergency weapon to hurl or avalanche at their enemies. It’s like whenever they needed something resembling action they would just fall back on the warehouse of rubber boulders and a half dozen PA’s to bowl them down the hill. Sometimes I wish I had a truck full of rubber boulders to have some fun with. They even spoofed it in Galaxy Quest in with the rock monster.
Anyway, like I said I enjoy this episode and would one day like to do some cosplay as a Capellan. My height would work nicely for that and they do have some cool costumes. Of course first I would have to do Ruk from What Are Little Girls Made Of. That would rock (pun intended). Rock image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return
Filmed entirely on location in the Uncanny Valley.
You know when I did a little research into this bowel obstruction of a movie I discovered it was the first effort of a new company called Clarius. At once I started to feel guilty about the vast load of bile I was about to dump all over it like a forest fighting aircraft who can only tank up on the deepest contents of my gullet. I like to see new studios try new things and I’m not comfortable stomping on first efforts.
Then I did a little more researched and discovered that they claim to have had a $70,000,000 budget and at once felt much better about clubbing this baby seal. You see, now I know what I am dealing with, and that is a bunch of idiots with too much money who assume that making movies is easy and that audiences do not require more than a few flashing lights and cute characters to be mindlessly entertained. The fact that they failed so miserably in the low hanging fruit of kids cartoons says a lot about how much they suck.
Given a budget like that I can name about 20 guys who could do between 2-4 films that would at least recoup the film investment and make money on the back end (including myself. If there are any Hollywood studio types actually reading this review contact me and I will tell you about my idea for a film about a humble movie review writer who develops super powers and saves the world from extraterrestrial zombies. I don’t want to demand too much control over the casting but for the romantic love interest I’m going to recommend Mila Kunis and for the protagonist let’s go with the sexiest movie reviewer in the country, me.) To spend that much money and fail is a sign from god that you should go back to whatever your day job was.
The good news is I have found an animated film from this year I hate more than the Nut Job. That one might have had a bad protagonist but it least it had one. It also managed to skip the whole singing issue entirely instead of subjecting me to the earhole raping that was this film. Given a choice between seeing this bomb, the Nut Job, or eating a pinecone I’d choose the pinecone, the Nut Job, and Legends of Oz in that order.
How did this film fail? Let’s pretend I was the man in charge of this studio. How would I have avoided the pitfalls this film seems drawn towards like a mouse to a glue trap? First off given a $70MM budget the first thing I would do is hire some writers who had more to their writing credits than a few crappy TV shows. You know, guys who’s brains don’t lock up when asked to write more than 22 minutes of story. Perhaps someone who has worked on something that made money. You’ve got $70,000,000. A couple hundred grand to good writers is not going to break your bank.
I would then instruct the writers to do whatever they could to maintain the feel and spirit of the original Oz movie. Specifically keep the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion the same in tone and inclination and NOT turn them into the Three Stooges (I’m not kidding about this. Scarecrow was Moe, Tim Man Larry, and Cowardly Lion Curly and at one point Scarecrow literally calls them all “Lunkheads”. Some days the urge to beat the projectionist is harder to resist than others). Remember how part of the charm of the Wizard of Oz was when the Wizard teaches each of them that the qualities they desired-intellect, emotion, and courage-they already had and needed only to see it in themselves and their actions? Well, forget about that. Now the Scarecrow is an annoying super genius, the Tin Man a big cry baby, and the Lion ready to fight anyone, anytime, for any reason.
I would also instruct them to try to keep these beloved characters involved in the story as much as possible, NOT replace them with three more sidekicks who for the first time ever make Jar Jar Binks look slightly cool (ewww. I just threw up in my mouth. Thanks a lot Legends of Oz). In this film we have a obese know-it-all owl (glorifying obesity in a kids movie is cool, right?), a marshmallow soldier named Marshal Mallow (ohh, I see what they did there), and a walking china doll clearly ripped off from Oz the Great and Powerful (you know how it is. If your Oz movie is going to suck why not rip off other Oz movies that suck?). As a fun note this movie lists Dan Ackyroyd, Kelsey Grammer, and James Belushi as the main voices of the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion but they are in this film for about 15 minutes total, leaving us with Oliver Platt, Hugh Dancy, and Megan Hilty.
I’d also like them to keep the tone of Dorothy as a proactive individual and positive role models for girls, not a passive second banana.
Next I would hire a director who has also done a movie or two (oddly enough they did in this case, but this guy must have been asleep for most of the direction. I honestly can’t figure it out). Then I would look at my animation and make sure that the humans weren’t so deeply ensconced in the uncanny valley that you literally get sick looking at them. The human figures in this film were truly off putting in that way that only CGI can accomplish. CGI animation can do some amazing things but it can really suck on the other end of the spectrum. It looks like this film was feeling the budget crunch as nothing interesting was going on in any of the backgrounds. They might as well been painted on backdrops. Perhaps some more traditional animation, or a style that is OK with not rendering every skin pore, might have allowed for the occasional bird to fly by in the background.
Finally I would either hire talented songwriters or scrap the song business altogether. The music in this film gives new definition to the term “lame”. You know how in most musicals there is one song that you automatically skip? In this film that’s pretty much every song.
Anyway, I’m already at 1K words and haven’t really gotten into it. I have things to do tonight so let’s go, shall we?
The film starts off with Moe (I mean Scarecrow. Sorry my bad. Dan Akyroyd-Ghost Busters, Grosse Point Blank, the Blues Brothers) and his cohorts Tin Man (Kelsey Grammer-Cheers, Toy Story 2, X Men Last Stand) and Lion (James Belushi-K-9, Red Heat, New Years Eve) being chased by flying monkeys (with day glow mohawks. Aren’t they cute? In the original movies they used to give kids nightmares). Scarecrow has invented a “rainbow caster” which he uses to try to contact Dorothy (Lea Michele-New Years Eve (will that film ever stop haunting me?), Glee) in Kansas because she is the only one who can do something for some reason.
Time moves faster in Oz apparently so instead of the decades that have passed Dorothy is passed out in her basement after the last tornado wrecked her house. The fact that she is still missing and unconscious does little to concern Aunty Em (Tracey Adams-Parenthood, Gray’s Anatomy, School Dance) and Uncle Henry (Michael Krawic-Ghosts of Mars, Fire Down Below, the X Files) as they catalog the damage done instead of looking for their missing niece (wait a minute. Didn’t Dorothy wake up in a bed surrounded by her relatives, all of whom had been characters in the Land of Oz? Piddling detail, I’m sure). Their house is wrecked but before they can start repairs “the Apprairser” shows up and tells them the house is condemned and they have to leave. Aunty Em and Uncle Henry cave like sheep but Dorothy is suspicious.
At that point the rainbow lands and scoops her up. She gets half the message before the flying monkeys wreck the machine and dump her in the Oz countryside. Her enemy is apparently the Jester (Martin Short-Mars Attacks!, Frankenweenie, Weeds) who is the brother of the dead witch and cursed to always be dressed as a jester. She hooks up with her fat owl friend Wiser (Oliver Platt-Love and Other Drugs, X-Men First Class, 2012) who, just like in the other movie is motivated to join Dorothy in order to find his…? Self control? Eaters Anonymous? Jenny Craig? The go to Candyland where he proves his ability to curb his appetite by eating everything in sight. Dorothy joins him in his food orgy (showing kids a cartoon hero eating enough candy to give the entire city of Butte, Montana diabetes is a positive message, right?) only to find out that is illegal and is arrested by Marshal Mallow (every time I see that name it just looks more and more clever. Hugh Dancy-Adam, Black Hawk Down, King Arthur). They are convicted in candy court (less cute than it sounds) but are pardoned when the judge learns that Dorothy is the Dorothy who killed the witch. Marshal Mallow joins them in order to find his king or something and perhaps some kind of spine?
They have to go through China and the Jester sends an earthquake to wreck all the china (oh, you thought the major world power? How narrow is your thought process is. Chairman Mao image courtesy of the Political T Shirt category). By the way, if the Jester has the power to summon up a 6.5 earthquake whenever he wants how is it he even has any competition at all? The China Princess (Megan Hilty-Smash, Secret of the Wings) joins up in order to…do something? Maybe ask the Jester to not send earthquakes? There was something about evaluating Marshal Mallow as a possible husband (given that she is 8 inches tall and he is at least six feet I hope she does a lot of yoga). The team opts to bring her along because there is no way an 8 inch girl in a formal gown made of china will be a liability when she falls off a curb and shatters.
Anyway, once the characters are established that’s pretty much it. The Jester sends stuff to stop them and they overcome it, mostly with dumb luck. One of the talking trees (inexplicably voiced by the great Patrick Stewart. How the hell did he get roped into this?) volunteers to be cut down and turned into a boat. Flying monkeys are no match for candy catapults apparently. The movie grinds its way to an inevitable conclusion.
I don’t do the black holes/stars thing for kids movies. That’s a good thing as far as this movie is concerned. I generally judge kids movies by how the kids in the theater were reacting and the kids in this flick (all four of them) were bored stupid. One of them was doing that thing where he insisted on moving to seat after seat and even ended up sitting right next to me (as an aside I have a realistic understanding of how I am perceived in the world and if you see a 6’5″ guy sitting at the very back of the theater by himself in a children’s movie I think it fair to assume he can be found on the Megans Law website. Odds are the responsible parent thing to do is steer your children away from him, and while I am most definitely not on that site I would applaud your parental instinct). If your kids are particularly challenged mentally they might enjoy it, but understand that by bringing them to see this film you are committing yourself to 92 minutes that compares favorably only to falling into an open septic tank and spending the night there. There is absolutely nothing here for the parents (or poor adult reviewers).
Thanks for reading. I’m seeing Godzilla tonight and hope to have time to write it up tomorrow although I have a lot happening this weekend (Big Wow in San Jose, if you live in the Bay Area). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have a question or suggestion feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
“The Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 41 The Deadly Years
I’m kind of middle of the line on this one. Not bad, not great. I really liked the Corbomite bluff and it’s always fun to see Checkov used extensively, but the whole Commodore Stocker thing always bugged the hell out of me.
You see, in Balance of Terror it was established that not violating the Neutral Zone was worth any price up to and including the destruction of the ship, but Commodore Stocker, while a base commander with no deep space training, doesn’t seem to be capable of reading regulations and orders or even understanding that his need to shave a few hours off his trip to Starbase 10 could very well commit the Federation to war with the Romulan Empire. I know he was supposed to be a pompous jerk, but this is just annoyingly dumb.
It was also established earlier that the Romulans were pretty much looking for an excuse to go to war. Just because they failed to destroy the Enterprise doesn’t mean that the Praetor and Tal Shiar didn’t at least consider the whole deal an excuse to open a can of whoop ass. It certainly would have warranted a little more concern on the part of Kirk, Spock, and Stocker towards the end of the episode. It just might have behooved the Federation to send some kind of “Sorry our guys are idiots” message or at least a Pick Me Up Bouquet.
Like I said not one of their best. It does seem like whenever something bad or painful but not deadly has to happen to a crewman Chekov is the go to guy. Also if you are an advocate of senior rights this one will probably not sit well with you. Even the title “The Deadly Years” could be seen as painfully insensitive. Whatever happened to “the Golden Years”? If someone ever told my mother she was enjoying her Deadly Years I’d koon-ut-kal-if-fee his ass so hard his own parents would feel it. Lord knows I have enough frustrated libido to give me the focus. Feel the bite of my lirpa!
All that being said the squirrel nuts image comes to us from the funny t shirt category. I never said I was sensetive enough to get out of being strangled with an Ahn’woon.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman