Neighbors Review
Some funny jokes that unfortunately got stretched over too much movie.
This is a film that I have to fight past my own prejudices to review fairly. I was a GDI in college and proud of it. I tend to find organizations who’s sole purpose is to get its members drunk and/or laid to be a waste of oxygen (although were I to go back in time I’d probably rush a fraternity if only to get laid once in a while. And that, my friends, is the official sound of me selling out. I’ll leave my punk rock/alternative lifestyle membership card at the door) . I also find Seth Rogan’s humor either really hot or really cold and have yet to forgive him for the Green Hornet.
Then there is my issue with Zac Efron. I really, really want to hate him. He is way too pretty a male (I don’t know if I can call him a man) and grievously exacerbates my own image and self esteem issues (sometimes I don’t know if I can call myself a man). He as done not a single movie to date that I didn’t hate (That Awkward Moment in particular, but the Lorax sucked too and I still have nightmares from the festering midden known as New Years Eve) and his success with women makes me sometimes wish for a tragic illegal firework to the groin accident so at least I would have an excuse for how miserably I do.
The problem is deep down inside I suspect that if I were to hear him interviewed on Howard Stern or maybe meet him somewhere and grab some coffee he might just turn out to be a super cool and chill dude and that just isn’t fair. I am so much happier with successful, beautiful people who are soulless douchebags. People who have all that plus are neat damage my mental paradigm. Also I can’t fault Zac’s work ethic. He might be making crap movies, but at least he is making a lot of them. Eventually he might hit a script that doesn’t count on him carrying the entire film by taking off his shirt.
So did I like this movie or not? It definitely had some great moments but honestly it felt like a 20 minute SNL skit stretched out over 96 minutes. Seth Rogan seems to now ascribe to the “if it was funny once, it will be funny four more times” school of humorous repetition. Like so many modern comedies the story is basically the taxi that moves the film from set piece to set piece joke. It also didn’t help that the best running gag of the film (the airbags inserting into normal seats) I have seen in trailers several dozen times.
Then there is the level of stupidity exhibited by the protagonists. Drug movies are funny when you see stoners come up with dopey plans based on the gaps vacated by their long lost brain cells. This is why I love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (image courtesy of the TV Show T Shirts). The problem I had with these characters is they are supposed to be responsible adults with jobs and an infant but are coming out with plans that would seem dumb to Shaggy and Scooby Doo on angel dust. The story is that Seth is an ex stoner who is trying to grow up but it just didn’t seem credible. Also, while the baby was super duper cute and a big plus in the movie seeing her parents getting drunk and stoned as hell but trying to listen to their baby monitor had me squirming in my seat for concern for her. Having both your parents pass out drunk on the floor seems like a recipe for SIDS. Also what was the deal with the two of them needing to have sex in the same room with the baby awake and mobile? You are OK using your baby monitor to keep tabs on your kid from next door at a massive frat party while getting completely wasted and listening to very loud music but you can’t go into the next room and leave the door open a crack to keep from giving your kid some repressed trauma to work on in therapy in 25 years?
That being said there were some really excellent moments. Some of the party scenes with Seth and Zac were really funny (especially the dance off) and if I hadn’t already seen it 50 times the air bag thing would have been hilarious. There was a really cool growing up/bromance/homoerotic undercurrent going on between Zac’s character and Dave Franco’s. I thought Rose Byrne crushed every scene and in my opinion stole a lot of the movie. There were a few rated R topless scenes (including one that I both strongly suspect and hope were prosthetics for Rose Byrne. When you see it you will understand) to keep things interesting and the final scene with Zac and Seth both topless was pretty amazing.
The story is basically the ultimate nightmare of suburban college town living. Mac Radner (Seth Rogan-This is the End, Guilt Trip, 50/50) and Kelly Radner (Rose Byrne-the Internship, X-Men First Class, 28 Weeks Later) live in suburbia with their super cute infant daughter Stella (played by twin babies Ellise and Zoey Vargas. Kind of a clever way of getting more work out of a baby actor. No other credits, obviously, unless they did some indy “in the womb” piece). Their life seems pristine and Mac still gets to spark the owl with his work stoner buddy Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz-the Awesomes, Eastbound and Down, the Mindy Project).
The house next door gets sold to a frat led by president Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron-the Lucky One, the Paper Boy, At Any Price) and vice pres Pete (Dave Franco-21 Jump Street, Now You See Me, Warm Bodies). The Radners head over to try to make nice and seem to do well. The frat is dedicated to partying epically on all levels and throws a huge one that night. Mac and Kelly head over to ask nicely for them to turn down the music and Teddy is accommodating, even inviting them in to join the party. The two of them rage until dawn (newborn babies sleep all night with epically loud techno music playing next door, right?) and Teddy and Mac bond.
Unfortunately the next night there is another party and they have to call the police. The worst cop ever shows up and rats out the Radners. At that point it becomes a fragmented Animal House with Mac in the role of Dean Wormer. He tries to go to the dean of the school (played very unconvincingly by Lisa Kudrow. Sorry Lisa. I do love you but you looked like you were attending the frat parties, not regulating them. I mean that as a compliment. -Friends, Analyze This, Easy A) who is more motivated to control bad press than make sure students get a quality eduction. Sit com-style episodes start rolling down the chute. Mac finds Stella chewing on a condom, he busts a pipe and floods the frat house basement, the frat makes molds of their erect penises and uses them to sell sex toys (I’m sure that joke looked a lot funnier on paper, and by on paper I mean rolling paper) in order to pay for the damage, Kelly manages to force a wedge between Pete and Teddy, yada yada yada.
Honestly things just keep going until party Armageddon. Eventually everything comes to a head and then later sort of resolves itself in a very tepid and unsatisfying way.
The stars:
Some really funny moments. Two stars. Acting was in general pretty good. One star. Rose Byrne in particular killed it. One star. I thought the sub plot of Teddy and Pete having a serious bromance and facing growing up was better done and more interesting than the main story. Kind of wish they had played that one out more. One star. Every woman in this film was at least super hot (especially Rose. I don’t see any mention of a husband on IMDB. Hmm. Rose if you are reading this and are single it would be my honor to take you out to the most romantic dinner $27 can buy. Tweet me). One star. Some brief but nice topless shots (the Rose one is a wash at best however. It almost earned this film a black hole). One star. If you enjoy watching young people party their asses off and drug/booze humor works for you welcome to Nirvana. One star. Total: eight stars.
The black holes:
I don’t know about you but I find it very difficult to identify with stupid protagonists. One black hole. After a while the set pieces got old and I found myself yearning for an actual story. One black hole. If this were real life there would be legitimate concern for the safety of the baby and that is something I don’t consider funny. One black hole. I really, really want to black hole this movie for Zac Efron but honestly he did an admirable job (and I secretly suspect he could be cool to hang with). I also want to black hole this film for showing kids having more fun in 10 minutes of college than I had in five years (word to the wise, kids. If you want to enjoy college choose any other UC than Irvine. Really, who wants to call themselves an Anteater anyway?) but this is where I put on my grown up reviewer pants and keep my personal bias out of it. Total: three black holes.
A grand total of five stars, which for me puts it at the bottom of the good category (mediocre tends to be 3 stars down to 2 black holes. I honestly don’t know why but that is how it seems to work out). Should you see it? Sober? Maybe. Drunk and/or stoned? Absolutely. This is a film that will seem 100 times better if you can blaze up and loc it in the parking lot with a fifth of vodka and a pint of orange juice prior. Date movie? Sure. Nothing here to creep her out and if she finds this funny it might help. On the other hand every second she sees Zac Efron with his shirt off (and there are a lot of them) you are bleeding sex appeal so maybe not. Bathroom break? Any of the Dean meetings could be missed with impunity assuming you saw Animal House and understand how double secret probation works (although in this case it’s three strikes).
Thanks for reading as always. The film world still in Spider-Man recovery so not a lot more to see. I think I will try to catch up on some smaller fish that slipped my net, but I have two shows back to back the next two weekends (Big Wow in San Jose and Kublacon in Burlingame. If you are going to be at either stop by and say hi) and that always screws up my writing schedule. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu (<–Rose take note) or email questions and suggestions to [email protected]. Comments on this film or my review can be left right here. Have a great weekend.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 42 Obsession
Another one of my favorite episodes. I like to think that a lot of space horror ideas were sparked here. Alien, for example. Also, this is a good example of how Captain Kirk will always be a better captain than Picard. Remember the TNG episode where the crystalline entity was literally sucking up millions of sentient beings and Picard wanted to find a way to talk to it? This gas cloud kills a couple red shirts (oh, yeah. Also half of the Farragut’s crew) and Kirk is willing to drop an antimatter bomb on it. My kind of captain. The one thing any hapless red shirt could count on is after his or her horrible death if there was someone or something that could be made to bleed for it Kirk would find a way. Good luck with that on the NCC-1701-D. I hope your family receives a copy of the strongly worded letter of protest Picard sent to whatever alien monster snacked on your bone marrow to go with your folded Federation flag.
(Red shirt image courtesy of the Star Trek T-Shirt category)
I also liked Ensign Garrovick. There was a series of cool named red shirts who later just disappeared (Riley, for one). I wonder if Shatner ever felt threatened by them and had them axed. I wouldn’t put it past him. I am a massive Shatner fan and Kirk will always be my captain but I freely acknowledge that in general he was a total jerk.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
The Quiet Ones Review
A horror movie sans horror.
While I am an aficionado of all things zombie and sci fi, horror is not a category I can comfortably call myself an expert in (I see zombie movies and horror movies as entirely different categories BTW. I’d be happy to discuss the difference with anyone who actually cares). 
Friday the 13 and Halloween never actually did much for me. I like stories where the protagonists have a chance to fight back, not be hung on a meat hook by an immortal force of nature. (Halloween image courtesy of the Horror Movie T shirt category)
(Incidentally, meat hooks and things hanging from them is something I am way too familiar with. My father was a meat cutter and I spent an unhealthy chunk of my childhood surrounded by dead animals and insanely sharp knives. Good thing I’m so well adjusted today. You know, quiet fellow. Keep to myself for the most part).
That being said I am not illiterate in this area. I have seen most of the classic horror films and understand what works or doesn’t work for them. More importantly I understand what works and doesn’t work for film in general, and unfortunately there is less that works than doesn’t work here.
I’m not happy to say that as I am a fan of Hammer films. They made a name for themselves in the B movie horror film arena with such classics as the Vampire Lovers, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, The Devil Rides Out, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, The Plague of Zombies, Vampire Circus, Hands of the Ripper, and the Camp on Blood Island. Most of these are weirdly amazing and super fun to watch with some friends and some beers on a Saturday afternoon. More recently they have tried to break into bigger budget, bigger name films with the Woman in Black and Let Me In with mixed results.
I won’t say this film was bad. Just that there was an absence of good. The film focused on building suspense to a denouement that really wasn’t a whole lot more exciting than the rest of the film. The “horror” was mainly derived from found footage style surprises, like “wouldn’t it be surprising if we were watching a possessed woman on 8mm film and all of a sudden the nearby radiator blew up with a loud bang?”. Off camera bumps, knocks, and things happening out of the shot or suddenly flying across the screen in a blur that ends up showing you nothing is not the zenith of horror making in my opinion. The net result of this constant build up to next to nothing was 98 minutes that dragged for 92 of them, with lots of time spent watching the creepy professor smoke and bitch his students out.
I also have an issue with the whole “found footage” aspect of this film in that if you are going to commit commit. You can’t go parachuting and hang from the planes landing gear for an hour and a half. The camera shifted back and forth from what was being “shot” by Brian, the camera guy, and a regular film camera. Very little attempt was made to make the shot footage look like it was one on a single camera in 1974 so the shift back and forth really did nothing for the film. They should have either gone all found footage or just blown the whole thing off. Also the sound was flawless in spite of the fact that there was no sound guy. SPOILER ALERT Given that all the found footage was reportedly destroyed by the end of the film it made this aspect even more annoying.
A lot has been said about this film being taken from a true story but if so perhaps there is a reason most movies are written from fiction. The scientist was kind of either comically evil or laughable stupid. The rest of the cast was Shaggy and a slutty Wilma from Scooby Doo, a straight man, and the possessed girl herself. As a whole they seemed like complete idiots in that they didn’t all bug out the first time random evil crap started happening around them. No real reason was given for anyone other than the professor and the possessed girl to hang around, and characters with no sense of self preservation make for incredibly lame protagonists.
Of course regular readers should remember that I hate the ’70s with a burning passion so that definitely colored some of my perception. I think I was fair in my assessment of the film regardless of that. For the record given a choice between traveling back on time to the 70’s or the Great Plague I would have to give serious consideration to London in 1665. At least they didn’t wear bellbottom pants suits.
The story. It starts off with Professor Joseph Coupland of Oxford (Jared Harris-Natural Born Killers, Lincoln, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. By the way, the “real” story they took this from happened in Toronto. I guess the film need the most prestigious university ever to make it work. It makes more sense to me that weirdness like this would come from the Great White North. Hail to our Canadian nerd brethren! You guys rock!) hiring a camera guy named Brian (Sam Claflin-Snow White and the Huntsmen, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) to document a study of a girl he believes to be manifesting ghosts and apparitions with her mind using “dark energy” (? Oil? The theoretical glue of the universe? A generator powered by burning babies? What is dark energy?). His is assisted by tech geek Harry (Rory Fleck-Byrne-Vampire Academy, Stealaway) and super blond and slutty ill defined scientist of some kind Krissi (Erin Richards-Open Grave, Breaking In, Being Human).
He introduces him to the subject Jane (Olivia Cooke-Bates Motel, the Signal, Ouija), who looks exactly like she is possessed by an evil spirit that seriously wants to kill everyone. They are recording her with some kind of electronic devices while forcing her to stay awake with the help of Cum on Feel the Noize by Slade. She is sort of a prisoner with no privacy and sort of a volunteer. Joseph’s plan is to force her evil, dark energy filled side out and some how remove it (he is truly short on explanations on how he intends to do anything other than torture the girl and get his grad students killed. At one point he seriously said something about harnessing the dark energy and I swear I thought he was going to add a maniacal laugh and the words “then take over the world!” but that might have made the film interesting). He also thinks that if he can cure Jane he can cure everyone in the world with mental problems (what, and put my poor therapist out of work?).
They lose their funding from Oxford and have to move out to some super creepy house to avoid all the noise complaints. At that point the film turns into about 75 minutes of bad X-Files episodes. You know, the ones where every few minutes you think you are about to see something super cool and interesting but it turns out to be a damned cat? Interesting stuff almost happens a lot, and on the rare occasion something happens it is always off screen. There are some dopey twists and betrayals. I won’t spoil the ending but I was more glad the film was over than anything else.
The stars:
I don’t know. Both of the girls were super hot, and you almost see them naked in a very PG-13 way. One star. I will give credit for an original setting. You don’t see a lot of horror movies set in England. Usually they are outside of some bumbling Bible belt cow town. One star. I do appreciate stories derived from reality. One star. Given an original idea and their obvious attempt to move from the straight-to-DvD world I will award Hammer Films one more star as an A for effort. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes:
Nothing in this film is remotely new or interesting. Recycled from a ton of other films. One black hole. Pacing sluggish as hell. I’ve seen raw security camera footage of nothing happening that seemed better paced. 98 minutes that felt like 198. One black hole. The whole “found footage, not found footage” thing was annoying. Make up your mind. One black hole. Everything that might have been interesting happened off camera. Honestly I think they did it to keep their PG-13 rating. One black hole. A distinct lack of motivation, as in why the hell didn’t any of these people decide being far away from this weird ass girl was more in line with their interest in breathing? I’ll buy people sticking around a dangerous situation as long as you give me some form of excuse as to why. One black hole. At the end of the film I really didn’t know what point was being made. Was she possessed or not? Did she manifest everything with her mind? Was the professor right? One black hole. Total: five black holes.
So a total of one black hole. For me that’s at the low end of mediocre. The film is not irredeemable. Had they tightened up the pacing and given us some actual events prior to the last 10 minutes I might have been much more engaged. However, if you have seen any 10 horror films and the Blair Witch Project you have seen this film. I’d say see it when you are bored at home with nothing else to do. Date movie? Not really. Bathroom break? There’s a scene towards the end when Brian goes back to Oxford for more film or something but really spends a ton of time doing research at the library. Nothing he is doing is explained while he does it and he later reveals everything anyway.
Thanks for reading. Hitting a dearth of film lately. I saw a couple recently and never got around to writing them up so maybe I will do one of those tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Email me any off topic questions or suggestions and if you have a comment on this film or my review feel free to leave it here. Talk to you soon.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 43 Wolf in the Fold
This episode was not exactly a pillar of women’s liberation. If one could have a real complaint with regards to this show in general it’s that in spite of all it’s attempts at racial issues, anti war, and social problems the sexism and misogyny were rampant and never so much as in this episode. 
Women are pretty much treated as inanimate sex objects and are more or less helpless in the face of masculine dominance (Not to mention brutally murdered en masse. Problem solved image, while not necessarily funny, comes from the Funny T Shirt category. Sorry it was the best misogynist image I could find). One of the worst quotes from Mr. Spock ever came from this one: “women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species.”
If anything redeeming can be had from this episode it is that if you compare this to any of the TNG shows you can see how greatly the shift in gender parity has progressed. I won’t pretend there aren’t still major issues surrounding this today but in TNG none of this dancing sex slave girl BS would have surfaced. Also for once Kirk wasn’t the focus of the show. It’s nice to see Scotty get his chance at bat.
However, let’s talk about the psycho-tricorder for a minute. So this device records anything that happens to someone for the last 24 hours. Umm, excuse me but wouldn’t that have been the perfect answer to like 85% of the other episodes? Court Martial? Turnabout Intruder? And the Children Shall Lead? The Trouble with Tribbles? Journey to Babel? Mudd’s Women? Space Seed? Dagger of the Mind? Charlie X? The Man Trap? The Conscious of the King? Spock’s Brain? Every one of these episodes could have been solved in short order with the use of the psycho-tricorder. Just strap Kara into one of those and figure out exactly what she did with Spock’s brain. It should have been the most commonly used device after communicators.
Oh, well. I guess sometimes you just invent stuff to keep the episode moving without having to worry about how it will affect future episodes (cough cough kironide cough cough). Also by listing all those episodes I just realized that TOS had some very cool episode titles. Suck it, TNG. Encounter at Farpoint might be the worst title ever.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 44 The Trouble With Tribbles
Ah, a classic. Of course it is in my nature to be a contrarian and as this episode is beloved by almost everyone I should find a reason to hate it, but I don’t. This episode puts a big smile on my face every time. I love the story, I love the Klingons, I love the big bar fight started by Scotty; there is nothing in this episode that does not make me happy.
I could talk about the paranoia of the 70’s and how the Klingons were clearly the Russians, but honestly I have always had another question. At one point Kirk goes to the rec room to get dinner and his meal comes out of the replicator covered with Tribbles who had eaten his food. The question is this: did the replicator replicate some live Tribbles? Is the TOS replicator different from the TNG? Is it just a very high speed food processor? If so how did the Tribbles survive being microwaved or whatever process was used to heat up the food? Shouldn’t Kirk have gotten a meal of fried Tribble? Crazy Delicious image courtesy of the Star Trek t shirt collection.
Another thing I love about this episode is that is for the first time ever showed Kirk beaten down and at his wits end. The scene where he is walking slowly around the bridge picking up Tribbles pretty much says everything possible about what was going on. When he finally freaks out it the timing and tone is perfect. I also like how he started the episode not taking the grain or Tribbles at all seriously but eventually had to. Kudos to the great director Joseph Pevney.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to throw a shout out to my friend Miles, the Tribble Guy. I have seen him at every Star Trek convention we have set a booth up at and he is a good dude. He and I usually sit around bitching about the assorted conventions we do. He is not hard to spot as he drives a panel truck with giant Tribbles on it. He sells Tribbles of the highest quality, not to mention stuffed germs that are hilarious. You can find them at his site Tribble Toys.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 45 the Gamesters of Triskelion
This episode always brings a big smile to my face. As a kid my favorite episodes always had a lot of hand to hand combat and this episode was nothing but that in all of Shatners greatest shoulder roll glory.
This was also the episode that as a preteen boy most flipped my hormone switch, if you know what I mean. To this day whenever I see a girl with green hair (and/or a silver lame bikini) I flash back to the gorgeous Angelique Pettyjohn as Shahna. My ultimate fantasy would have to be her and metal bikini Leia. Yes, I know I’m a pig. At least I’m a nerdy pig.
This episode also introduced us to the currency I plan to use to replace all world currencies once I conquer this pathetic mudball, quatloos (I also plan to have martial combats be a means of settling legal disputes and caning be an Olympic event). I see the Canadian habit of calling their one dollar coin a loonie a sign of their connectivity with the gestalt human consciousness since I believe quatloos will be called “loos” for short. Kudos to our friends in the Great White North.
On a side note if I were a lowlie crewman on board the Enterprise doing my daily job of mucking out the toilets and exterminating Tribbles I think I would have a problem with Kirk betting my life and freedom in a 3 to 1 fight to the death. I’m pretty sure there is a Starfleet regulation somewhere that says your commanding officer cannot sell you into slavery. Image courtesy of the retro TV show t shirt category.
“the Infamous Dave” Inman
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 3D
Spider-Man! Spider-Man! Does whatever any other crappy comic book based movie can!
There are certain franchises that I have what can only be described as a dysfunctional relationship with. Like an abused spouse I get beaten and belittled, yet come crawling back in the vain hope that THIS time things will be different and the abuse will magically stop.
Spider-Man is exactly that kind of franchise and I have to say it might be time for me to give up on the relationship. Like most relationships the first few months were great (in this analogy represented by the original Tobey MacGuire movie) but had slipped down a steady slope of mediocrity and canon abuse. Each movie has a few points that are fun but the fun elements steadily diminish leading us to this remnant, representing the least fun movie of the franchise. I dread whatever they come up with next. I can only assume a movie so unfun that it sucks the fun out of the movies playing in the theaters adjacent to it.
(image courtesy of the Comic Book t shirt category)
If a few years ago you had told me that one day I would be rooting for Disney I probably would have either laughed or punched you out for impugning my integrity. I have always had an adversarial relationship with the Mouse that started at a security related issue in the Haunted House ride back in my childhood and has grown ever since (in 1987 I went to Grad Night at Disneyland with all of my high school “friends” who ditched me in the first 30 minutes, leaving me wandering the “happiest place on Earth” miserably by myself for 8 hours straight like a lost soul. The contrast was mind bending. That is one of the many childhood traumas that makes me the well adjusted adult I am now). In film in the past I have found them oppressive and formulaic, with little redeeming artistic value. As I work in the licensing industry Disney is a name spoken with fear and dread as they will literally hang you from a tree with a barbwire noose if they catch the slightest whiff of copyright infringement (even on images that should have been public domain 50 years ago).
Yet when shown what they have done with most of the Marvel movies I have to say they are really, really good. Spider-Man needs to be rescued from Sony by the lesser of two evils. When comparing this film too the infinitely superior Captain America: the Winter Soldier the contrast is startling. On paper the two movies should be at the same level. They are both sequels. They are both based on iconic Marvel super heroes. In fact Spider-Man is more beloved and has a richer backstory than Captain America. They both exceeded two hours in run time. So why then does this movie suck and the Winter Soldier rule? In fact rather than just list all the things I hated in this film let’s do a comparison, shall we?
1. Three times the villains =/= three times the fun. There is a weird belief in bad comic book movie making that adding more villains will automatically make the movie better. Joel Schumacher (one of the most hated men in the nerd world) proved that concept Batnipple wrong with Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Villains are fun when they are developed like the heroes and have a personal axe to grind. Each time you add another one to the film you cut the amount of time one can spend on character development, making each one in turn that much more uninteresting. The good movies treat villains almost as importantly as the heroes. Sometimes more so in that you can have a team of heroes but only one villain (Magneto from X-Men, Khan from TWOK, Darth Vader). By adding more villains to this film you take away from the value of each one, resulting in a sum that is less than the individual parts (having Paul Giamatti speak with a Russian accent and hate Spider-Man for getting him arrested earlier is not an automatic good villain. What is this, the Rocky and Bullwinkle show?). Disney wisely opted to go with one great villain. These guys went with a bunch.
2. Have a linear plot without too much to distract from the story. I checked a bunch of other reviewers for this film and the most common joke made was something along the line of “What a tangled web they’ve weaved” or the like. Winter Soldier, while addressing some interesting social issues and having a couple of cool plot twists, had a story that did not verge off into Magical Tangentland every ten minutes. This movie is about what happened to Peter Parkers parents, how he got his powers, how another guy loved and felt betrayed by Spider-Man, Peter haunted by Gwen Stacy’s dead father, his romance with Gwen, Harry Osbourne dying of something and needing Spider-Mans blood, Harry Osbourne haunted by feelings of failure from his father, OsCorp business politics, Spider-Man being abused by the media, Aunt May keeping secrets from Peter, Aunt May’s feelings for Peter, and Harry feeling betrayed by Peter. The film has six different writing credits and it shows. In fact it looks like each one wrote about 20 minutes without ever talking to or meeting any of the others. Also can someone give Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci a job watching paint dry or something? How many crappy scripts are they going to ruin before the literature police show up and arrest them? For the record they did both Star Treks, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, and Van Helsing. I can totally see why they are the best choice for a film with a $200 million budget.
3. Ease back on the romance. Ok, in the comic book I was always more of a Gwen Stacy fan than Mary Jane and love was always a part of Peter Parkers life but jeez, how much of this film is going to be taken up with freaking Gwen Stacy, her option to move to England, her romance with Peter, and the whole thing. I am for sure a fan of Emma Stone and like looking at her on the screen but I’m here to see Spider-Man fight some guy, not watch the two of them eat ice cream. Notice that in Winter Soldier the romance was touched upon and then let rest easy in the background, secure in it’s knowledge that it had contributed just the right amount to the story.
4. No kids. Look, if we learned anything from The Phantom Menace it’s that kids in sci fi action movies suck. They generally suck as actors (not always but often), they take you out of the fantasy of the film into a legitimate concern for their safety (movies like this require suspension of disbelief, something that is hard to do when you see kids on the screen), and rarely add anything to the film. Do the producers really think that more kids are going to want to see this film because some eight year old is on the screen? Kids don’t want to be other kids in a Spider-Man movie. They want to be Spider-Man.
5. Treat the canon with SOME respect. I know I go off on this all the time, but every time you think it might be a good idea to go off canon in the interest of making the movie do something it really shouldn’t take a day to think about it and at the end of the day punch yourself in the balls really hard. If the canon change is worth a punch in the balls go for it. If not stick to the story as written. The fact is the best comic book movies try to stick to the comic book.
6. Don’t give any of your characters back stories that suck. You know, the nerdish guy who had some kind of accident and gained super powers has already been done. He’s called Spider-Man. The Electro back story was as tepid and lame as humanly possible. The whole Harry/Norman Osborne story sucked. They didn’t even bother with Rhino. If you had focused on one villain you could have had more time to develop something more interesting but that’s neither here nor there.
8. Avoiding the temptation to make your cast into a joke. This may or may not be petty but the director of this film is no joke named Mark Webb. Prior to getting on board with the new Spider-Man franchise he had directed absolutely nothing of note. This is purely speculation but I would be willing to bet at some point while considering who to put in charge of this someone at Sony said “This guys last name is Webb! That is fate! Also he must be a huge expert in Spider-Man with a name like that. The fans will love it!” and then proceeded to do more coke. Notice Winter Soldier did not hire a guy named Anthony Shield.
8. Soundtrack. Regular readers might recall me saying I never even notice soundtracks unless it is painfully obtrusive and annoying, and I will just say I haven’t “noticed” a soundtrack this painfully obtrusive in years. It was like sitting in the window seat on a plane and the guy next to you is a 300lbs homeless fan of garlic. The music used in this film would have embarrassed the creators of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica. Again, I never even noticed the soundtrack from Winter Soldier.
I could go on. Bottom line is in my opinion Sony should just sell the license back to Disney and let them make great movies instead of mediocre convoluted BS. Once I am done flagellating myself for coming down in favor of Disney I will feel a lot better about that statement.
The story. There is a lot of potential spoiler material so I am going to go easy on it (also it was so complex I am having a hard time keeping it in order). However a good amount will sneak into this so SPOILER ALERT. Skip ahead to the stars. Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield-the Social Network, I’m Here, Unscripted) starts things off by stopping a hijacking of a truck carrying plutonium (which we are told in one of the lamest plot devices ever is both radioactive and explosive. While the explosive part is sort of true it is not going to blow up like the movie implied. Also plutonium is a solid on this planet, not a liquid. Bad science makes me mad/sad). The hijacker is Paul Giamatti (Saving Private Ryan, Private Parts, the Illusionist) who will later resurface as the Rhino.
While saving the plutonium Spider-Man also saves Max Dillon (Jaime Foxx-Collateral, Django Unchained, Ray), a nebbish electrical engineer working for OsCorp. Max becomes obsessed with Spider-Man and is his biggest fan. Spider-Man goes back to Peter Parker and his college graduation with girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone-Crazy Stupid Love, the Croods, Gangster Squad). They break up for some reason (I think Peter was too worried about her getting hurt and she was pissed off because she’s a big girl and doesn’t need protection? Given that her father died in the last movie 10 feet from Spider-Man I would think his concerns might sit more heavily with her than that, but whatever).
Meanwhile Norman Osborne (Chris Cooper-The Patriot, Adaption, the Muppets) locks down his Father-of-the-Year award by telling his son Harry (Dane DeHaan-Chronicle, Lawless, Kill Your Darlings) how disappointed he is in him and also that Harry is soon going to die of the same ill defined genetic disease (not sure what they called it or if they even gave it a name. For the purposes of this review I am going to call it Shmerpes). Norman dies (without becoming the Green Goblin) and Harry takes over, dealing with internal corporate politics (fascinating, really) before the first symptoms of his Shmerpes kicks in.
Gwen works at OsCorp and meets Max on an elevator. Max’s boss tells him to stick around and work when the entire company is going home over the death of Norman. Max has to perform a high tech repair (known as plugging two cables together) and has an accident where he falls into (oh God I wish I were kidding) a tank filled with mutant electric eels, turning him into Electro.
(You know, a guy gets bitten by a radioactive animal and gains the animals powers has already been done. He’s called Spider-Man. This is just lazy writing all around.)
So Electro comes out and is attacked by cops and beaten down by Spider-Man. Meanwhile Harry is desperately searching for a cure for Shmerpes and discovers the fact that Peter Parkers father Richard was working with Norman on some mutated spiders but they were all destroyed. For some reason Harry thinks this venom is a cure and also that Spider-Man must have gotten his powers from these spiders. (Oh, yeah. Radioactive spider venom now has healing properties (cough cough Wolverine cough cough).)
So Harry asks Peter to ask Spider-Man for some of his blood in order to cure his Shmerpes but for some reason Spider-Man knows more about his blood than the entire OsCorp research team and tells Harry that the blood is too dangerous (um, Harry, Peter’s best friend, is dying. What does Spider-Man think the blood is going to do? Make Harry double dead?).
Things go haywire from there. Harry loses control of OsCorp and busts Electro out of the facility where they are torture-experimenting on him (?). They get the company back and Harry discovers that the guy who took over had the spider venom all the time. He takes some of it at gunpoint but it combines with his Shmerpes to do something bad (?). He more or less collapses and only by sticking himself into the Green Goblin suit (it just happened to be lying around) can he survive. Everyone decides they hate Spider-Man for assorted ill defined reasons and wreaking the whole city is worth getting revenge.
The stars:
Action was pretty good. They definitely captured what it’s like to be and/or fight against Spider-Man. Two stars. Visuals and special effects were great. I really liked the look of Electro and the big fight scene between him and Spidey was awesome. Two stars. I really liked Dane DeHaan as Harry Osbourne. He really brought as much heat as he could to the film. One star. As a purist I should probably hate the new Rhino suit but honestly I loved it. Extremely cool. I also loved the new Goblin suit. Too bad we never got more than three minutes of either of then. Two stars. Emma Stone is very easy on the eyes and played her role well. One star. If you don’t feel the need for character development and a coherent story this film is fun. Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes.
Too many villains dammit. Give me a bad guy to get to know and sink my movie going teeth into. One black hole. Way too much going on in the story. One black hole. Way too much romance. Do we really care that Gwen is considering moving to England so much that we have to go with her on her interview? One black hole. The whole parents sub plot and his fathers part in creating Spider-man was also totally unnecessary and stupid (actually those three last words describe most of the sub plots). One black hole. Massive plot holes. How is it spiders created by Richard Parker are still alive to bite 14 years later? How did he get a secret lab built in an abandoned subway platform? Did OsCorp build it? If so why did they not come get all his research after he betrayed them? How is the lab fully functional and spotless with biological samples in Petri dishes 14 years later? How is it Peter and Harry are best friends when they haven’t seen each other in 8 years? The list goes on. One black hole. Going off canon in really stupid directions. One black hole. Bad science. One black hole. The soundtrack felt like I was wrestling Shmoo and lost. Smothering. One black hole. Total: eight black holes.
A total of two stars, and me once again frustrated with what could have been. The potential of this film was great but instead they just did the typical Hollywood design-by-committee pap. When I look a this film and the convoluted yet horribly simplified story, the massive special effects, and the lack of real character development I realize that it was clearly made with overseas audiences in mind. This sort of thing will go over great in China. Should you see it? Sure. It’s fun and it’s Spider-Man. However will you want to see it a second time? I do not. Bottom line I am eager to see Winter Soldier a third time but given the prospect of seeing this one again I’d rather watch Tobey MagGuire on DvD. For me that is the mark of a good or bad movie. Date movie? Sure, why not? I don’t think this will get her pants off but it will not keep her pants on, if you get my meaning. Bathroom break? I think the scene with Peter discovering his fathers lab is totally disposable. Either that or any of the scenes with Aunt May. In the comic she was the most boring part of the story and nothing in this film improves upon that. At 142 minutes you will probably need a break somewhere.
Thanks for reading. I’ll try to get something else watched soon. In truth I saw this Thursday night and have been putting off writing it. I know when I find myself reading old blog posts in order to correct grammar errors I really don’t want to write it, and the mundanity of a franchise I used to love does not fire my enthusiasm. Feel free to post comments on this film or my review here, or send me an email if you have off topic questions or suggestions to [email protected]. Also join the dozens of followers I have on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Thanks and have a great night.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 46 A Piece of the Action
Yes I’m back on this. In fact I need to stay on it in order to actually finish this project. I have an idea following this for TNG next.
So A Piece of the Action. I quite liked this episode. The story of how the Sigma Iotians became all 20’s gangster actually made sense, as opposed to “they just evolved into an exact replica of a Paramount backlot”. Sorry but the whole Yang thing from Omega Glory always bugged me (not to mention the Roman Empire from Bread and Circuses).
The other part about this that rocked is it really shows the importance of the Prime Directive. The book Chicago Mobs of the Twenties was left pretty much by accident by the Horizon and rewrote the entire direction of the culture of the Sigma Iotians. Would that JJ Abrams had watched this episode before creating his last abomination (actually, would that JJ Abrams had ever watched a single episode before signing up to direct the Star Trek reboot).
As an aside I recently learned that Star Trek fans at the Vegas Con voted Star Trek Into Darkness the worst movie of the series. Kudos to you all. This is why I love Trek fans and am proud to count myself among your number. Of course the TNG Fanboys voted First Contact the number two best movie in a lame homage to the Borg but as long at TWOK is number one I have no real complaint (although if we were to sit down together I could tell you in excruciating detail why First Contact also sucks. Am I too hardcore in my Star Trek purity? Mabye). I might do a blog about that list some time in the future. It puts a smile on my face.
The episode image comes from the TV Show t shirt category. Yes, I know it has the wrong number on it. I go by release order while my printer goes by production number. It is a bone of contention.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
A Haunted House Review
Stupid, childish, offensive, and hilarious.
So I had a choice of this one or the Quiet Ones and just felt in the mood to laugh my ass off. Odds are if I were a more serious reviewer I would have gone for the Quiet Ones but in my opinion found footage horror has pretty much advanced as far as it’s going to go. I do not expect that film to blow my brain in original thought or content.
So I saw this film and it was exactly the kind of awful slapstick rated R hilarity you can expect from Marlon Wayans. There is absolutely nothing of note in terms of message or social note. The humor is crude, low brow, offensive, sexual, and derivative. The story is the barest pretext to move the film from set piece to set piece. The special effects are essentially a PA flicking the lights on and off (the movie had a budget of $4MM and it shows. In truth I think even $4MM is a generous estimate). It is a muddled mass of 3rd grade fart jokes and the t shirts you see teamsters wearing (“I’m not a gynecologist but I’ll take a look”, “FBI: Female Body Inspector”, etc.) and bad sight gags. In fact, it has only one redeeming feature and that is it is fricking hilarious.
Yes I laughed my ass off throughout the film. There is a reason crude humor is still humor and the jokes aimed at taking the pressure off racism were amazing. The cast were to a man or woman funny entertainers and knew how to deliver a punchline. Some of the jokes will have you squirming in your seat (or possible retching a little) but in general you will love it.
I will offer up a warning to anyone on the fence about taking their kids to see this film: it is about as hard an R as you can get without going NC-17. Pretty much every sexual act possible was explored (generally with a puppet, but still), the curse words flew out thick and fast, and every bad behavior possible was shown. 
Normally I don’t feel the need to express this but I saw this movie at 10pm on a Tuesday night and the theater was FULL OF FREAKING CHILDREN! I’m not even talking early teens. I’m talking kindergarteners. I know I don’t have kids and probably should keep my noise hole shut but if you take your 5 year old kid to a 10pm showing of a rated R movie that shows the act of analingus on a school night you are a selfish bastard who’s only qualification for parenthood is fertility. When I conquer the world don’t be surprised if you find yourself wearing a shock collar to keep you from doing stupid crap like this. (the children image is funny but really it should say something about parents. Image courtesy of the funny t shirt category)
Anyway, I supposed I should do a story recap although really, it’s kind of pointless. The story is of Malcolm (Marlon Wayans-Requim for a Dream, White Chicks, Scary Movie) and his cousin Ray Ray (Affion Crockett-Never Back Down, Soul Men, This Means War) escaping from Malcolm’s ex girlfriend psychotic possessed Kisha (Essence Atkins-A Haunted House, Are We There Yet, Half & Half). Apparently this was from the end of the first movie? (Is it fair to for me to review a sequel without having seen the first one? Probably not, although I feel that all movies should stand on their own without a prerequisite. Suck it, Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part II!)
Skip forward a year and Malcolm is moving into a new house with his new girlfriend Megen (Jaime Pressly-Not Another Teen Movie, I Love You Man, My Name is Earl) and her two kids Wyatt (Steele Stebbins-Wish You Were Here) and Becky (Ashley Rickards-Awkward, Gamer, Sassy Pants). Odd stuff starts happening including the dog getting crushed by a safe. Malcolm meets his Mexican neighbor Miguel (Gabriel Iglesias-Magic Mike, Planes, the Nut Job).
He finds some old footage that show an incompetent demon trying and failing to kill the previous family. Becky gets possessed while Wyatt has an imaginary friend who is not so imaginary. Malcolm has sex with a wooden doll (very graphic scene. Pretty much a harder version of the sex scene from Team America) who then ends up stalking him.
Hilarity ensues. Malcolm tries to get rid of the demon haunting him by bringing in psychic team Ned (Hayes MacArthur-the Game Plan, Life as We Know It, She’s Out of My League) and Noreen (Missi Pyle-Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters, the Artist, Big Fish) and then Father William (Cedric the Entertainer-Madagascar, Ice Age, Planes), each with different hilarious results. They jump from ridiculous and funny scene to ridiculous and funny scene.
The stars:
Really, really funny. I spent more time laughing than not. Three stars. Some really good references to current films and TV shows. I especially like the Breaking Bad one. One star. Rated R for this film translates into some great topless scenes. Thank you for remembering that the only reason guys go to see rated R is for massive violence and/or the occasional female breast. One star. In generally a really fun time watching. Two stars. Total: seven stars.
The black holes:
Some of the humor was really off putting or stomach turning. The recurring joke of the creepy wooden doll got really old by the end. One black hole. This film suffers from the same curse that the Scary Movie franchise suffers from in that once you are done watching it you will immediately start forgetting it. There is nothing here that will really stick inside your brain and I could almost hear the flushing sound as my brain started dumping the scenes out of my memory banks. One black hole. Total: two black holes.
So a grand total of five stars. Not bad, but ultimately a moot point. If you like this sort of film you will watch it and enjoy it and if you have an underdeveloped sense of humor and think laughing for longer than it would take you to say the word “laughter” is gauche you will not. Use that as your barometer of whether you should see it or not. Nothing in this film requires a big screen so wait until it shows up on Hulu or whatever. Date movie? Probably not, unless she is an avid fan of the Wayans. A lot of crude humor in this film and in my experience that is just ammunition for her to load up her rejection gun with. Bathroom break? Pretty much anywhere, but I say that in a good way. All the scenes were at least funny but none of them remotely necessary for your understanding of the “plot”. In fact you could probably see each scene randomly out of order and still enjoy it so go whenever the need takes you. It’s only 89 minutes so odds are you can hold it.
Thanks for reading as always. Naturally I’m going to see the new Spider-Man tonight. I’m both afraid and hopeful. Look for that review tomorrow. Also since big blockbusters like this tend to clear the theaters of other new releases like an unmentionable in a public swimming pool I will be able to catch up on all the films I missed while at Wondercon. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or my review can be left here and off topic suggestions or questions emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
“the Infamous Dave” Inman
The Other Woman Review
Testosterone draining for sure, but fun nevertheless.
There are days when I sometimes wish I had been born a woman (is this keyboard on? Dammit!). Not in any sexual sense as I have yet to see anything even remotely male that I found the slightest bit attractive (in fact, one of the biggest mysteries of the dating world for me is how you women even put up with us. If the world actually made logical sense you would all be lesbian and men would live below ground like the Morlocks (or C.H.U.D.s), fighting, drinking beer, watching sports, and occasionally being summoned up for a sperm donation.). More from a social aspect as in my imperfect dating world women have appear to have a lot more power and can use that power to do serious damage.
Now before all the feminists I went to college with write in about the unfair social power dynamic between men and women and how much more power men actually have I acknowledge all that. My perception is based on my miserable life of always being the rejected rather than the rejector and a constant grass is always greener when it comes to dating. Odds are if I looked like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and had enough money in my bank account to actually buy a girl a meal of food I would quickly turn into the man slut he plays in this film and be singing a different toon. However, this is the world I live in and the perception I have.
Also for the record I think women have so many more cool choices in clothes. Men’s fashion has not changed significantly since 1910 and once we settle on a look we generally don’t deviate from it. Also women smell nicer and don’t have to put up a macho front in front of other women. Maintaining all this super machismo is actually a lot of work ladies. I just wish more of you appreciated the effort. Plus free dinners and you are allowed to talk in the ladies room. Sounds good to me.
Anyway, the point is sometimes when I am watching a chick flick I honestly try to see it from the distaff side and this movie made it easy to do. I am not really a Cameron Diaz fan and feel like she has been playing the same role for years but managed to engage with her character a bit. Leslie Mann was my favorite and really really funny, while Kate Upton is like the result of a scientific experiment to concentrate sexual attractiveness to a weaponized level. The fact that she spent most of the movie wearing a bikini did not in any way inhibit my enjoyment of the film if you know what I mean. Each of the three were very distinct and interesting characters and I wanted to learn more about each of them.
Therein lies the flaw however. Instead of having a protagonist for us to connect with we actually have three. Essentially not enough time and effort was spent on any of the three to let the audience really connect, leaving me wishing I knew more about each of them. Little breadcrumbs of character development were strewn about (Leslie Mann’s character was implied to be a creative genius, Kate Upton had a few lines in passing implying some serious personality issues, and there were some hints of interesting daddy issues for Cameron Diaz that could have taken away from her stoic mien) but nothing that really convinced me they were anything other than a high powered driven New York lawyer, a timid fragile suburban housewife, and a hot bimbo.
I suppose an argument could be made that this was supposed to be some kind of team up showing the value of sisterhood but that was treated as a side note. In fact the three protagonists felt like one fully developed character broken up into three distinct fragments. Also once the three of them were introduced the film more or less washed its hands of any further development and then proceeded to drag on like a pushing a car out of gas up Lombard Street. The film was a fairly short 109 minutes but it felt like all 109 of them were in the last half of Act 2.
The male lead and focus of all the feminine vitriol was as despicable as you can imaging but let me clue any female readers out there (for the sake of my self esteem and sanity I hope there are more than three of you. Otherwise 33% of my female readers is my mother) in on a little fact of dating. 
When you see a guy who looks like he just fell out of a Calvin Klein ad and every women he looks at has her skivvies burst into flame odds are far more likely he is a scumbag than the more “average” looking dude out there. Men who put in a lot of effort in looking amazing and have hours a day to be in the gym are doing so for a reason and that reason is generally pulling tail. The “good guys” you ladies claim to want are far to busy working, paying attention to their (hypothetical) girlfriend, and writing long, detailed movie reviews to get waxed and run a marathon. (the image comes from our funny t shirt category and makes me laugh whenever I see it)
Anyway, the movie. It starts out with Carly (Cameron Diaz-Bad Teacher, There’s Something About Mary, Being John Malkovich) dating the current love her her life Mark King (Marking? Really? As in a guy who marks. A little Freudian writer Melissa Stack. Oh, yeah, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau-Headhunters, Mama, Oblivion). She is a sexy, high powered lawyer who is pretty sure the sexual world revolves around her. Mark bails out on dinner with her and her father (Don Johnson-Nash Bridges, Miami Vice, Django Unchained) because his pipe burst but Carly lets her father convince her to travel to his house as a surprise.
There she meets Kate (Leslie Mann-Knocked Up, ParaNorman, This is 40), Marks wife. She bails out but the next day Kate shows up at her work. Kate more or less breaks down and Carly has to get her out and gives her some advice. 
At that point a reluctant friendship begins, mainly due to Kate not having any friends that are not shallow suburban socialites (I grew up with about 10,000 of them) and Carly more or less trying to help Kate not self destruct. Kate convinces Carly to stalk Mark on a trip to the Hamptons and there they meet his other mistress Amber (Kate Upton-Tower Heist, the Three Stooges, Exposure: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011).
The three of them form a friendship and bond. As a huge fan of the Count of Monte Cristo I would love to say they started cooking up a revenge plot but a lot of the film seemed to be them just stumbling from set piece to set piece. The character focus shifts from Carly to Kate (to the betterment of the film in my opinion. Kate was a more intriguing character) with Amber floating in the background. A romance starts between Carly and Kate’s brother Phil (Taylor Kinny-Zero Dark Thirty, Chicago Fire, Trauma). The film drags through a very long segment and eventually remembers that stuff is supposed to happen in time for a fairly fun if predictable denouement.
The stars:
I definitely found moments to laugh at. Parts of this film were very funny. Two stars. Acting was good all around, even Kate Upton (at least I hope it was acting). One star. I especially liked Leslie Mann and found her both funny as hell and extremely engaging. She was the character I was most interested in. One star. Kate Upton was eye-bleedingly gorgeous. One star. 
Every other woman in the film was at least super hot, especially Carly’s assistant Lydia (Nicki Minaj-Friends with Benefits, The Hangover Part 2, Pitch Perfect). One star. Mark was a total scumbag that you wanted to see bad stuff happen to and when it does you get satisfied. One star. I won’t say great story but it was competent. Given the dross that makes up most of Hollywood scripts were this being graded on a curve it would warrant a B- at least. One star. As I left the theater I decided I had not wasted my time (always the real challenge for a manly man such as myself when watching a chick flick). Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes:
The splitting of character focus in three different directions was not a good move. They either needed to consolidate or add another 20 minutes to the run time. I really could have used more info on each of the characters. One black hole. I thought pacing was great at first but about 40 minutes in the whole film slowed down to an almost complete halt. I was seriously wishing for a fast forward button. This might have been the perfect time to inject some of that missing character development I just spoke of. One black hole. While Kate’s desire for revenge was both comprehensible and legitimate working to ruin the life of a man who you only dated for two months seems a little extreme. Carly and Amber seemed gung ho to literally destroy Mark and some of the stuff they pulled on him had me squirming in my seat. If you have ever had any kind of distrust of women or fear of them wrecking your life you should probably give this film a miss. One black hole. This may sound petty but I really found Don Johnson’s character fake and out of place. He wasn’t in it much but every time he showed up I disconnected from the film and remembered I was in a crummy theater in Oakland surrounded by happy couples and attractive women I was too shy to talk to. I can honestly say I have always been neutral towards him as an actor so this has no previous bias. One black hole. At the end of the film they did a whole Animal House/American Graffiti-esque “where are they now” text montage that was completely out of tone with the rest of the film and totally unnecessary. Pretty much everything they said in the text was on the screen and completely obvious. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A grand total of 5 stars. Not bad. Worthy of your time. However nothing really needed to be seen on a giant screen except for Kate Upton slow motion jogging in a bikini so if that is not your focus wait for NetFlix. If it is your focus try to see it on IMAX. Date movie? Hell yeah. She will love it and you will have some nice eye candy to keep you interested. However if you are planning on cheating on your girlfriend you should probably stay away. This film might give her ideas. Bathroom break? Anywhere in that dead zone I talked about would do fine. If I had to pick a scene I’d the dinner with Mark and Kate is pretty missable. The film has already established that Mark is pond scum and nothing in that scene will do anything other than reinforce that.
Thanks for reading. I’m seeing either A Haunted House 2 or The Quiet Ones tonight so look for a funny horror review of some kind tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review please post them here and if you have off topic questions or suggestion email the to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
“The Infamous Dave” Inman
