Med City Movie Guy

The Force is not with this one

In the new Disney blockbuster, G-Force, a team of highly-trained government guinea pig commandos are called to save the world from an evil appliance manufacturer, a task which proves to be nearly as impossible as knocking-down all of the bolted-down milk bottles at that county fair midway game.

     Deep inside a nondescript secret lab, Dr. Ben Kendall (The Hangover’s Zach Galifianakis) has made remarkable breakthroughs in animal training and has assembled an elite force comprised of guinea pigs Darwin, Blaster, Juarez, mole Speckles and housefly Mooch. At the other end of town, billionaire manufacturer Leonard Saber announces his newest line of appliances featuring a smart chip that wirelessly and intelligently links the devices. When the coffeemaker detects a low supply of beans, for instance, it will add a shopping item to the homeowner’s PDA. But are the chips as innocuous as advertised?
    “No,” says the G-Force after intercepting encrypted intel that suggests the devices are much more nefarious. Now the team must save the world from espresso machines gone wild while demonstrating their own value to the FBI who wants to shutdown the program as part of a cost-savings initiative. 
     G-Force topped the box-office chart this weekend, though that says less about the quality of this film than the need for family fair deep into this final stretch of summer vacation. Indeed, the film is targeted to grade-school audiences. Unfortunately, unlike more clever family films like those from PIXAR, there is little for older audiences. The plot is cliché, it’s always about a rouge chip. The heroes are a secret crack team of commandos, librarians never seem to get called-up to save the planet. The villain? British, of course, never Slovak.
     To be fair, Nicolas Cage, Tracy Morgan and Steve Buscemi bring a dimension to the characters in this adequate film. Funny moments, there are a few. In one, Speckles fakes his death hoping a pet store owner will bury him and he’ll dig his way to freedom but he is instead bagged and unceremoniously tossed in the trash.
    Mostly, though, the film is flush with missed opportunities. For example, the origins of the rodents are never explored. They could have been rescued from test labs: one perennially caffeinated, another permanently (and grotesquely) rouged. Both haunted by flashbacks. A darker film, yes, but one much more original. Instead, we get a pimped-out hamster ball, a flatulent obese half-brother, and a micro-robotic fly going up someone’s nose.

  
 
2 Honks
MPAA Rating: PG for some mild action and rude humor.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809936378/trailer

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"Bruno" sucks

     Bruno sucks.
     That’s not a clever double entendre, it’s a rating. (Roger Ebert ought to forfeit his credentials for giving it 3 ½ stars; celebrity gift baskets and the high-life of pre-release junkets have cost him his objectivity.)
      The fundamental problem with Bruno is that it tries too hard to be over the top resulting in gags that repulse rather than engage. The funniest bits are the ones underplayed, his stint as a TV extra and his interviews with parents, for example. “Are you comfortable with you child near lit phosphorous?” “Yes.” “Can your 30 pound child lose 10 pounds in week?” “If that’s what it takes to get the job, yes.”
      Did Elton, Bono and Sting know how bad this film would be when they signed on to it?
      What did you think?

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'Prince' Harry concocts winning potion

In the new film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth of the wildly popular series by J. K. Rowling, the venerable Hogwarts school of wizardry is under attack by Death Eaters. Even more chilling is the rumor that headmaster Albus Dumbledore spent 5000 sickles on a new desk for his office.

     In the continuing battle to destroy Lord Voldemort, Dumbledore invites his old colleague Professor Horace Slughorn to return to Hogwarts and asks Potter to befriend him in the hopes of mining a deep memory the Prof has regarding the origins of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (I erred earlier in naming him, by the way). In class, Potter finds a well-marked old copy of a textbook once belonging to someone known as “the Half-Blood Prince” containing powerfully effective potion corrections and variations. But one of the most powerful concoctions the class discovers is a love potion, and in it they find a new distraction as Ron Weasley gets caught in a quaint love quadrangle involving Lavender, Romilda and inevitably, Hermione. Harry, too, learns that he is not immune to the sting of Cupid’s arrow or the curves of Ron’s sister Ginny. But these are only minor distractions compared to the matter at hand: Potter must collect and destroy Voldemort’s horcruxes, in which are locked parts of the evil lord’s soul and thus are the key to his immortality.
      The midnight shows of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were packed with fans whose reaction was one of either, “it was great, the best of the series,” or, “it was awful, they left half of the book out” with opinions skewing towards the negative. One moviegoer even complained Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, was getting a bit too old to play a student, “those signature glasses,” he said wryly, “if you look real close, you can see they’re no-line bifocals.”
      Indeed, the books’ fans, who rightly feel some ownership in the franchise, will ultimately determine if the film succeeds or fails at the box-office (spoiler alert: it succeeds), but even those unfamiliar with the texts (worldwide, there are fifteen of us) will find it entertaining, experiencing only minor lapses and nothing tremendously confusing. Casual fans will quickly reacclimate with familiar characters like Hagrid and perennial creeps Draco Malfoy and Professor Snape. Which is to say that there’s something here for everyone: a riveting story, spectacular cinematography, even a quick round of Quidditch, but mostly, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the mortar that joins the earlier plots to the upcoming two-film epic series finale.

3 Honks
MPAA Rating:  PG for scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809791044/trailer

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I Love You, Beth Cooper ... NOT!

In I Love You, Beth Cooper, the new teen comedy from Harry Potter and Home Alone director Chris Columbus, a nerdish valedictorian professes his secret love for a hot cheerleader during the school’s commencement, a bold admission that would silence any audience, even the one at this year’s John Marshall graduation.

     Though we expect most valedictorians to one day cure cancer, most do little more than cure insomnia with their platitudes and trite nods to the coach who pushed them or the social science instructor who inspired them. Not Denis Cooverman. Midway through his tired oration he summons to courage to tell the world what he thinks of Beth Cooper. He loves her, of course, but he doesn't stop there. Emboldened, he continues, ripping first into the class bully, then the “stuck-up” girl, and finally Beth’s jerky boyfriend.
     Beth is understandably mortified, but at the same time flattered and accepts an invite to his graduation party. The social outcast’s soirée, though, has only one other guest, Cooverman’s best friend Rich Munsch. Beth arrives, but it's all over quickly when her jealous boyfriend, Kevin, comes looking for her and with his ROTC pals busts-up Cooverman’s house sending them all off on one action-filled night of getting to know each other. The problem is, Cooverman finds that the real Beth Cooper and the fantasy Beth Cooper are nothing alike.
     The “one wild night” feel of I Love You, Beth Cooper can surely be traced to director Chris Columbus' earliest effort, Adventures in Babysitting. The two share many plot points though Babysitting is much more clever. But that’s OK. ‘Clever’ is not one of this movie’s objectives.
     A few poignant moments notwithstanding -- Beth’s revelation, for instance, that high school graduation marks the end of her popularity but only the beginning of his -- the film clearly has no Oscar aspirations and its goal is simple: to crack-up the audience. In a handful of scenes, it does. For example, Rich’s empty-gym cheer makes Brüno look like Rambo. Unfortunately, too often, it misses altogether (Cow tipping? Give me a break!) or at least misses with its target audience as is the case of its brightest moment, the swashbuckling towel fight homage (complete with silhouettes) to The Adventures of Robin Hood. The one constant is actor Jack T. Carpenter, who plays Cooverman’s friend, Rich. He is clearly the breakout and we will see more of him, which cannot be said of the rest of this forgettable cast. .

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1 1/2 Honks
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual content, language, some teen drinking and drug references, and brief violence.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810007776/trailer

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Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009

A partial “filmography:”

Thriller (1983) directed by John Landis

 

Captain EO (1986) directed by Francis Ford Coppola

 

Bad (1987) directed by Martin Scorsese

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"Public Enemies" is a crime

A long and disappointing take on John Dillinger, Public Enemy #1, in which Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow panache and Donnie Brasco character immersion are nowhere to be found. Worse, as a gangster-era lawman, Christian Bale is no Kevin Costner which begs the question, how can you not compare this film (and unfavorably, at that) to Brian De Palma’s 1987 masterpiece “The Untouchables?”

 

What did you think?

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“Ice Age 3.” Not cool.

The new animated family film, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, tells of a perennially frozen land and its charming inhabitants … or as Minnesotans like to call it: January.

     Manny, Sid, and Diego are back in this third chapter of the saga that began with the phenomenally successful 2002 film, Ice Age. This go-round is all about family with Manny (voiced by Ray Romano) and wife Ellie (Queen Latifah) expecting their first baby mammoth while Sid (John Leguizamo) looks to raise some found dinosaur eggs as his own.
     One day, while tracking his little charges, Sid falls through some ice and finds himself in a lost underground world filled with dinosaurs … and danger. Manny, Ellie and old friend Diego (Denis Leary) set-out to save their chum and find an unlikely ally named Buck (Simon Pegg), a salty Australian-talking pirate-like weasel whose Moby Dick is a Suchomimus named Rudy. The four then go about reuniting both families.
     In spite of a strong weekend opening, Dawn of the Dinosaurs is probably the weakest of the Ice Age films. Antihero Diego is underplayed; the dinosaurs look like they were CNTL-V’ed from The Land Before Time; and, the humor is just plain silly, not clever at all (e.g., “Don’t ever yabba-dabba-do that again!”). In fact, were it not for Sid’s lisp, there would be nothing worth watching here. The lullaby he sings when trying to milk a water buffalo (“Hush, hush, you mean, vicious animal”) is a high point. Unfortunately, that isn’t saying much when so much of the humor goes like this: Sid, “it’s a girl!” Diego, “That’s his tail.” Sid, “It’s a boy!” The film may work on a specific level -- the little boys in the theater chuckled when Buck explained why a particular peril was named the ‘Chasm of Death’ (“Because whenever we said ‘big smelly crack’ it just made everyone giggle”) -- but it lacks a broader appeal.
     To be fair, the animation is stunning (and in 3D at some locations). In one early scene, for instance, Diego, who fears he is losing his edge, is in hot pursuit of a gazelle. As his prey take some precipitous evasive turns in slow-motion (ala Animal Planet), a small bit of slush splashes on the camera “lens.” But those sorts of things only highlight the technology behind the film, something, frankly, we take for granted these days. What it lacks is crisp writing. That’s something that can’t be CGed.

1 1/2 Honks
MPAA Rating: PG for mild humor and peril.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810004564/trailer 

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Toy stories

Toy stories
by Chris Miksanek
Rochester Post-Bulletin's Med City Movie Guy

While this week's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen marks what looks to be the summer's only blockbuster, it's hardly the only film we can expect that is based on a toy. Check out these others coming to a theater near you.

Bake Off! This feel-good movie stars Dakota Fanning as a young girl who enters a national cooking contest with her EASY-BAKE Oven. She wins and a scandal ensues when it turns out her little party cake isn’t made from scratch at all, but from a packet procured at Toys “R” Us.

Barrel of Monkeys. While on an expedition to find and tag a rare species of monkey in Paraguay, one of the environmentalists contracts Ebola. One by one the team succumbs and the expedition, which began as protectors, turns into hunters. Can the last two, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube, eradicate the deadly primates they sought to save, or is all of mankind doomed?

Rock’em Sock’em. In the South Bronx, there are only two ways to get by -- with your fists, or with a hotdog cart. Laurence Fishburne stars as Blue, a boxing has-been who has a run-in with a sidewalk vendor named Red (John Leguizamo). Acrimony accrues in this gritty film until the two vow to knock each other’s block off.

Magic 8-Ball.  The last thing Doug Ringman (Shia LaBeouf) remembers is that he was competing in a California 9-Ball tournament. As he was breaking, the crystal necklace from a spectator who leaned over to get a better look touched the eight-ball and a brilliant flash of light knocked him unconscious. Since then Ringman’s been unable to play professional pool but has the uncanny ability to foretell the future. Sample dialog, “Signs point to yes,” “My sources say no,” and “would you like an apple pie with that?”

Jack in the box. Jack has all the toys an eight-year-old can imagine, but the one he likes best is a cardboard box. Tim Burton directs this fantasy where a little boy can be anywhere or anything, sometimes to the chagrin of his fun-sucking liberal mother who says things like, “instead of a war-mongering Sherman Tank, why not pretend it’s something even more powerful: a voting booth.” Al Gore costars as Jerry, the evil recycle truck driver who wants to take his box away.