Little Shop of Horrors

1996 musical black comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: For the most part, it's the same as this one. Only this version has songs and probably took longer than two days to film. There's also more cleavage, less Jack Nicholson, more black people, and more color.

I had a "Guess This Movie" contest with the winner getting pick the next movie that I watched, and this is the movie that was sort of chosen for that. It was on the queue anyway, so this guy really didn't win anything. Sucker!

The only other time I saw this was in the theater. I was a big Rick Moranis fan, and since this was PG-13, I thought there might be a little partial nudity. I already liked puppets, but I wonder if this sparked an interest in cult black comedies. I can't think of any that I would have seen before seeing this. It was an interesting theater experience for me. I remember during "Suddenly Seymour" not being able to peel my eyes from Ellen Greene's cleavage, and I was perplexed and strangely aroused by the hermaphroditic Audrey II. When Audrey II assaults Audrey I (a scene that completes a 2012 "tentacle rape" trifecta for me, by the way), I got stiff and hoped my date--the pudgy and red-haired Cassandra, a girl who may or may not actually exist--didn't notice. When Audrey II depantsed Rick Moranis, I climaxed, and I wasn't ashamed of it then and am not ashamed to admit it now. Also--and this made the Brazil Times so you can verify it--during the scene where Audrey is crying because her boyfriend was just smashed by the demolished building and the music rumbled to life and played "Suddenly Seymour" and then Seymour emerges from all the smoke, the theater crowd erupted with cheers. People started disrobing and having sexual intercourse right in the theater aisles, somebody started a small fire and started throwing trash into it, a person a few seats next to me fell to his knees and started eating through the cushion of the chair he had been sitting on, somebody stood a few inches from the screen and screamed The Kaddish. Sure, the songs in this are memorable enough, but all the extracurriculars made this a movie experience I will never forget. The songs in this, all intentionally corny, aren't bad, but they're dated more from the bass lines than they are the doo-wop doo-wops provided by the trio of background singers. I like them, by the way, like a dramatic chorus. Not sure why they were murmuring "summertime" during the scene when Seymour's boss gets eaten. [Edit: Ah, it was "suppertime," not "summertime." That makes more sense.] Rick Moranis, a guy who ruined what could have been one of the greatest careers in movie history by deciding to focus on his family, isn't a bad singer, but he's out-performed by Ellen Greene, sometimes comically. Either she's overdoing things or he's underdoing them. And then there's Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops whose performance would have been better if he didn't have such stupid things to sing. "I'm just a mean green mother from outer space, and I'm bad." "Would you like a Cadillac car? Or a guest shot on Jack Paar? How about a date with Hedy Lamarr?" Ick. He does get to use one of my all-time favorite phrases--"No shit, Sherlock"--so it's not a total loss. Back to Ellen Greene and her cleavage. She's got an impressive singing voice, but the Olive Oyl screeching voice thing drove me nuts. She made up for it by riding side-straddle on the back of Steve Martin's motorbike though. Hot! Steve Martin is delightfully over the top, part-Elvis and part-Marquis de Sade, and I especially enjoyed seeing him from the perspective of a uvula. And I had completely forgotten that Bill Murray was in this in Jack Nicholson's role. That's still a completely pointless scene. The stylized setting looks great, and the puppet work is amazing. No, I never believed there was really a man-eating plant in the room, but I also couldn't figure out how exactly that many parts of Audrey II moved around like that. As my five and a half regular blog readers know, I'm easily impressed by puppets though. A couple gags that I really liked: John Candy's radio show that apparently shows his listeners weird things. How would that work on the radio? And waiting to be interviewed after Rick Moranis was a little person with a saxophone-playing nun ventriloquist dummy. I tried to find the little person's name, but I can't even find evidence on the Internet that that scene exists. It's possible that I hallucinated again.

La Course en Tete

1974 cycling documentary

Rating: 13/20 (Mark: 15/20)

Plot: A look at Belgium cycling superstar Eddy Merckx as he trains and races and juggles a family life.

Best thing about this one: I get to use my "bagpipes" label. A bagpipe-heavy score, by the way, never really made sense to me. I was tricked into watching this by my brother who translated La Course en Tete as "The Way of the Tits" and told me it was "boob kung-fu" which, as a warm-blooded American male, I was excited about. And then this didn't have kung-fu or boobs, just a bunch of cycling. And I mean lots of cycling. For the cycling enthusiast, this might make a lot of sense on its own. I had to have a lot explained to me by a cycling enthusiast, almost as much I need comic book movies explained to me by comic book enthusiasts. I also had problems with the chronology of this, and I suspect that it was all sort of random. There was a lot of exciting cycling action, but after a while, enough was enough. Once this hit the four hour mark, I had hit my limit. I did come away with a respect for Eddy Merckx though which I suppose was the point. My favorite bits: an opening montage of a bunch of old-timey bicycle footage and a later montage of a lot of horrendous accidents. One of those probably was accompanied by inexplicable bagpipe music.

Step Brothers

2008 "comedy"

Rating: 6/20 (Anonymous: 4/20; Pump or Astro-Pretzel: 3/20)

Plot: A couple unemployed middle-aged good-for-absolutely-nothing jackasses become the titular step-brothers after their parents hook up at a convention and later marry. Initially, they can't stand each other, but once they realize they have a lot in common, like their shared affinity for night vision goggles, they become friends. But their shared interests and attempts to start their own company threaten to tear the happy newlyweds apart.

I wanted to watch In the Line of Fire, but my step brother wanted to watch this instead. We fought over that for a while--rolling around on the floor, poking eyes, farting on each other, giving wedgies, kicking nutsacks, etc.--before realizing that we had a love of Mary Steenburgen in common. Then, we high-fived each other awkwardly, and he broke his finger. And that story, ladies and gentlemen, is just as clever as the one in the movie Step Brothers. Attempting to recapture the magic of Talladega Nights, a movie I've been told is a classic, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly stupid it up in this one that reminds me simultaneously of a whole bunch of predictable 80's crap and every single other Will Ferrell movie I've ever seen. There's not a single laugh to be had in this thing. It fits right in with that disturbing trend in modern comedies where lazy writers assume that creating really uncomfortable situations for characters who could never actually exist is automatically going to be funny. Awkward is not a synonym for hilarious. I should know because I looked it up, and I'm an English teacher.

It took me a while to remember it, but I made a promise around Christmas that I would not have another Will Ferrell movie on this blog. See? I'm really sorry that my own step brother made me break that promise. Maybe I'll fart on him later.

Elf

2003 holiday comedy

Rating: 10/20 (Toby: 5/20; Kasey: 10/20; Tramayne: 7/20; Dakota: 13/20; Tyler: 1/20; Derrick: 10/20; Jacob: 12/20; Kendrick: 15/20; Jazzmin: 3/20; Taylor: 17/20; Brionna: 20/20; Michaela: 16/20; Hailey: 12/20; Damion: 19.9/20; Mikhail: 1.5/20; David: 15/20; Kimberly: 16/20; Yamira: 20/20; Stephen: 4/20; Sebastian: 2/20; Elizabeth: 20/20; Brianna: 15/20; Rahim: 15/20; Austin: 13/20; Krista: 10/20)

This is already on the blog right here.
The movie isn't any better now, but I learned that middle schoolers like when Will Ferrell runs face-first into walls. Well, I guess I knew that already which makes Elf completely useless to me. And look at that poster up there. I don't want to watch a movie that features a guy who can make that face. In fact, no more Will Ferrell movies for me. You have my word that you won't see him on these pages ever again.

The Pistol: The Birth of a Legend

1991 biopic

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A tall tale based on young Pete Maravich, a little guy with a big heart. He works hard, dribbling around his living room with a blindfold and practicing his father's basketball drills, until he winds up on starting for the varsity team as an 8th grader.

The only thing bigger than this kid's heart is the chunk of cheese the makers of this movie drop in your lap. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate the message behind the movie. But when a character actually said, "Pete, watching you makes me want to dream," I had to start giggling. It's cheese from the get-go as we open with a scene of an old Maravich conversing with his son or some other kid (something about dreaming, I think) while walking in an empty gymnasium. There's gratuitous patriotism; at one point, there's a completely random shot of an American flag. I think it's to remind the viewer about dreaming or something. There are also about five too many of those 1980s musical montage scenes. I thought the kid playing Maravich (Adam Guier) was great. He looked a little slow as he was making his moves, but you could tell he had some game when he was spinning the ball on his finger, making behind the back or head passes, and dribbling around. But enough's enough. I don't need to see another five minute montage with terrible music to show me how hard he works. I guess it was to show what a person should do when they have a dream or something. The very worst thing about this movie is the narration. Whenever the narrator says anything, it seems like he's interrupting. And it's completely unnecessary since whatever he says is usually repeated visually or through character dialogue right after he's finished talking anyway. I'm fairly sure that liberties were taken with the late Maravich's story, but there are a couple few scenes that would have really embarrassed him. There are probably some sweaters that would have embarrassed him, too. One scene involves young Pete (a little guy with a big heart) finally deciding to stand up to the bully, a comeback we've been waiting for the entire movie, when all he can say is, "You're a butthead." You're a butthead? Come on, Pistol Pete! A scene involving an intentional foul is so poorly done that it made half of the people I watched this with laugh. Somehow, he's knocked unconscious even though he didn't have an injury to the head. The head, as you probably know, is where dreams are kept. And the final scene? Whoa. I almost lost my lunch. The above poster has the same effect actually.

This was watched on the big screen at school with students. I forgot to ask them for their ratings. They're a bunch of buttheads anyway.

Up

2009 best animated feature

Rating: 18/20 (Kayla: 14/20; Steven: 16/20; Dillon: 14/20; Rachel 15/20; Cameron: 17/20; Mariana: 9/20; Etzlin: 10/20; Antwana: 20/20; Alivia: 11/20; Courtlyn: 14/20; Wendy: 20/20; Cody: 15/20; Anthony: 13/20; Bradley: 12/20; Yoselin: 17/20; LaDon: 19/20; Ashley: 15/20; Darrian: 20/20; DeArion: 15/20; Brenna: 17/20; Jeremiah: 19/20)

This is already in the blog, but I got paid to watch it last week. I like it even more each time I watch it, something I wasn't sure would be the case when I first saw it in the theater. It's so beautifully constructed, especially if you buy into my "reading" of the story. It shakes you up, it excites you, it makes you laugh. It's poetic, it's mature, it's silly, it's graceful, it's magical. It's fun for little kids, it's fun for teenagers, and it's fun for adults. Great music, great voice acting, and great animation. It's a work of art, and in Pixar's top three.

Side note: It was standardized testing week, and my grade was finished. I had a choice to show this or The Pacifier with The Rock. The kids voted for The Rock, but then I told them that their vote didn't even matter and to shut their mouths and stop whining about things.

Love Happens

2009 terrorist attack

Rating: 7/20 (Dylan: 4/20)

Plot: Poor Mitch. Or whatever his name is. After his wife dies in an automobile accident, Mitch becomes a self-help guru, touring and writing books in order to help people move on after the loss of their loved ones even though he's far less than an expert in that category. While in Seattle, the hometown of his wife's parents and her parrot, he meets Jennifer Aniston and decides that having sex with her might help him to forget the past.

This movie starts with the cliche about making lemonade when life hands you lemons. I think the line (and subsequent similar banalities) is meant to show that Aaron Eckhart's character's self-help advice is trite and superficial. Still, it's a bad start to the movie. Actually, it might be the perfect start for this movie, an hour-and-a-half-or-so full of hackneyed drivel and predictable sludge. I stopped assuming Jennifer Aniston will eventually make a good movie a long time ago. She's the same character that she always is, and cute to the point where she becomes a real distraction. I don't know who this Aaron Eckhart fellow is, but he's got the range of a telephone pole. Love Happens' worst crime is when it spontaneously turned into a commercial for Home Depot. At that point, I turned to the guy sitting next to me on the plane (a guy who was on the first leg of a 26 hour trip to somewhere in the Middle East [or Middle Earth? I think he might have said Middle Earth.]) and said, "Can you believe this crap?" He opened his eyes and said, "Please stop talking to me. I really need to sleep." The best thing about this movie was probably the bird. And unfortunately, the bird wasn't even very good.

Julie and Julia

2009 duo-biopic

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 16/20; Becky: 18/20; Tom: 8/20)

Plot: An extremely whiny wannabe writer named Julie moves to Queens with her supportive and loving husband. She hates her friends and her job and doesn't understand why nobody else thinks she's the most important person on the planet. Since all egomaniacal whiny wannabe writers wind up starting blogs, she decides to start her own, a three hundred and sixty-five day adventure in which she'll cook all five hundred and some recipes in the Julia Child cookbook. Her irritating story is juxtaposed with Julia Child's life with her own supportive and loving husband and her developing interest in cooking. The two meet, and the bitter elderly Julia Child (***spoiler alert***) defeats Julie in an epic fight with utensils and rolling pins and then forces her husband to watch as she debones her and devours her lifeless carcass while giggling madly through blood-stained false teeth.

I would have really liked this if it was just called Julia. Meryl Streep is great in her portrayal of the quirky and fascinating Childs. There's some humorous banter between her and her husband, and there are also some very touching moments as well. When the movie focused on Julia Childs, this was actually good. Unfortunately, there's a Julie in the story, too. She wrote the blog, she turned the blog into the book, and the book and blog gave her the easy fame she longed for. If the character in the movie is anything like the real person, as I suspect is the case, then the real person is irritating, pretentious, and hopelessly self-centered. The most revealing part of her story is when she finds out that Julia Childs hates her. It was easy to see why. Almost everything she says is irritating, and every minute detail of her life is blown up into a major drama. As my faithful readers know, I'm not generally a hateful fellow, but I genuinely hope that people start randomly attacking her with food at all her future speaking engagements. Julie is played by the mousy Amy Adams, sort of a Meg Ryan lite. And it's hard to imagine an actress lighter and fluffier than Meg Ryan. This is the type of role that will likely cause me to never give her a fair chance in another movie. Actually, her annoying character in this might cause me to completely avoid any future Amy Adams movies unless Crispin Glover or Vincent Price happens to be in them as well. So, to sum it all up: Meryl Streep is great. Somebody needs to slap around Julie Powell. Oh, one final note. If you watch this hoping to see a Julia Child sex scene, expect to be disappointed. Close counts only in horseshoes and hand grenades and not in Julia Child sex scenes.

Elf

2003 Christmas comedy

Rating: 10/20 (Dylan: 6/20; Emma 2/20; Random Guy Sitting Next to Me on the Plane: 14/20)

Plot: Orphan Buddy, intrigued by Santa's sack, crawls in while the jolly old elf is busying himself under the orphanage Christmas tree and is dashed away to the North Pole. He's adopted by Papa Elf and tries his best to make toys and perform other elf tasks, but it becomes obvious to him, because of his size and lack of elf skills, that he isn't an elf. He decides to travel to New York City and find his real father.

As a displaced-person-trying-comically-to-adapt-to-his-new-surroundings comedy (i.e. Crocodile Dundee, the television series Perfect Strangers, and seemingly anything with Pauly Shore in it), this is an original and humorous idea, and I suppose Will Ferrell is the perfect man to fit those tights. Unfortunately, not much of the actual writing is original. This is as predictable as it gets. I understand that it really has to be--it's a Christmas story and it's got to have a happy ending where the elf man gets the girl, the grouchy guy becomes a better father, and Christmas is saved--but it really makes everything way too light and fluffy. Like all Will Ferrell movies, a handful of the material works and brings, at the very least, a grin while the majority of the jokes and slapstick moments and quotables make you wonder not only why you continue watching the movie but why you even should go on living. The second half of the movie is especially cringe-worthy. You frolic along with Buddy through an exposition, and then it feels like somebody, probably James Caan, has kidnapped you, put you in a sleigh, and crashed through a candy cane forest to hurry toward an action-packed climax. Dizzying! You watch because you want to checkmark your list of predictions and because you're on an airplane and have nothing better to do. At least this wasn't as bad as the worst movie I've seen on an airplane--The Polar Express--which I still suspect was part of some ingenious terrorist attack. The one question I'm left with after watching Elf: Was Bob Newhart embarrassed after his participation in this movie?

A Christmas Story

1983 Christmas comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: In the fictional town of Hohman, Indiana, in the fictional 1940s, little Ralphie waits for Christmas and dreams of Santa Claus bringing him a BB gun even though his parents, his teacher, and even Santa warns him that he'll shoot his eyes out. Meanwhile, he deals with bullies, listens to the radio, watches his parents' passive-aggressive battles concerning a lewd lamp, hangs out with his friends, and curses.

I hadn't seen this in a while and completely forgot that it takes place in Indiana. Is it insanely popular in the rest of America (or, just the middle part of America) or is this strictly a Hoosier thing? I don't think this is uproariously funny, more mildly humorous and nostalgic, but it's quotable, has a couple scenes that could accurately be labeled as holiday movie classics, and is a rare example of a movie with heavy narration that actually works. I really like the goofy kid, played by Peter Billingsley, and I think the rapport between his parents works really well. Nice, subtle period details add to the flavor and make this one fit just like a comfortable shoe. I guess that's why people like it so much.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

2009 comedy

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Die unpassende mallspindel muss das mall von den mittleren dieben allein verteidigen und gewinnen sie das herz eines reizenden mitarbeiters. Ha ha! Er ist sehr fett und reitet ein Segway. Ha ha!

Ableitung und nicht lustiges. Ich rollte meine augen vier weitere mal, als ich mich lachte nullzeiten lachte. Kevin James ist nicht schrecklich, aber er ist wie ein armes mannes Jack Black. Wies Jack Black diese rolle zuruck? Reinfalle Kevin James herum viel! Ha ha! Er ist liebenswert, abert ich bin nicht ich mag ihn sicher. Ich wurde in das aufpassen dieses an der schule betrogen. Ja, erhielt ich zahlend diesen film aufzupassen. Ha ha!

Marley and Me

2008 depressing comedy

Rating: 9/20 (Mother-in-law: 15/20; Jen: 11/20; Dylan: 12/20; Emma: 12/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Rating: Two fairly boring people get married and start scratching items off their goals list. They get newspaper jobs, buy a house, find themselves a dog, and start their family.

I loathed this movie. It's essentially the Cliff Notes version of marriage and family, like a two hour montage with the occasional montage-within-a-montage. It drags. If it's a comedy (I honestly couldn't tell; there are some moments that are supposed to be funny), then it's criminally unfunny. If it's a straight drama, it's predictable and sickeningly manipulative. The story progresses exactly as you figure it would complete with an ending that, if you've ever seen another movie with a dog's name in the title, you'll know before even popping the movie in the dvd player. Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson collect their paychecks although they do nothing to create authentic characters or inject a little life into these characters we're supposed to identify with, pull for, appreciate, experience. This is just filled with so much clumsy sentimentality. The quick way it tosses in mid-life crisis or postpartum depression and then yanks it back almost with an "Oops! Excuse me. That shouldn't be in there. Let me show you some more mildly humorous dog slapstick stuff instead!" attitude is borderline offensive. It wasn't my idea to watch this, but I sure expected to enjoy it at least a little bit. At least the dogs were good. And by the way, this is nowhere near a movie that most parents will want their children seeing. It really makes me wonder if Owen Wilson started feeling depressed after filming Marley and Me, maybe seeing it as the beginning of the end of his career. Awful movie.