Date Night (2010)

Tags

Action, Comedy, Common, Date Night, Jimmi Simpson, Mark Wahlberg, Movie, Ray Liotta, Romance, Steve Carrell, Taraji P. Henson, Tina Fey

 

Dwight! I need your help!

PG-13

Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mark Wahlberg, Taraji P. Henson, Jimmi Simpson, Common, Ray Liotta

Claire: If we’re going to pay this much for crab, it better sing and dance and introduce us to the Little Mermaid!

While out on a date night, a married couple gets mistaken for two people who are trying to blackmail a politician.  They have to go on the run from crooked police officers as well as some mafia guys, all the while trying to figure out why they’re being chased.

This could have been…better.

The pairing of Steve Carell and Tina Fey actually worked pretty well in the quieter moments where the two were just engaging in some banter over dinner.  The problem is, the movie feels like it has to ramp up the action and adventure because lord knows we wouldn’t want to watch two funny people actually getting the chance to be funny.  No, we would rather watch them drive cars in high speed chases or get in fights or shoot guns.  The more adventurous a scene tries to be, the more it just grinds the movie to a stop.

I’m not sure why they had Fey’s character be kind of dumb so often, but at least she played it for a few a laughs.  Especially when she’s confused over what exactly a flash drive (aka a “computer sticky thing”) is.

Going back to my previous point, though, what is this obsession Hollywood has with taking everything way over the top?  Is it just lazy writing?  Instead of having to write a few pages of dialogue, they just throw in a totally unrealistic and unnecessary car chase?  Where’s the effort??  I know, old news…

Okay, moving on.  Mark Wahlberg shows up a little ways in, always shirtless, and gets a few laughs, but not as many as it seems like he should.  And that’s pretty much the story of the whole film.  It seems like it should be funnier than it is, but often it just lays there spinning its wheels while it tries to top itself in ridiculousness or awkwardness.

You have two funny people in your movie.  Let them be funny!

Don’t steal other people’s reservations at restaurants.

10 – 2 for not being as funny as it should/could be – 1.8 for too many silly, over-the-top sequences = 6.2

Youth In Revolt (2009)

Tags

Comedy, Drama, Fred Willard, Jean Smart, Michael Cera, Movie, Portia Doubleday, Ray Liotta, Romance, Steve Buscemi, Youth In Revolt, Zach Galifianakis

see, this is what you're supposed to be thinking with...this thing up here...

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Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard, Ray Liotta, Zach Galifianakis

Nick: How are we gonna get down there?
Vijay: We could use my grandmother’s car.
Nick: Would she let us have it?
Vijay: She’s in a hospital at the moment, hooked up to life support equipment, so permission is not really a salient issue.

Nice guy Nick (Cera) must turn into bad boy Francois in order to win the girl of his dreams.

So I’ve got this really original idea for a movie!  See, there’s this geeky teen who doesn’t have a lot of friends and doesn’t do well with the ladies.  In fact, he’s a virgin!  And he’s really ashamed about it, as any 16 year old should be, naturally.  He’s a really nice guy, but has to sit back and watch as the girls all go for the better looking jerks.  But then, through some strange circumstances, our hero ends up meeting a beautiful, lonely girl looking for a way out of her unfulfilling situation.  He’ll go to great lengths to impress her and be the guy that he thinks she’d want, but in the end he’ll discover that all along he just needed to be himself.

Whaddya think?

It’s been done?  4,768 times?  Huh…I must’ve missed all of those.

Well, okay, let’s borrow some originality from some other movies.  Let’s have Nick develop a Tyler Durden like persona that will help him become the bad boy.  We’ll call him Francois, and he’ll have a wispy little mustache and smoke cigarettes.

More?

Okay, Nick has a rough family life.  His parents are divorced and are both dating people they shouldn’t be dating.  There’s all kinds of comedic potential there…presumably.  We’ll get Zach Galifi-whatever and I’m sure he’ll just make his role funny.  We won’t even need to write funny lines for him.  That should work.

Oh, and the girl’s parents are religious freaks!  And her brother’s a druggie…

Still not enough?

Okay, we’ll work in a big explosion, some animated moments, a few punches, some light sex, and a Steve Buscemi freakout!  Plus…dinosaurs!  Huge, rampaging dinosaurs that are constantly jumping out and trying to eat everybody!

No on the dinosaurs?  Okay, but the rest of it should work fine!

What’s the moral of the movie?  Well…early on we’ll have Nick say “In the movies, the good guy gets the girl.  In real life, it’s usually the prick.”  Then we’ll have him say something in the end about how he really only had to be himself all along.  Though actually, the girl will have never been truly interested in him until he became more of a bad boy.  So it’ll be kind of ironic…or something.  Don’t ya think?

Eh, it’ll all work itself out once we’re filming, I’m sure.

So…can I have money now so we can get started?  Oh, and do you have Jesse Eisenberg’s number…?  Oh…well what about Michael Cera’s?

Michael Cera clearly does not mind playing the same role over and over again.

10 – 1 because it’s just not a very original setup – 1.5 for being too slow moving at times – 1.5 for just not being consistently funny = 6.0

Observe and Report (2009)

Tags

Anna Faris, Comedy, Michael Pena, Movie, Observe and Report, Ray Liotta, Seth Rogen

this doesn't bother you, does it?

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Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Michael Pena, Ray Liotta

Charles: Are we gonna be getting paid extra for this?  Because…it’s like…pretty separate…
Ronnie: Let me ask you something.  How much did they get paid to storm Normandy?  How much did King Arthur get paid to kill Merlin?  How much did they get paid to invent television?  Nothing.  They did it because they knew it was right.

The head of mall security, Ronnie Barnhardt (Rogen), is a bizarre, angry, awkward, occasionally violent guy who thinks he has more power than he really does.  When a man flashes several women in the parking lot and then several stores in the mall are robbed, Ronnie resents the police taking away what he sees as his case.  Ronnie attempts to solve the case, join the police force, and win the love of a makeup counter girl, Brandi (Faris).

This is yet another middling comedy featuring Seth Rogen, a lot of obscenities, copious amounts of male nudity, and broad character stereotypes.  Sure, there are funny moments, but the central character of Ronnie is clearly so disturbed that it’s hard to see most of the movie as even dark comedy.

It’s the usual set up:  a generally good-hearted, but socially awkward buffoon is in a position that affords him less power than he thinks he has, so he goes around intimidating people and overstepping his authority whenever he feels like it.  (How is Will Ferrell not in this movie??)  Our ‘hero’ also pines for the vapid, obnoxious girl who works at the makeup counter, all the while being oblivious to the flirtations of the cute, nice girl who works at one of the restaurants in the food court.  Bet ya can’t guess who he eventually ends up with!

There are some funny exchanges and clever moments, but for the most part, it’s stuff we’ve seen before, many times.  Overriding it all is that creepy feeling that we’re watching a disturbed individual who needs real help.  Ronnie is delusional, has a penchant for violence, is from a broken family (his mother blames him for his father leaving them), and has been diagnosed as bi-polar.  I know all that stuff can, and has been used to comedic effect before, but here it just falls flat.

I think one character summed it up well when he emerges from the closet he was hiding in to overhear Ronnie being rejected by the police force:  “Ya know, I thought this was going to be funny, but…it’s just sad.”

Apparently you can beat up several police officers and only spend a couple days in jail.

10 – 4 for being more disturbing than funny – .4 for standard, predictable plotting – .5 for some annoying characters and performances = 5.1