February 11, 2011, - 5:17 pm
Wknd Box Office: Just Go With It, Barney’s Version, The Eagle
Once again, there’s nothing great at the movies, this weekend. But the relative best of the bunch is a lite–very, very lite–version of “300.”
* “Just Go With It“: More like, Just Avoid It (Like the Plague). Four words: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston. When either is in a movie, you know to run the other way. When both are in it, run like hell. Whenever I see the “Happy Madison” production company (Sandler’s company) logo at the beginning of a movie, it’s like the Chinese symbol for, “Garbage Ahead.” Everything Sandler touches turns to dreck, but, for him, turns into gold. So, I guess I should call him “RumpelSandlerkin.” I just wish he wouldn’t push the “I’m a Jew” thing in our face in his awful movies, as some sort of kosher seal of approval for crap. Please, Adam, we don’t wanna claim ya.
This wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but it was very, very close. I laughed less than a handful of times during this “comedy,” in which the jokes are mostly disgusting bathroom humor–literally fecal material stuff, getting hit in the penis, and falling on a ladder on the penis. Oh, and some plastic surgery accidents. Yeah, that’s funny . . . if you’re a pothead frat-boy slacker. I mean, really, a kid going to the bathroom and defecating on a guy’s arm because he’s asleep in the bathtub and has his arm in the toilet–this is funny? Yuck.
The story: a Jewish plastic surgeon who used to have a nose that looked like a sausage discovers that wearing a wedding ring, even though he’s not married, helps him attract women at bars, etc. But, eventually, Sandler meets the girl of his dreams (or so he thinks), swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker (terrible actress and real-life wife of tennis player Andy Roddick, who has a cameo in the movie). He has sex with her after a party, and when they wake up the next morning, she discovers his wedding ring, which she thinks is real. He can’t tell her it’s just a tactic to pick up women, so he makes up a story that his medical assistant, Jennifer Aniston is his wife, but that they are getting divorced. For the rest of the movie, Aniston and her kids pretend to be Sandler’s family, and they are all on vacation in Hawaii. Nicole Kidman (so much botox my face froze looking at her close-ups) plays Aniston’s enemy from her college sorority. Dave Matthews plays her husband.
Believe me, I’m making it sound better–much better–than it is. It’s simply awful. And gross. Not to mention, predictable. Typical Sandler silver screen sludge (say that five times fast). Skipworthy to the max.
FOUR MARXES
Watch the trailer . . .
* “The Eagle“: This is the best of this weekend’s new movie releases, but all things are relative. I found this movie a little too long and drawn out. And I question the casting of the very hot–but way too ghetto–Channing Tatum as a Roman warrior general in a “300 Lite,” which is basically what this movie is. He just didn’t seem right for the role. Too hayseed-esque.
The movie takes place when the Romans occupied and ruled England. Tatum is the son of a Roman warrior general who died in a botched battle, or so the story goes. Tatum thinks his father was far more noble than legend has it, and he, himself, is now a young general with many of doubters even among his closest top officers. He is seeking to regain the eagle, a talisman/emblem of his father’s legion of soldiers, and willing to fight to the death to get it. But while his bravery in battle regains him the confidence of his men, Tatum is injured and retired from the battlefield, recovering at his uncle, Donald Sutherland’s house. Soon, Tatum and his servant are planning an incursion to regain the eagle from enemy warring tribes and have infiltrated.
This is a guy’s movie. There are many extended fighting scenes and, for the women who tag along, there are gratuitous shots galore of Tatum’s well-toned naked chest and most of the rest of his body. But, like I said, the movie was slow and long-ish. And it lacked that spark or special something. Who fights and gets men killed for a tiny statue? Seems kinda dumb to me. Not heroic. On the other hand, there was nothing objectionable in this and it shows men and masculinity in a positive, worthy light.
ONE AND A HALF REAGANS
Watch the trailer . . .
* “Barney’s Version“: I’m not sure what the point of this extremely long, and boring movie was, other than to mimic Adam Sandler’s plan to make Jews look bad and coarse. It was clearly made by either self-hating Jews or anti-Semites or both. If I were an author of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” transported in a time machine to this century, this is the kind of film I’d be making. Based on a novel by the late Canadian Jewish writer, Mordecai Richler, Paul Giamatti plays Barney Panofsky, a hippie-turned-PBS-television-exec-turned-producer-of-low-budget-TV-shows. His father, a very low-class Montreal cop, is played by Dustin Hoffman.
The movie follows Panofsky from his marriage to a drugged out nutty Jewish woman to his marriage to a spoiled Jewish woman, to his leaving her on their wedding night to pick up another woman, who becomes his third wife and, then, ex-wife. Oh, and then there’s the matter of whether Barney killed his best friend, something of which he’s accused in the media and by the investigating police detective. And, finally, Barney gets Alzheimer’s disease and dies. And this is entertaining because . . . ?
Not only was this extremely sad and depressing (and a pointless waste of time), but it also throws in every anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews in the book. One scene shows Barney’s uncle telling him how to cheat people out of money by claiming it’s to support Israel and that it will be the only place to go because the Holocaust will happen again. Oy vey. Even the dish I hate most, gefilte fish, is infinitely more palatable than this trash.
They’re showing this mostly in arthouse theaters, where liberal-lefty Jews who voted for Barack Obama will actually think this is a great movie because it’s about Jews. Who needs Bin Laden Studios, when you have the people who made this movie doing a far better job at the assignment?
Paul Giamatti is a great actor, but he belongs in far better stuff than this. And I wonder how he’d feel about a Jewish actor playing the worst stereotypes of Italians in a movie.
FOUR MARXES PLUS A BIN LADEN
Watch the trailer . . .
Tags: Adam Sandler, Andy Roddick, Barney Panofsky, Barney's Version, Brooklyn Decker, Channing Tatum, Dave Matthews, Donald Sutherland, Dustin Hoffman, Happy Madison, Jennifer Aniston, Jewish, Just Go With It, Mordecai Richler, movie, movie review, Movie Reviews, Nicole Kidman, Paul Giamatti, Roman, The Eagle
Just how many more “romans can’t survive north of the wall” movies do we really need? They release at least one or two every year, in theaters or direct to video. Please, just come up with something original.
How about doing one about the “Lost Legion”. A whole roman legion is tricked in to the German forest and completely wiped out. To Rome they just disappeared. Signs of their final battle weren’t discovered until the 1980’s.
ender on February 11, 2011 at 9:23 pm