January 14, 2011, - 4:58 pm
Wknd Box Office: Green Hornet, Dilemma, Blue Valentine, Somewhere, Rabbit Hole, Four Lions
It’s another Netflix/Blockbuster/rent-it/just-stay-home weekend at the box office. Yup, everything pretty much stinks.
* “The Green Hornet“: This is the disaster that happens when an overpaid, talentless slacker actor from “Knocked Up” (read my review) gets to acquire, write, produce, and completely ruin a classic comic book superhero. Thanks, Seth Rogen.
I wanted to see a real superhero movie, not one in which a slacker becomes a silly parody of a superhero, along with the parodies of villains that populate this movie. I liked the gadgets and cool cars, but that’s about it. The rest of it is just a mess.
And, parents, beware of this movie. Who makes a superhero movie–to which kids are sure to flock–filled with four-letter and otherwise inappropriate words? The hack, Seth Rogen, that’s who. The family of George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, who invented the Green Hornet and still own the rights, must really be desperate for a payday to license Rogen to so utterly poop on their ancestors’ creation.
The story in this movie has nothing to do with the real Green Hornet, the masked vigilante who became part of American pop culture. This is just some uncreative, unimaginative idiot’s (Rogen’s) view of what a superhero should be like: unheroic and stupid. And inept, too. In this warped version, Rogen plays Britt Reid, the slacker, playboy son of a billionaire newspaper magnate. When his father dies, Reid takes over the newspaper and wants to restore it to its former glory on the advice of his thinks-she’s-smart secretary, a somewhat haggard-looking Cameron Diaz.
Rogen also discovers that his father’s mechanic, Kato, has a knack for building fantastic security features in a fabulous collection of cars. And he also has a knack for beating up multiple people in a fight. Soon, Rogen and Kato are baiting and fighting criminals, while posing as criminals to get in on the game. The criminals they are fighting have as their crime lord a silly, diminutive guy played by Christoph Waltz. Wow, did he fall far from his masterful role as the Nazi in “Inglourious Basterds” (read my review). Rogen also discovers that the District Attorney is evil and trying to co-opt news coverage of his on-the-job performance.
Not only was the movie a mess and not the least bit interesting, but I also found it long, slow, and kinda boring, and briefly fell asleep despite all the eye-candy gadgets and loud soundtrack. This wasn’t a tight movie. It was sloppy. And stupid.
This morning on SiriusXM Patriot Channel’s Mike Church Show, on which I do movie reviews every Friday morning between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m. Eastern, I gave this half a Reagan ONLY because I liked the cool cars with cool gadgets, but I was in error. In writing this review, it’s so clear it deserves so much less. Thus, I now give it the half Marx it deserves, which is, frankly, being charitable.
ONE-HALF MARX
Watch the trailer . . .
* “The Dilemma“: I like Vince Vaughn, but his movies are becoming less and less funny, and more and more painful to sit through. This is the latest nadir on the trajectory downward. It wasn’t funny. It was a mess. And it was basically a chick flick . . . and the chicks were Vince Vaughn and Kevin James. The bro-mance was filled with melodrama and heated arguments and speeches by and between guys. And the women: well, Queen Latifah (if you can call her a woman, and that’s debatable) had two, um, “memorable” lines in this movie. Both were about how she’s “sporting lady wood.” TMI, (wo)MAN. Too Much Info. The same goes for the in-your-face naked butt shot of Channing Tatum, complete with smiley face tattoo. You stay classy, Hollyweird.
Vaughn and James are close friends who have a chance to make millions to develop a noise-making engine for an electric car for Chrysler. But while they are toiling to deliver on the deal, Vaughn spies James’ wife (Winona Ryder) making out with the very hot Tatum. His dilemma is whether or not to tell his friend James about this while they are trying to score their multi-millions from Chrysler and risk ruining the deal. The dilemma and the movie–to that point–are not bad. But once he makes his decision to tell his friend, the movie goes nuts. Screaming, crying, spying, fighting. It was all over the map. And the ending was dumb–the gazillionth ending, as the movie went on waaay tooo looong.
So, would you tell your friend if you saw his/her spouse cheating? At the end of the movie, you won’t even care about the question. The flick goes that far off base.
The only real “dilemma” here is what movie to rent instead of wasting your time on this.
THREE MARXES
Watch the trailer . . .
* “Blue Valentine“: Most of the mainstream (read: liberal) movie critics are swooning over this utter garbage. The movie got a lot of buzz over its initial NC-17 rating. Don’t believe the hype. There’s not much there, just a guy’s head shown going in a downward direction, with the implication that he’s performing oral sex. And the reason the movie has to rely on this crap is that that’s all there is. It’s basically flashbacks and current scenes of a couple, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, from when they meet and marry to their present fighting, drunkenness, and melodrama.
Both are working class teens who meet and marry when she becomes pregnant with another guy’s kid. Then, six years later, they are bitter–she, because she wants him to want more than being a house painter, and he, because he suspects that she’s having an affair and she isn’t happy with his present lack of ambition.
And, of course, the movie has a stereotypically Jewish-looking doctor (big beak and all) who is also stereotypically lecherous and trying to get with her, despite knowing she’s married.
I absolutely hated this total waste-of-time, slow, and boring-beyond-belief piece of trash “movie.” If you want to see husbands and wives fighting, go to your local divorce court, and you’ll get something far more interesting–and less expensive–than this pointless utter piece of crap. One of the most over-rated movies. EVER.
FOUR MARXES PLUS AN OBAMA PLUS A BIN LADEN
Watch the trailer . . .
* “Somewhere“: Why would I want to waste my time seeing an on-screen depiction of the Charlie Sheen lifestyle (minus the violence), when I can read it in Us Magazine and People, instead? Stephen Dorff plays a playboy movie star who lives at Chateau Marmont, has twin strippers performing for him in his hotel room, sleeps around with everyone including his movie co-stars, drives around in a Ferrari (or is it a Lamborghini?–I wasn’t sure), and occasionally sees his daughter from a previous relationship. Boring, slow, a waste of time. Garbage. A reality show of Charlie Sheen would be more interesting. But not by much. Yawn.
THREE MARXES
Watch the trailer . . .
* “Rabbit Hole“: A depressing, slow, boring story of a troubled couple whose young boy was killed in a car accident. Not sure what the point was … other than to give an aging Nicole Kidman a role that doesn’t need botox, and give Aaron Eckhart a paycheck gig in-between good movies.
TWO MARXES
Watch the trailer . . .
* “Four Lions“: A group of Muslim idiots want to become Islamic terrorist homicide bombers in London. If only all Islamic terrorists were this stupid. Sadly, almost none are. But it was mildly humorous and entertaining, despite the duplicitous intent of the filmmakers to have viewers believe that only people this dumb and inept are Islamic terrorists and that most Muslims are nothing like homicide bomber wannabes.
ZERO REAGANS OR MARXES – A WASH
Watch the trailer . . .
Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Blue Valentine, Channing Tatum, Chateau Marmont, Christoph Waltz, Dilemma, Four Lions, Fran Striker, George W. Trendle, Green Hornet, Kato, Kevin James, Michelle Williams, movie, movie review, Movie Reviews, Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole, Ryan Gosling, Seth Rogen, Somewhere, Stephen Dorff, The Dilemma, The Green Hornet, Vince Vaughn, Winona Ryder
From what I can make out of the trailer and your review, the Green Hornet film appears to be based pretty much on the exact same running gag as the 1987 movie, “Without A Clue” with Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. The premise of that film was that unbeknownst to the public, Sherlock Holmes was really a dimwitted drunk and Dr. Watson was the real brains behind the duo. Here we have what appears to be the exact same situation, only with the Green Hornet and Kato instead of Holmes and Watson.
Irving on January 14, 2011 at 6:12 pm