The Bounty Hunter

Posted on July 13, 2010 at 8:00 am

Jennifer Aniston is a beautiful and talented woman, but this film had me thinking some very mean thoughts about her, thoughts like, “She is too old for this kind of movie” and “Probably not a good idea to make a movie that seems like a lesser version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, best known for documenting her real-life husband falling in love with his co-star.”

If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen this movie: battling exes squabble as he (Milo the bounty hunter played by Gerard Butler) tries to take her (Nic the journalist played by Aniston) to jail while she tries to persuade him that she’s working on an important and very dangerous story. Will they get shot at? Will there be chases? Will there be a romantic interlude interrupted by a mis-communication? You don’t even have to see the trailer to have seen this movie. You already know everything that’s going to happen.

Aniston is too old for this movie. Butler looks pudgy-faced and uncomfortable. Despite rumors of an off-screen romance, there are no sparks between them and we never get any sense of what brought them together or any relationship between what we are told about their issues and any aspect of their behavior toward each other or anyone else. This is one of those films where if anyone behaved in a rational manner, the whole thing would have been over in 20 minutes.

It does have a good chase scene at the beginning and a couple of briefly interesting goons (Milo owes some gambling debts). But it lets us down repeatedly by wasting the time and talents of the fabulous Christine Baranski (as Nic’s glamorous mother), SNL’s Jason Sudeikis as Nic’s co-worker, and Carol Kane (with a new set of teeth) and Adam LeFevre as bed-and-breakfast owners. It is supposed to be heartwarming and humorous that Nic’s mother has some boundary issues when it comes to Nic’s romantic life. It’s just icky. It’s supposed to be funny that her co-worker keeps trying to persuade her to get romantic with him. It’s just icky — until he is mistaken for Milo and gets beat up by the goons, when it becomes not just icky but ooky. It’s even supposed to be funny that Nic tases Milo. Nope. This falls into that category of movie that exists to be perpetually playing on airplanes — because when the pilot interrupts to tell you to look out the window you won’t miss anything.

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Hot Tub Time Machine

Posted on June 29, 2010 at 8:00 am

I can understand why John Cusack, producer and star of this movie, would like to find a time machine to take him back to 1986. That was the last time he was making popular movies.
With the most explanatory title since “Snakes on a Plane,” we know where this is going, literally. Four shlubs, unhappy with their lives, go for a ski weekend at a place where the three middle-aged friends used to live it up. The fourth member is a shlub from the next generation who has never had a chance to live it up. At the resort, they go into a hot tub and faster than you can say Spandau Ballet, they are back in 1986. Three of them have a chance to correct their mistakes and the fourth has a chance to find out something about where he came from that will surprise no one. Within the first ten minutes we see a bong, a character throwing dog poop in someone’s face, and a suicide attempt. Party on!
Can you guess what happens next? Will there be jokes about cheesy 80’s trends? Someone is wearing a “Miami Vice” t-shirt. Will there be jokes about things people in the 80’s didn’t know were coming? Someone from the 80’s asks cluelessly, “What is email?” Will men who never figured out how to be grown-ups go back to being kids and learn that they didn’t know how to do that, either? Will there be appearances by performers from the 80’s intended to make us feel nostalgic but in reality just reminding us of how old they are now? Watch for Chevy Chase and, reminding us in addition about how much worse this is than “Back to the Future,” Crispin Glover. And then, just to throw everything possible into the mix, let’s add some raunchy humor with a lot of cheerful sexism and homophobia. Its slacker vibe matches its era, but it’s not unpretentious; it’s just lazy.
It tries hard to be outrageous, but more often it’s dull. Once again, and I’m just going to have to keep saying this until they get the message, referring to something is not the same as making a joke about it. And, for the record, let me add that jokes about and the appearance of bodily fluids are not inherently funny, either. On the other hand, if you disagree, you will love this movie.
The few bright spots include the always-welcome Craig Robinson and the on-the-brink-of-breaking-through Lizzy Caplan, still just one great part away from the big time. The un-bright spots include pretty much everything else.

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She’s Out of My League

Posted on June 22, 2010 at 8:35 am

“She’s Out of My League” recognizes that raunchiness is easy, but sweetness is the challenge. Making both parts of the equation work is something of a struggle but this movie comes closer than many.
The title says it all, and the mismatch of tone parallels the mismatch in the story. It’s a gender-reversed Cinderella story about a shlub who loves a goddess. And he has no idea what to do when it appears that she might just like him back. He cannot believe that he deserves her, and so of course he then does everything he can think of to prove he’s right by making the near-fatal mistake of taking the advice of his friends. The definitive response to this, of course, is still the scene in “Say Anything,” the quintessential she’s out of my league movie, where John Cusack responds to his friends’ awful advice: “If you guys know so much about women, how come you’re here at like the Gas ‘n’ Sip on a Saturday night completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere?” Apparently, Kirk (Jay Baruchel of “Tropic Thunder” and “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”) never saw that movie because when one of his friends tells him that the way to a woman’s heart is to engage in an extreme makeover of a personal area, he goes for it all the way in an extended scene that somehow — see above — manages to become kind of sweet.

A lot of the credit goes to Baruchel, in his first romantic lead, as Kirk, the TSA security guy who works at the airport so he can dream of becoming a pilot, and Alice Eve as Molly, the impossibly beautiful dream girl who also happens to be smart, successful, kind-hearted, and able to somehow see more in Kirk than anyone else ever has. They never lose sight of the fact that this has to work as a romance as well as an over-the-top outrageous comedy, and that helps carry the audience through the slow patches. Unfortunately, it doesn’t to much to get us through the excruciating patches in which Kirk is subjected to a series of humiliating events, many featuring his embarrassingly obnoxious family and ex-girlfriend as well as various drawn-out mess-ups and recoveries and confrontations, ending, finally, in the inevitable race through the airport for a movie that never makes it off the ground.

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Comedy Romance

When in Rome

Posted on June 15, 2010 at 8:00 am

An exceptionally strong cast makes this fantasy romantic comedy trifle pleasantly watchable despite its chick-lit conventions. Kristen Bell is Beth, the (of course) supremely competent museum “curator,” who is so devoted to her work that she has never figured out the love thing. She is (of course) not just humiliatingly re-dumped by her ex (the always-engaging Lee Pace) in the middle of a big art gala but — just to make this a major chick-flick tragedy — she also breaks the heel of her boot at the same time. And she has a mean boss (Anjelica Houston). This officially makes her the Cinderella of the movie.

Enter Prince Charming, late and with a loud and inappropriate ringtone. That’s Josh Duhamel as Nick, who is some sort of sportswriter. And they meet at a ball, or close enough, the grand wedding of Beth’s sister to a gorgeous Italian she just met. No evil stepsisters here.) Maid of honor, meet best man. But Beth, all too ready to assume the worst about love, runs away from Nick as fast as her Louboutins can go, stopping to grab four coins from the Fountain of Love to show her defiance of all things romantic.

Enter the complication: it seems that if you remove a coin thrown by a man into the Fountain of Love, you become the object of his desire. So, back in New York and with the Big Gala coming up at the museum, Beth finds herself being something between stalked and chased by: Danny DeVito as the sausage king who sends her a basket of “encased meats,” Will Arnett as an artist who paints an enormous nude portrait of Beth on the side of a building, Jon (“Napoleon Dynamite”) Heder as a street magician who can make the audience’s patience and good will disappear, and Dax Shepherd as a guy who is unabashedly way too into himself.

There’s a lot wrong with this movie. Just for the record, I do not know what the people who made this film think curators do, but in this world party-planning for cultivation of donors seems to be Beth’s primary obligation. Anyone who works in any capacity at an art museum will have more edge and style to her clothes than Beth does, with a particularly unfortunate dress in the big denouement that looks like collision of two of the biggest fashion catastrophes of all time: the 1970’s and bridesmaid’s gowns. The movie promises much more humor from a tiny little car, some pratfalls, a confused priest, a museum exhibit about pain(!), a restaurant in the dark, the characteristics of the four suitors, and the entire premise than it delivers. But the deftness of Bell and especially Duhamel manages to make clumsiness seem a little romantic and rather sweet.

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Comedy Fantasy Romance

Harlem Hostel

Posted on May 30, 2010 at 3:58 pm

“Harlem Hostel” is an unpretentious little film about a group of friends who decide to turn a run-down brownstone into a youth hostel to make ends meet. At times the film looks as low-budget as its setting, but with an appealing cast and a better-than-average script with a touch of sweetness, this is worth a look.

Want to give it a try? The first four people to send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Harlem” in the subject line will win a DVD.

NOTE: DVDs provided by the studio; all opinions are my own.

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Comedy Drama Romance