I am currently the happiest blonde in a hamster ball the world has ever seen. We have been waiting so long to make this movie dream a movie reality, and it’s because of YOUR commitment, YOUR persistence, that we finally have a chance. We just have one more step to go.
You have banded together like the sassy little honey badgers you are and made this possibility happen. i promise if we hit our goal, we will make the sleuthiest, snarkiest, it’s-all-fun-and-games-‘til-one-of-you-gets-my-foot-up-your-ass movie we possibly can.
I promise to give it my all. i promise to work my hardest to give everyone a little bit more Veronica, and i will be oh so honored to do so.
I only ask for one thing in return.
If I ever die, do me a favor. Go on Oprah and tell the world that I loved kittens.
Real-life couple Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are as cute as can be on and off camera, but there is nothing in this movie that comes close to the adorableness of their viral sloth video. Bell produced and Shepard wrote, directed, and co-edited this action-comedy-romance about a guy in the witness protection program using the name Charles Bronson (not named after the actor but after the prisoner who named himself after the actor) and his girlfriend, Annie, who has a PhD in non-violent conflict resolution. He told her he was in the program because he witnessed a crime. He didn’t tell her he witnessed it from the driver’s seat in the getaway car. Meanwhile, she has to get to an interview for her dream job, which is a bit tricky when they are being chased by her ex-boyfriend who wants her back and his ex-gang who want him in a lot of pain.
Shepard and Bell said they based the dynamic between their characters on their own relationship and the obvious affection and chemistry is genuinely endearing. But the script is slapdash and haphazard, seemingly thrown together based on whichever of their friends was available for a day of shooting. Kristin Chenoweth has two scenes as Annie’s pill-popping boss (completely wasting the obvious opportunity to cast them as sisters) and Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes show up briefly for two pointless cameos.
They are luckier than Bradley Cooper, who brings all of his goodwill and Actors Studio technique to the role of the dreadlocked, animal-loving bank robber who is looking for payback but can’t make it work, perhaps because his biggest laugh line is supposed to be a funny comment about prison rape. The movie wants us to find naughty words funny just because they are naughty, and that gets tired very fast. There are a couple of mildly funny lines: “I’m not going to teach non-violence at a university and marry Dog the Bounty Hunter.” “It’s not cool to wear those tank tops any more, unless you’re wearing them ironically or something.” It’s nice to see Beau Bridges. The souped up cars are cool and there are some nice stunts. But then we get back to Tom Arnold as a hapless federal marshal who has a premature firing problem and an orgy that is supposed to be funny because all the people are old and saggy and some dumb commentary about racial and homophobic humor and some dumber commentary about the importance of trust and communication — and hedging currencies. Don’t hit, just run.
Parents should know that this movie has constant provocative and outrageous humor including sexual references and racial and homophobic humor, frontal male and female nudity, some graphic violence (guns, battery), drug humor
Family discussion: What should Charlie have told Annie? What do you think of the way they talk about their differences?
If you like this, try: “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Grand Theft Auto”
Cute people getting mired in a cute situation? Good. Cute situation getting mired in unimaginative slapstick? Not so much. This is yet another one of those movies about characters who have clearly never watched a romantic comedy. If they had, they would know that: trying to break up a loved one’s wedding two days before it is scheduled is not a great idea (“My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “Made of Honor,” etc.). You only embarrass yourself by showing embarrassing footage of the bride at the rehearsal dinner (“27 Dresses”). Wandering off by yourself on a visit to the prospective in-laws often results in getting wet and ruining property (“Father of the Bride”). Taking a wedding-related movie down to a PG instead of a PG-13 is usually a sign that the studio does not have much confidence in it (“Bride Wars”) because the script is weak. The characters in this movie are the only ones on earth who haven’t been there, seen that.
It is a cute situation. Marni (Kristen with an “e” Bell) is a smooth, capable, professional woman who is proud of triumphing over her teenage years as an ugly duckling, constantly abused by the mean girls led by head cheerleader J.J. (Odette Yustman). Her comfort during those years was her golden boy brother Will. Now Will is getting married to none other than Joanna, formerly known as J.J. The calm, professional Marni instantly reverts to a cowering mess, and then things really get complicated. It turns out Joanna’s only family is her aunt Mona (Sigourney Weaver), who is none other than the former BFF-turned WFF of Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis), mother of the groom — and of course of Marni as well. Add to the mix a wedding planner (Kristin with an “i” Chenoweth), the bride’s ex-beau, a wise-cracking granny (Betty White, of course), a dance-off, a fluffy dog, and a dad who eats his meals blindfolded (okay, that one I didn’t see coming), and you have pieces that never quite work.
Just to see the glass as half-full for a moment, I’ll point out that this movie does not have a big but highly touchy client who gets caught up in the chaos or a child to spout out-of-the-mouths-of-babes wisdom. There are no funny clergy. There are a couple of genuinely welcome surprise cameos. Weaver and Curtis do their best to elevate the material and sometimes succeed.
On the glass half-empty side, there is an icky dentures joke. Serious injuries are dismissed as blithely as are serious infractions of trust and good judgment. It is under-written, running out of steam — and ideas — long before it is over. Ultimately, there’s too much com and not enough rom.
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.
I’m guessing that what happened here is that BFFs Jon Favreau (director of Iron Man but here as an actor), Vince Vaughn, and Peter Billingsley (star of A Christmas Story-turned director) decided that it would be a lot of fun to go off to a beautiful island together and so they decided to make it a business trip by creating a story they could film there.
And I am guessing that their home movie of that trip would have been more entertaining than this dull, drawn-out, mess of a film about four couples who go to a resort that is somewhere between “Fantasy Island” and “Dr. Phil.”
These are the kinds of couples with a friendship you only see in movies. They have nothing in common. They do not particularly seem to like each other. They do not appear to know anyone else. And yet, they are always up in each other’s bidness, hugely involved in the tiniest details and decisions, far more than in their own, so much so that they are constantly conference-calling each other on their cell phones, inviting each other to make crucial decisions about their lives. Possibly the hardest to believe, they are not only mandatory attendees at a birthday party held for a very young child of one of the couples, they all wander off in the middle of the party, including the child’s parents, for a power point presentation on one couple’s marital breakdown (apparently a welcome relief following a previous series on the husband’s testicular cancer). The couple (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) have arranged for a group rate at a resort and guilt everyone to going along with them: the couple who are distracted with young children (Vaughn and “Watchmen’s” Malin Akerman), the couple who are furious with each other (Favreau and “Sex in the City’s” Kristin Davis), and the recently separated Shane (Faizon Love) with his new 20-year-old girlfriend (Kali Hawk) who calls him “Daddy” and wants to party all the time.
While the other couples planned to relax and enjoy the island, it turns out that the couples counseling is mandatory, starting at sunrise — sort of Dr. Phil boot camp. There is much attempted hilarity from a scantily-clad male yoga instructor getting very up close and personal with both the men and women (a lot of homosexual and adultery panic in this movie) as he demonstrates the poses. There is much attempted hilarity from the counseling sessions and from a child twice confusing a store display with a working toilet. None actually occurs.
Individual scenes drag and the movie as a whole sags. Episodes are thrown together haphazardly and run on forever. There are innumerable references, for some reason, to Applebee’s and there is an extended and pointless, even by the low standards of this film, excruciatingly drawn out game of Guitar Hero. And we are supposed to care about these people and believe that they have actually learned some important lessons about communication and not taking each other for granted. It fails at comedy, it fails at warming our hearts and it fails at making us care enough about any of these characters to want them to work out their problems. Instead, we just keep wishing they would get out of the way and let us enjoy the pretty scenery.
