Ted

Posted on June 28, 2012 at 6:17 pm

It’s so wrong. But it is very funny.

Fans of Seth MacFarlane are familiar with the politically incorrect humor that has made him the world’s highest-paid television writer (“The Family Guy,” “American Dad,” “The Cleveland Show”) and a popular emcee at the raunchy Friar’s Club roasts. They should strap on their seat belts for his first movie, which takes full benefit of the R rating to include outrageous and offensive humor in every category plus a lot of pop culture references. Nothing is sacred here, except the need to make jokes about anything anyone has ever thought sacred. The “oh, no, he didn’t” factor may have them falling out of their seats. Or maybe just the laughter.

Mark Wahlberg, who deserves acting and good sportsmanship awards for this film, plays 35-year-old John, a guy who spends his life smoking weed with his talking teddy bear, Ted (voice of co-screenwriter MacFarlane). This is not a pull-the-string-hear-the-recording talking teddy bear. This is a teddy bear that talks because when John was a bullied, friendless eight-year-old, he made a Christmas wish that came true and promised Ted that they would be best friends for life.

John and Ted are very adult — as in “for adults only,” not as in “mature” when it comes to their pleasures and vocabulary but perpetually juvenile when it comes to things like responsibility and downright childish when it comes to thunderstorms. John’s one brush with actual adulthood is his relationship with Lori (Mila Kunis). He loves her dearly. She loves him, too, and does not mind that he has no education or ambition. But living with the bear is getting on her nerves, especially when she comes home to find him surrounded by hookers.

Most of the movie is repeated jokes about the incongruity of a cute teddy bear with a foul mouth and an flurry of pop culture references and surprise cameos. But some of them are truly hilarious, especially two people named Jones. If there was an Oscar for being a good sport, they’d both win.
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Comedy

Contraband

Posted on January 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Oh, not another one last job movie! This remake of an Icelandic thriller, directed by the actor who played the lead role in the original, is a by-the-numbers heist, chase, and shoot-em-up. It’s too gritty to be escapist fun and too predictable to work as a thriller.

Mark Wahlberg plays Chris, a one-time smuggler turned legitimate family man with a loving wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and two sons. He is committed to staying on the right side of the law. But Kate’s young brother gets into trouble with the local drug dealer (Giovanni Ribisi as an oily predator named Briggs) the same way Han Solo got into trouble with Jabba the Hutt, dumping the payload to avoid capture, and Briggs says he will come after the whole family if he doesn’t get paid. So, Chris has to get the band back together for one more run. He gets approved by the Department of Homeland Security to work on a ship going to Panama and arranges for trusted associates to be assigned to the crew. He leaves his closest friend Sebastian (Ben Foster), a recovering alcoholic, to watch over Kate and the boys and takes off for many locations where bad cell reception will add to the tension and frustration.

We’re supposed to be on his side because he keeps saying he won’t smuggle drugs and he loves his highly photogenic family and because the bad guys are so thoroughly loathsome. And because he such a good smuggler. But that can’t make up for the increasingly sour taste of the story as Chris and his gang get caught up in some ugly situations, including a detour to meet up with yet another strung-out drug dealer who wants everyone to call him El Jefe, keeps deadly animals in cages, and yes, needs Chris to ride along for just one more last job. There is one good exchange when the drug dealer says he fed a colleague who disappointed him to the wolves and Wahlberg responds, “Literally?” And there are scenes that are either commentary on the conundrum of abstract expressionism in a realist world or an ironic statement on valuation models, or perhaps a pearls/swine reference, but most likely just a cheap joke about real guys who know how to fight being smarter than people who pay millions of dollars for paintings no one can understand. Chris may love and defend his family and even try to protect Briggs’ little girl but his callousness to the carnage and other damage around him and inflicted by him makes it hard to stay on his side.

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The Other Guys

Posted on December 14, 2010 at 3:33 pm

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg make an inspired buddy cop pairing in “The Other Guys,” a rare comedy based on something other than snark or irony or insults or humiliation or high concept. This is that rarest of comedies — kept aloft by a delirious, surreal, irrepressibly sunny randomness, delivered with sincere conviction and all the funnier for it. In an early exchange destined to be memorized and repeated endlessly by fans, Detective Hoitz (Wahlberg), frustrated by being assigned to desk duty, tells off his new partner, Detective Gamble (Ferrell), who prefers the paperwork, using the metaphor of a lion devouring a tuna. Gamble comes back at him with a deliciously loopy monologue, taking the comment literally, and then, when Hoitz comes right back in on the same level, it reaches for the sublime.
Hoitz and Gamble work in a police precinct where two cops (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) get all the excitement, all the glory, and all the girls. That’s fine with Gamble, recently transferred from forensic accounting. But Hoitz, who likes to describe himself as “a peacock who needs to FLY!” is smoldering, furiously playing solitaire at his desk while other cops go out on all the exciting assignments. At a support group for officers who fired their weapons on duty, we find out why he was reassigned. Let’s just say he shot the wrongest guy imaginable.
When the two hero cops are out of the picture, Hoitz and Gamble step in, despite the competition from another team (Rob Riggle playing the frat boy part he always plays and Damon Wayans, Jr. looking like his dad) and the directions from their Chief (Michael Keaton). Of course, as in any buddy cop movie, there are detours to resolve some problems with the ladies (“You’re not a cop until your woman has thrown you out,” says Hoitz). And of course they will discover that they have more in common than they thought, including some anger management issues and interest in Gamble’s wife (a luscious and also very funny Eva Mendes).
There are some dull patches and misfires, especially a backstory about Gamble’s college years. But the action scenes are surprisingly dynamic and a sleazy Wall Street billionaire is played by the always-welcome Steve Coogan. (A brief, unbilled appearance by Ann Heche as another Wall Street type suggests there may be some good extras on the DVD.) And any movie with a police chief who does not realize he is constantly quoting TLC, a trip to “Jersey Boys,” a succession of hot women including Brooke Shields finding Ferrell’s character irresistible, a CD playing “Reminiscing” by the Little River Band, narration by Ice-T, and Wahlberg doing pirouettes qualifies as the funniest movie of the summer.

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Action/Adventure Comedy Crime

‘The Fighter’s’ Micky Ward and Dickie Eklund — The Real Story

Posted on December 8, 2010 at 3:59 pm

One of the year’s best films is “The Fighter,” with Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale as boxing brothers Micky Ward and Dickie Eklund and Melissa Leo as their mother, Alice. Micky and Dickie (who asked that his name be spelled “Dicky” in the movie, so he could match his brother) grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, a once-thriving mill town that fell on hard times when the textile business moved to the South. Dickie became a boxer who was referred to as “The Pride of Lowell.” He was Micky’s hero. But by the time Micky, the son of Alice’s second husband, was old enough to box, Dickie was a crack addict. The man who once knocked down boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard was featured in an HBO documentary called High on Crack Street. The movie is the story of the conflicts Micky faced as he had to decide whether to go with an outside manager who would pay him for training and take him away from Lowell or stay with his family, using Alice as his manager and Dickie as his trainer.

This project was a long-time dream for Mark Wahlberg, and he and director David O. Russell made sure that some of the details were authentic. The gym in the film is not a movie set; it is the real place where Ward trained and still trains. One of his cornermen, a police officer named Mickey O’Keefe, is played in the film by O’Keefe himself.

But, as with any feature film, there is some dramatic license in the characters and events in order to turn the messiness of real life into a story that can fit into two hours. For more information about the real story, check out The Hard Life and Times of Micky Ward and “Fighter” More Fiction Than Fact. Here’s a look at the real Micky and Dickie.

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The Real Story

Will You Host ‘The Other Guys’ Other City Premiere?

Posted on July 15, 2010 at 11:02 am

“The Other Guys,” starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, opens in theaters August 6th, and the film will make its World Premiere in New York City on August 2nd. But, in keeping with its “other” theme, the movie will have another premiere — “The Other Premiere” — and moviegoers can help decide where it will be. Beginning today, moviegoers can go on Facebook to vote in a poll to decide which Other City will host The Other Premiere. Ferrell and Wahlberg will attend the red carpet event in the winning city on August 5th.

The 20 candidate cities are Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Orlando, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Seattle, Tampa/St. Petersburg, and Washington, DC. On August 2, Ferrell and Wahlberg will announce the winning city.

Commenting on the announcement, Adam McKay, director of “The Other Guys,” said, “We’ve all had those moments when we’ve had to watch some other guy be the cool guy. But your city can be the cool city. Get on Facebook and vote, and we’ll bring The Other Premiere to you.”

In The Other Guys, NYPD Detectives Christopher Danson and P.K. Highsmith (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson) are the baddest and most beloved cops in New York City. They don’t get tattoos – other men get tattoos of them. Two desks over and one back, sit Detectives Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg). You’ve seen them in the background of photos of Danson and Highsmith, out of focus and eyes closed. They’re not heroes – they’re “the Other Guys.”

But every cop has his or her day and soon Gamble and Hoitz stumble into a seemingly innocuous case no other detective wants to touch that could turn into New York City’s biggest crime. It’s the opportunity of their lives, but do these guys have the right stuff?

The Other Guys stars Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, Steve Coogan, Ray Stevenson, with Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson. Directed by Adam McKay and written by Adam McKay & Chris Henchy, the producers are Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Jimmy Miller, and Patrick Crowley.