A Little-Late Film Review - The Proposal

Jagged and shredded steel, broken glass scattered all around, and mangled metal cars wind and bend their way across the landscape as electrical fires break out and property damage and the voices of survivors permeate the landscape. What I’ve just described is a train wreck. In the Proposal, the imperious Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) blackmails her submissive, weak-willed assistant Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her so that she is not deported back to Canada. What I’ve just described is also a train wreck.

After the initial announcement of their proposal by Margaret, a shocked Andrew refuses to go along with her plan until she essentially offers to pay him off. So, without any real reason except to include the rest of the cast in the movie, they go to Alaska to meet the Paxton family. The family is filled with popular talents including Betty White, who seems to be reserved to play the old lady that says outrageous things in every bad movie released anymore; Craig T. Nelson, who is a rock, we never really learn anything about this man; Mary Steenburgen, who is underused except to promote the fictional couple’s sexual activity; and the Office’s Oscar Nuñez, who is the obligatory “Jack-of-all-trades” in the small town, he is also an offensive stereotype here.

The performances here are forced and unnatural. Very few characters in this movie are likable and relatable and the overblown acting makes things that much more disconnected. When you are trying to tell the story of an unlikely couple, say Rhett and Scarlet in Gone With the Wind, it is important to make aspects of each character likeable. The biggest problem with the Proposal (and most modern rom-coms for that matter) is that the characters on screen are so outside the bounds of reality that we cannot find a point to connect to. When Harry Met Sally brought together two flawed but likeable characters and revealed them to us and we grew to know them. The Proposal plops them down like a ladle full of stew and we are forced to pick through the slop. The characters are messy, inconsistent and illogical. As a result of this, any attempts at depth the film tries to portray seems like it belongs in a different movie.




Ultimately, The Proposal is a stupid, empty, boring and sometimes mean comedy of which the jokes are the result of behavior that no one on God’s Green Earth would consider normal. There is no room for a thick plot here. There is just Margaret being a contentious, hateful wench to almost everyone on screen including, and especially, Andrew. The problem is, we don’t feel any sympathy for Andrew either because later when the tables turn on their charade, he is just as heartless and dismissive as Margaret has been this whole time.

The genre of the romantic comedy has been a vapid wasteland for a very long time. With the exception of some smart and honest films like (500) Days of Summer and the Forgetting Sarah Marshall, most rom-coms are dumb, gimmicky movies with little regard for the audience and for their stars, and the Proposal is one of the worst offenders because it actually tries to be a heartfelt romance in the end, something I did not buy for a nanosecond. While not as schticky and overblown as the Bounty Hunter, or as disgusting and offensive as the Ugly Truth, the Proposal is a dull, brainless, heartless beast of a film that should be slain for the sake of the people. It could be argued that it is worse in some respects than those two because it is the same manic and immature material disguised as sincere.

A Little-Late Film Review: Birdemic: Shock and Terror - PART 2!

I pick up where I left off…  This movie is just too bad to give just one article.  Here is where the movie goes further off the rails:

The acting in this movie makes Tommy Wisseu’s in the Room look like an Oscar-worthy performance.  The inflections are all wrong, the emotions, out of place.  One particularly bad performance belongs to a young girl who’s family is ornithologically slaughtered.  So, in one shot she’s crying, scared and missing her family, in the next she’s smiling in the back seat, playing a PSP, all in the span of about three minutes.  Aside form the girl’s performance, the leads are just as bad, mumbling and running words on, speeding up and slowing down their rate of speech in the middle of conversations and showing no emotion at all despite the fact that the world is under attack. 

There are so many other glaring issues with the film, starting with the picture quality, that make it qualify to be one of the worst films ever made.  The film quality changes from scene to scene, going from camera-phone quality in some shots, to studio-lit life insurance-commercial-quality others, not just from scene-to-scene, but from camera-to-camera.




Then there’s the audio.  I can assure you, no boom-mics were harmed (or even used for that matter) in the making of this film.  The mix is way off, the ambiance overpowers the voice track, and the fact that most of the actors mumble through their lines doesn’t help.  Also, like with the video quality, the audio quality changes from shot to shot as well, and sometimes does not start playing until after the video cuts to the next scene, leaving awkward gaps of silence at the start of cuts in the middle of the film‘s dialogue.

The special effects, if you want to call them that, involve animated sprites of birds super-imposed onto the screen with cheesy special effects in the form of pre-fabricated explosions and lights placed over buildings.  The scenes of the bird attacks, which actually take up only a fraction of the film, are so hilariously bad that they will actually make you forget you aren’t watching a comedy.  I literally laughed so hard it made my head hurt. 

So.  After all that, what is my verdict for Birdemic?  It’s hard to say.  If you like to watch bad movies and laugh at them, this one is for you.  It is filled with laughable moments and are just designed to be mocked.  That said, this movie is very, very bad.  If you aren’t tolerant of the So-Bad-That-It’s-Good genre, this will be a painful experience for you.  The acting is terrible, the cinematography is as though the cameraman has Tourette Syndrome, the dialogue is muffled and there is a great deal of background distortion making the things very noisy.  Also, the heavy-handed, albeit absurd, environmental message will make this one too much for some.  Birdemic is not bad in the way Norbit is bad.  It is taking itself very, very seriously, and that makes it funny.  So, if you are looking for a few unintentional laughs (or “bad laughs” as their called), this is one you have to see to believe.

A Little-Late Film Review - Birdemic: Shock and Terror

The Room and Bride of the Monster have some competition for the title of most inept movie of all time.  By now, most film fans know about Troma Studios, and the Asylum, but have you heard of Severin Films?  I haven’t, until I decided to check out the C-grade camp-fest that is Birdemic: Shock and Terror.  The film centers on our aviary occupiers of the sky taking their wrath out on man.  Our heroes: a telesales rep named Rod, and a model named Natalie. 

So after Natalie, who’s shoot apparently took place in a 1-hour photo shop in a commercial strip gets a cover deal with Victoria’s Secret, and Rod closes a one million dollar sale, from a cubicle, and everything seems to be going great for their newly-blossomed romance.  So, we watch Rod debate the prices of solar panels for two minutes and then it cuts to him waiting in a shopping center parking lot for a dinner date with Natalie.  The scene in the Chinese restaurant looks less like a film scene and more like a cheesy local commercial for a medium-grade oriental diner. 

Shortly in, the film’s grating environmental message starts to hammer you over the head.  You get lines like “I’ve learned my lesson, I’m getting a hybrid car.”  We get long diatribes about the cost-effectiveness of solar technology, and a laughable scene where the film‘s two stars cry over the corpse of a dead hawk.  This environmental message becomes key to the film’s paper-thin plot.  There’s nothing wrong with the promotion of environmentally-friendly technology, but considering this movie involves people getting attacked by killer birds, it seems less like “Love the planet or your actions will destroy it and you.” and more like “Mankind be damned!  Save the planet!”  We eventually learn that Global Warming caused the birds to attack us.  So, global warming causes birds to make sounds like fighter jets from the 1940s and explode on impact?  That sounds AWESOME!  Hooray for blaring misanthropy!




So, after about forty minutes of setup , which is mostly pointless and dragged out (including a musical number with the whitest dancing I have ever seen in a movie), the birdies attack.  It is literally like THAT.  Out of nowhere.  This is the scene we’ve been waiting for, and boy is it art.  The two wake up from a hotel bed to find birds screeching outside their door, and to their horror: DEVASTATION!  These are some of the funniest scenes I have ever seen, I couldn’t stop laughing.  The bird attacks are complete with sound of fighter engines diving as they swoop down and explosions when they collide with various objects.  It is perfect.

The scenes that follow are standard monster movie fare.  Warning of attacks, searching for survivors, panic and fear.  These scenes bring even more laughs as the heroes swat at super-imposed animated birds with coat hangars.  What’s really funny is this is supposed to be the aftermath of a brutal bird attack, but they forgot to tell that to the other cars on the road that drive by consistently during the so-called Birdemic, they obviously weren‘t intended to be in the shot, but with a budget this low, you can‘t expect them to close any roads. 

So with a plot this silly, and this hilariously executed, there has to be problems right?  Yep.  They are abundant.  So abundant that I’ve reserved my review of the technical flaws with the film for a second article.  So stay tuned for another episode!

A Little Late Film Review: The Ugly Truth (2009)

Where do I even began?  While watching this movie, I was like, “Wow!”  This movie is simply amazing; and not in a good way.  The Ugly Truth may be the worst modern romantic comedy of them all, and boy is that saying something.  If you recall, I recently reviewed the Bounty Hunter.  That movie is an insane mess.  So believe me when I say, the Ugly Truth is worse.  WORSE!

The idiotic plot centers on Abby (Katherine Heigl), a feminist control freak who produces a network talk show.  Her stupid show is on the verge of failing (of COURSE it is!!!), so the show’s owners take drastic measures to keep it on the air (of COURSE they do!!!).  Their solution is to suddenly hire a chauvinist television show host without telling the show’s producer (It just happens to be the very same host she called into and thought she told off on national television the very night before.  Isn‘t life full of funny little coincidences?).  Mike is meant to be the show’s savior and he also turns out to be Abby’s as well as he begins to offer her advice on men and even on her own sexual liberation.  So there’s a lot of “yadda, yadda” followed by even more “blah, blah, blah” and, WHO KNEW!  The two romantic leads on the poster together fall in love.

The problem is this movie thinks itself to be a raunchy, fowl-mouthed sex comedy told from a woman’s perspective.  Why is that a problem?  Because this perspective tells us that all women have the right to sexual liberation and all men have a right to watch you if you let them.  When the men in this film aren’t bumbling idiots they are disgusting pigs, while the women (with the exception of the lead) are more level-headed and intelligent.  The feminism in this film is so blatant, the misandry so screeching, the acrimony so vile that throughout the film, I wanted to punch my television screen. 

When you’re trying to be a comedy about sexual liberation, you shouldn’t really make sex the punch line.  The setup, maybe, but this film makes the same mistakes that Porky’s did about thirty years ago.  It objectifies the opposite sex and gives their only voices to detestable, usually less attractive, morons.  In the Ugly Truth, the source of contention is Abby’s repulsion of Mike’s amazingly inappropriate language; language so grotesque that if anyone in the real world spoke to their boss like this, they would not only be fired, but would likely end up in court.  The film is supposed to arouse giggles amongst the female audience members because popular stars are actually saying the things they are saying on screen.  It’s the cinematic equivalent of a creepy teacher trying to connect to his/her students by saying or doing something outrageous. 




With all of the film’s unfunny sex gags, and they are plentiful, what’s worse are the performances by the leads.  I can confidently say that Katherine Heigl is one of the worst actresses working today.  Her inflections are off in every sentence.  She emphasizes every other word and shrieks and barks at her onscreen counterparts like a harpy with hiccups.  She perplexedly widens her eyes and jerks her head about, you know, because she’s silly.  She flails her arms and overacts in every single scene.  Heigl’s acting aside, her character, Abby, is a bossy, obnoxious, aggravating wretch filled with “quirks” that make her an unlikable mess.  So is Butler’s Mike any better?

Nope.  The male lead may actually be worse!  Gerard Butler is an exceptionally boring on-screen presence.  His droll Scotish accent mixed with his snarky demeanor makes him very unpleasant to watch.  In the Ugly Truth, his character is a disgusting pig who is not only unlikable but he is utterly abhorrent.  Every comment he makes throughout the film that is meant to be gross but funny is offensive and off-putting.  I found myself cringing and uncomfortable by the dialogue in the movie and I was watching it by myself.  It’s not just filthy, it’s downright pornographic; and Mike’s objectification of the opposite gender is actually meant to make him an example of men as a whole, something I found to be utterly invidious. 

I really don’t even have to get into any examples of the unscrupulous sex gags in this film.  That thought that just popped in your head: yeah, it’s in there.  The Ugly Truth is a disgusting, unpleasant film that not only hates men, but it apparently thinks women are stupid because this movie tries to trap its audience into thinking it’s about stepping outside of your comfort zone.  It isn’t.  It’s really about plot contrivances, mean and unlikable characters, unfunny and disgusting jokes and really, really, really bad acting.  Good job the Ugly Truth!  You’re officially the WORST FILM I’VE REVIEWED ON THIS BLOG SO FAR!

A Little Late Film Review: Death at a Funeral (2010)

Death at a Funeral is a louder, more obnoxious, more profane and inept version of a mediocre but slightly entertaining British comedy of the same name from 2007.  The movie follows its source material almost to the letter, with the same characters and the same events that turn a patriarch’s wake into a circus.  Everything that happens in the film is taken from the original yet it is executed worse on every level. 

The cast is not without talent.  The list of popular stars includes Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Tracy Morgan, Danny Glover, Luke Wilson, Keith David, James Marsden, Loretta Devine and Peter Dinklage reprising his role from the original.  Most of the stars do what they can with the weak material; Regina Hall, Luke Wilson and Chris Rock are good here in a more subdued roles.  The problem is much of the remainder of the cast shouts and overacts, even resorting to flailing and running around.  James Marsden takes over the far more talented Alan Tudyk’s role as the boyfriend of one of the bereaved who is inadvertently given a narcotic that causes him to hallucinate.  His performance is particularly bad, and could be the worst in the film.

Another performance, that of Peter Dinklage, is a testament to the poor direction by Neil LaBute.  While Dinklage was pretty good in the original, he is stale and out of place in this version.  Its the director’s pension for seeming to enjoy overacting that brings this film down, which is why it is so odd that Dinklage is so boring in this role.  LaBute is the director of such absurdities as Nurse Betty, Lakeview Terrace and the epitome of over-the-top cinema, the Wicker Man.  It shows.  This movie is much tamer than those, but it is still pretty hyperactive. 




The film has what I like to call editing A.D.D.  It never holds a shot more than a few seconds, bouncing between views.  Shaky cam and speedy tracking shots are also abundant.  This is a bad editing job, and it makes the film distracting and hard to watch at times, especially in dialogue.  Actor 1 speaks, cut to actor 2 for one second, back to actor 1 to finish his/her sentence, back to 2 for reaction, back to 1 for wait, back to 2 for retort.  What makes things worse is occasionally you will see a shot in the rapidly shuffling mix that works; a shot they could have used from the start for the whole or at least most of the conversation, which further points out the film’s technical ineptitude. 

All of that aside, Death at a Funeral is the immature younger brother of an already silly and strange comedy.  It falls into the category of “If I use lots of profanity, it will be funny.”  To make matters worse, and to make the film that much more insulting, the screenwriter of this version of the film wrote the script for the original.  Which is a testament to what the writer must think about the film’s target audience.  One scene in particular, which was already bad in the original (involving a particularly disgusting scatological gag), is dragged out and overdrawn in this version.  Stupid Americans like poop jokes.  At least, that’s how this film comes off.  It’s a dumbed down version of an already unsophisticated film which is pretty derisive.  What’s even more insulting is the film tries to get heartfelt in the end; an inexcusable insult to the audience that has been subjected to the level of humor you would read on the bathroom wall of a middle school for almost an hour and a half. 

In short, this is a stupid, condescending film assuming its target audience is to immature for the original, tamer material and pursues the over-the-top over the believable.  What’s worse, is there was absolutely no reason for this film to be made.  It is a remake of a film that was already only moderately funny at times, and while I found a small level of amusement in the British version, I found this movie to be amateurish in directorial execution, ridiculous and needlessly crude in its screenwriting, and very puerile in its humor.  If you absolutely have to see this film, see the original instead as this version is exactly the same material recycled poorly.

A Little Late Film Review: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Undworld: Rise of the Lycans is a laughable and shockingly bad action film that tries to pass itself off as well-written and exciting. This prequel to the first two films focuses on the origins of the long-time war between the Vampires and the Lycans. Sonja (Rhona Mitra) is heir to the throne of the empire of the Vampires and Lucian (Michael Sheen) is an enslaved Warewolf, raised by the Vamps’ leader Viktor (Bill Nighy). There is a thing between Lucian and Sonja (of course there is), all while Viktor attempts to prepare his daughter to take the throne. Lucian devises a plan to escape by making a key to his shackles and fleeing. This leads to an insurrection that begins the war between the two races.

The problems with this film are abundant and prominent, and it could take a very long time to list them all, so I’ll try to keep this short. We’ll begin with the screenplay. I just know that the film’s screenwriters were very, very proud of themselves for writing this pretentious dreck. Just think Shakespeare if it were written by a drunken truck driver who never finished high school but remembers Romeo and Juliet and tried to recreate THAT. The screenplay includes some absurd colloquialisms that try to make it seem poetic, but just come off as laughable.

Another major problem is exceptionally bad direction of the film. This also includes the cinematography and art direction. Shots are poorly framed, unsteady and filled with unnecessary cuts between four or more cameras. The editing looks as though it was done through a Viewmaster. The actions scenes are incomprehensible, with bodies moving quickly in front of the camera passing as violence. There are also the constantly sweeping shots of landscapes. These would be great, if you could actually see them. The style of the film is blue filter, low-light and grim and boring sets. When you can actually see what’s going on the characters are shot in a way that makes them look like pale Smurfs because of the heavy blue in every single shot. The deep black doesn’t help. The actors are meant to be lit against the dark backdrop, which can work (I reference the works of Orson Wells), but the backdrops are opaque and ugly. All in all, this is a huge problem for a movie that thinks it’s pretty.




There’s also the horrendous CGI and practical effects that make up the Lycan. They are grimy, ugly and cheap looking as makeup, and resemble a video game character circa 1999 when animated. They wobble like blobs as they slide across the screen, meant to be cool looking but just coming off as cold and lifeless. One major problem with CGI in movies is that there has never been a film were you couldn't tell you’re looking at a poorly-rendered computer object. For a movie that tries to make these beasts seem intimidating and impressive, this issue is crippling.

Alas, there is the acting. It isn’t all bad. Certainly not the worst I’ve reviewed so far on this blog. Michael Sheen is one of my favorite actors working today and he isn’t bad, though he does seem a little out of place. He does what he can with the shoddy writing and direction. Character actor Bill Nighy is usually good, but here he is brooding and insipid. Then there's Rhona Mitra, who is just terrible here. She is emotionless (and don’t give me that crap that she’s supposed to be, that’s B.S.) and vapid. She comes off as a store clerk bored with the redundancy of her minimum wage job. As one of the leads, she really needs to be more likable, but alas, she isn’t. It’s hard to cheer for a character that doesn’t connect with the audience, let alone the other actors on screen.

In short, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, is a silly, disreputable mess of a movie. It is so dank, so ugly, so poorly written and so overacted that it feels like it could almost reach so-bad-its-good status, but its just to impressed with itself to be an enjoyable experience in the way Bride of the Monster is. When I watch a film like Rise of the Lycans, I can’t shake the thought that the makers of this film created the movie more for their own entertainment, rather than ours. It is also very boring for an action film, moving far too slow. It’s an 88 minute film stretched out to 2 hours (Thanks to roughly 40 minutes of unbearable filler), and it feels like it lasts an eternity.

The Adjustment Bureau - Review

Volition. Nihilism. Humanism. All of these are studied in the Adjustment Bureau, a film adaptation of the Phillip K. Dick short story. Whenever a film tries to get philosophical, it is normally disastrous. In the case of the Adjustment Bureau, it is interesting that the ideology that drives it tells us two things, love conquers all, and man cannot rule himself. There is also a degree of politics imbued in this film, something that Glen Beck would have a field day with, but there is nothing here to make a big deal of, and that’s the problem.

Structurally and artistically, the Adjustment Bureau is fantastic. The cinematography is beautiful, the screenplay is naturalistic and convincing, and the characters, even the smaller ones, are fleshed out and studied. The film takes place over the course of several years, beginning at the failed campaign of a New York state politician and fast forwards to the time where his next campaign begins. It focuses on the most intense and stressful periods in the life of this politician, and it is timed perfectly.

David Norris (Matt Damon) is struggling in his campaign, and after a brief, chance meeting with a lovely woman hiding in the men’s room, his life becomes an endless search to find this woman again, a woman he knows is “the one” (In a very contrived and strange moment, after speaking for about thirty seconds they begin a passionate kiss). There is a problem with this relationship however: It wasn’t supposed to happen.

The Adjustment Bureau is a team of strange and very powerful beings that look like men, but they are much more. They can manipulate the world around them, they can change your will and even read your mind. After an agent assigned to keep an eye on Norris misses an important queue in his target’s fate, Norris stumbles again into the girl, Elise (Emily Blunt). This is a big problem and conflicts with “the Plan”. From here, the Bureau does everything they can to ensure David and Elise do not meet, and this is made even more difficult for them when they reveal themselves to David. Once he knows their plan, he does all he can to dodge their endless roadblocks.




This is the movie in a nutshell: Norris meets Elise, the Bureau attempts to separate them, repeat. Their measures grow increasingly extreme, but that really is the formula here, and that formula becomes a huge crutch to this film, keeping it from greatness. The first two acts of the Adjustment Bureau are great. The dialogue is good, the movie is shot well, and the performances by all involved are fantastic. When the film reaches its last act, it is an extended chase scene that is well done, but too fast and sudden. It culminates in an ending that is so sudden, so “Hollywood” and pandering that it feels like it belongs in a different movie.

Another strange element of the film is the marketing. The Adjustment Bureau is marketed as a thriller or even and action flick. It isn’t. It is a romance with an underlying fantasy element, and this is important to get across. It is much more When Harry Met Sally than it is the Bourne Identity. This is fine, because they didn’t take the route of Inception, which essentially ruined that movie for me; making it thirty minutes of set up, two hours of shooting. Still, the trailers are deceptive and that’s important to note.

Another note, the concepts of free will, God and human and social nature are good; they give the film depth and that is always welcome. I only ask: Why did they take the ending the way they did? It is contrary to everything in the film, and it made no sense. Just because there is a guy and a girl doesn’t mean the ending always works out the way the couple would like (I refer you to Casablanca).

Overall, the Adjustment Bureau is a good movie, held back because it plays it too safe. It had the potential for greatness early on, but the film’s cold nature takes a turn so weak that it makes you wonder what happened to the previous two hours. Still, for a good weekend night out, it is a movie with elements that most audiences will enjoy, and in the scheme of things, considering all the garbage that comes out in theaters these days, it is a decent attempt at a great idea that may just be too deep for Hollywood.