Oh, Captain, My Captain

Captain America: The First Avenger:  Yeah, so… yeah.  These Marvel movies leading up to The Avengers are all pretty great.  I think Thor is the most consistently good.  I like the Iron Mans about the same- they’re a little uneven, but the good far outweighs the bad.  The Incredible Hulk ended up being pretty great, too, thanks to really smart editing (get over yourself, Edward Norton.  I’ve seen those deleted scenes- nothing but you jacking off on camera for 20 minutes).  And now, finally, the supposed jewel in the Avengers crown is out there for you to enjoy: Captain America.  So, does it rate with those others?

Yes.  Mostly.  Sort of.   But, yes.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) wants nothing more than to serve his country in World War II.  But he’s too sickly and scrawny.  While trying (again) to sneak his way in through another recruitment office, he’s approached by Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who gets him signed up.  Erskine is working on a serum that will take this 90-pound weakling and turn him into America’s first “super soldier.”  And he does.  Meanwhile, Johann Schmidt (a.k.a. “The Red Skull,” played by Hugo Weaving), one of Hitler’s right-hand men and Erskine’s first attempt at a super-soldier, is, through a combination of science and the supernatural, planning to destroy Earth’s largest cities and take over the world.  But not if Captain America has anything to say about it….

I love that this flick is a period piece, right down to the drab colors and soft lighting.  It looked a lot like another of Director Joe Johnston’s flicks- The Rocketeer… but, thankfully, it’s not as boring as that overrated, overlong Amazing Stories episode.  The stuff in Germany is great, too- it’s all muted, foggy blue mountains and wet, green forests, with Captain America’s bright red, white, and blue shining through the mire.  I love the Red Skull set pieces, especially the super-weapons he and Dr. Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) have developed. Said weapons have  this otherworldly bluish-green glow to them.  It’s a bit of the future thrust into 1940’s Nazi Germany, and it’s weird and alien.  Perfectly pulpy sci-fi.*

The “skinny Chris Evans” stuff is mostly good.  Definitely not perfect in some shots, but there were chunks of time that I simply forgot it was a special effect.  Certainly looked better than old/young man Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button.  Part of that was surely Evans selling the hell out of it, performance-wise.  Hey, speaking of the former Human Torch…

Chris Evans is, hands down, the best choice anyone could have made to play Cap.  He really comes across as the perfect, earnest, grown up boy scout.  I’m glad the casting gods didn’t shy away from him because of his work on that other Marvel film property, Fantastic Four (in which he was the only thing that didn’t suck).  Dude’s just charismatic as hell, which works so perfectly here.  Through unforeseen events that play out immediately following his transformation into “The First Beefcake Avenger,” Steve Rogers unwittingly becomes a strutting, pretty-boy stage performer, used by the government to sell war bonds.  Evans plays it so well, though, that you never get a sense of hubris from his success.  He’s sort of like Ryan Reynolds if he could completely turn off the smarm (no offense, Ry-Rey.  Don’t go changin’).  Cap’s just a sidetracked hero that needs his time to shine.

…and thanks to The Red Skull, he gets it.  Hugo Weaving is one cool dude.  What a career that guy has carved out for himself.  The Matrixes, Lord Of The Rings, V For Vendetta… hell, even the Transformers abortions were bearable when his voice was coming through the speakers.  In Cap he brings his megalomaniacal A-Game, channeling the best Roger Moore-era cartoony Bond villains with an operatic fervor and a clear Austrian accent (thanks to Arnold I just assumed Austrians all sounded like they had marbles in their mouths).  And once he sheds his fake skin and gets all red and noseless he’s kinda scary.

It’s really those two guys’ movie, but everyone else is really good, too.   Tucci, especially.  He’s basically Steve Rogers’ Yoda- an aging mentor that gets our hero on the right path, but is gone before he can see him succeed.  Uh, spoiler alert, I guess.  Whatever.  Tommy Lee Jones brings his deadpan sarcasm to “Colonel Phillips,” Hayley Atwell (“Peggy Carter”) is my new Brit girlfriend, and Dominic Cooper is pitch-perfect as Iron Man’s genius lothario father, “Howard Stark.”  The rest of the cast are all great, too.  Cap puts together an international band of heroes to stop Hydra in its tracks- “’Bucky’ Barnes” (Sebastian Stan), “’Dum Dum’ Dugan (Neil McDonough), “Gabe Jones” (Derek Luke), “Jim Morita” (Kenneth Choi), “James Montgomery Falsworth” (JJ Field), and “Jacques Dernier” (Bruno Ricci).  Behind-enemy-lines missions ensue….

…and here’s where the movie loses a bit of its charm.  ABSOLUTELY NOT because of these actors, their characters, or their place in the film.  No, it’s the execution of this stuff that bugs me.  Basically, 2/3 of this movie is specifically dedicated to the origin of Captain America.  We meet the scrawny Rogers, follow him through his unsuccessful attempts to join up, watch him get his outmatched ass beat in an alleyway, join him in his disastrous boot camp training, feel nervous for his impending transformation, get frustrated at him being used as pretty boy propaganda meat, feel pride when he defies his superiors orders and plans a rescue mission, are satisfied when he saves the throng of captured soldiers, and feel excitement at the idea that he’s putting together this team of badasses to go out there and fuck shit up for the Red Skull…

…and then we’re basically treated to 30 minutes of montages showing only snippets of said missions.  What the fuck, Joe Johnston?  This is the stuff we came here for.  That scene of Cap, Bucky, Dum Dum, and Jacques (I think) busting through a warehouse door and lighting the place up was the money shot that finally sold this movie for me, and even that gets cut shorter than the version in the trailer (and, actually, I think it was a different take- the framing was off from what I remember).  Don’t get me wrong- this stuff is still pretty great, and I’m glad it’s in the movie, but if you’re going to cut anything down to save time in a summer comic book superhero movie, it shouldn’t be THE ACTION.  Trim 10 minutes out of the skinny Steve Rogers stuff and let us see this team’s first outing in its entirety.   I want to see the scene where the guys are creeping along, guns drawn, in a foggy forest clearing, not just be shown that it exists.  Sigh.  Anyway, maybe a Director’s Cut looms for home video?  I hope so.  I hope they have this stuff filmed, and that it wasn’t planned this way from the start.  I mean, that scene on the train was really good, and somewhat more fleshed-out than the others, but it seemed to exist only to kill off one of the good guys, and that had no real emotional resonance because we never get to know the team as a whole in the first place.

Again, good stuff, but the way the last act of this movie is cut together really makes it feel like a rushed production.  I got the sense that they needed to get this one out there so we can cut to The Avengers chase next summer.  It’s odd, because Cap should have felt like more of a standalone movie than Thor did (hell, S.H.I.E.L.D. was all over that movie), but in the end it ended up being quite the opposite.  I mean, yeah, I should have known from the title of the movie- it’s like an ad for next summer (Captain America: The First Avenger).  Anyway, once we get through that Marvel Movie Team-Up, they’ll hopefully give Captain America a sequel that doesn’t rely heavily on future plans.  And maybe with a different director (*COUGH*kennethbranagh*COUGH*).

We’ll see.

Until I revisit this one and get more out of it, hopefully in some kind of Director’s Cut…

7 out of 10 Vibranium Shields In Your Face

*if you haven’t played Wolfenstein for the 360 or PS3, check it out.  I’m not saying it’s on purpose, but the Red Skull Nazi stuff in this movie is almost exactly the same as that game, design-wise.

Magically Sticking The Landing

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2:

First off, this is what I said about Part 1 last year:

“Loved it… but it was so front-loaded that I found myself a little distracted in the second half.  Not a bad thing, since we’re meant to feel the frustration and confusion that these characters experience by temporarily fleeing their world gone so horribly wrong, but still- after witnessing the frightening, exciting, violent extravaganza that was the first hour of DH, Pt.1, my brain wasn’t quite ready to get off that rollercoaster.  I’m POSITIVE that when it continues in Pt. 2 I will fully appreciate the slowdown, just like in the book… but for now I’m simply letting the anticipation get the better of me.”

So, what about Part 2?

It’s tough, because these really are one movie, split into two.  Yeah, yeah, I know- “DUH,” right?  What I mean is, think about something like Empire Strikes Back/Return Of The Jedi or Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions or even Kill Bill 1 & 2– they were basically two-parters bridged by cliffhangers, but they still stand on their own as separate films.  As released, Deathly Hallows is a two-parter as well, but there’s no real cliffhanger at the end of Part 1- it sort of just… ends.  Part 2 starts out with a 20-second recap of the final tag in Part 1, but then literally picks right back up, narrative- and pacing-wise, right where we left our heroes- on the beach, burying Dobby the house elf, and moves on from there.  By removing the aforementioned recap, the title screen, and the end credits of Part 1, you would truly have one well-paced, coherent film.  It’d be almost 5 hours long, but it would absolutely be one film.  That’s not to say they don’t work separately, it’s just that I can’t imagine not watching one without the other once Part 2 is available for home viewing, even if it’s a two-night affair.   If watched in the same night the switching of discs would be like a built-in intermission.

Anyway, Part 2.  Yup, they stuck the landing, and with style.  David Yates did a masterful job with keeping it so very realistic.  An odd thing to say about a movie rife with magic wands, dragons, giants, and flying brooms, but the thing Yates got right from frame one of Order Of The Phoenix is that these stories, while firmly entrenched in a world full of the supernatural, are about people, first and foremost.  They’re about friendship, courage, doubt, responsibility, honor, jealousy… all of those decidedly human characteristics that gel and clash within all of us to make us who we are.  The magic is simply the embodiment of these things, used to enhance the harmony and friendship of our heroes, and to bring the conflict between good and evil to a head.

And it does, big time.  The second half of the movie is one big battle in and around Hogwarts Castle, and no one is safe.  Characters we’ve known and loved all along die horribly, suddenly, violently.  I mentioned how it was so very realistic, and this is partly what I mean.  War is hell, folks, even in a movie with portkeys, pixies, and potions.  A once-beautiful castle courtyard can be reduced to rubble, and a fellow student can suffer the indignity of having a werewolf licking the blood from her fresh corpse (actually… was she dead?  Everything was so wonderfully chaotic that I wasn’t sure…).   Yates pulls no punches here, and proves that violence is about more than gratuitous explosions and squirting blood.  Violence is about raw emotion gone horribly wrong, mutated into the most awful form of self-expression there is, manifesting itself here as racial bigotry and attempted genocide.

Ah, children’s books.  So precious.

It seems a little redundant to discuss the performances here, mostly because we’ve seen these actors do their thing for a decade now, but I’ll do it anyway.  Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint are simply fantastic.  What an opportunity for these kids- to be able to evolve their characters parallel to their acting ability, with one of the best book series out there as a template.  And with this as the climax.  We get to see these kids finally grow up, yet regardless of the horrible events that push them to it, we feel pride, not sadness at the passing of their youth.  Some old British dude once said, “…some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.”  Harry, Hermione, and Ron certainly fall into that last category, and Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint (oh my!) truly handle it with the perfect combination of grace and gusto.

Speaking of grace and gusto… Ralph Fiennes.  I just can’t think of a better choice to play the chilling, creepy, insane, disfigured bad guy than him.  His Voldemort is like an evil potpourri of his past cinematic villains- Amon Goeth (Schindler’s List), cut with some Francis Dolarhyde (Red Dragon), sprinkled with a little Hades (Clash Of The Titans) for flavor.  He’s truly frightening.  There’s a great bit where Voldy asks the seemingly defeated army of good guys who will be joining his ranks and Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis, who’s time to shine has finally come) steps forward.  Fiennes manages to turn a reaction line as disarmingly innocuous and banal as, “I’m sure we can find a place for you somewhere in our ranks” into a condescending, chilling, hate-filled “mercy” that expertly paints for us, with absolutely no gray area, what Neville’s future would be like among the Death Eaters.  THAT’s a fucking actor.  And since we’re on the topic, yeah- all those magnificent Brit actors (and, really, they’re all in these movies) once again bring their A-game, even if their roles have been reduced to one or two (or no) lines.  Seriously, these pros seem to be having such effortless fun that I forget how much work goes in to making a movie.  Oh, and, of course, Alan Rickman bears Snape’s character arc with such poise and precision that only the coldest of hearts wouldn’t be completely emotionally satisfied with his final moments (and, boy, HOWDY is that mostly-obscured scene with he and the giant snake one of the scariest things ever committed to film).  Hans Gruber, you’ve come a long way, baby.

Atmospherically, it’s a treat.  We start out at the beach, with our protagonists taking an all-too-brief respite from the action, and it’s calm, bright, quiet… but not for long.  Soon we’re thrust back into the main plot of Part 1- finding and destroying the bits of the Dark Lord’s soul, which brings us back to the underground labyrinth of Gringotts Bank, and then to the oppressed halls of Hogwarts Castle for the remainder of the film.  And as a complete contrast to our first scenes on the beach (and, really, the rest of the movies), Hogwarts is cold, unfriendly, and dark.  Even the daytime scenes are overcast and washed-out.  For the first time, the school has gone from a warm, inviting place of infinite possibility to a claustrophobic, bleak, regimented prison.  It has essentially become Azkaban for people who have done nothing wrong.  And we feel a real sense of hope as Harry Potter steps into the light as a symbol of all that is is right and good, confidently reasserting itself and bringing on the final, glorious battle over the future of this magical world.  It’s masterfully done, and it’s so very amazing that it can be this great 8 movies in.

So, yeah, David Yates = awesome.  Fuck you, Michael Bay- you’ll never be this good.

Anyway, after uncomfortably gushing about all that stuff, I do have to say that it ain’t perfect.  There’s a couple of bits that were a little awkward.  Example: the trip to Gringotts.  There’s a confusing bit at the top of the scene where the goblins need proof of Bellatrix Lestrange(Helena Bonham Carter)’s identity (who, in fact, is Hermione in disguise).  They ask to see her wand, which she doesn’t seem able to produce.  Weird thing is, they made a pretty big deal of the fact that they actually have her wand in the previous scene.  Now, I’m sure there are justifications for this (hell, I came up with two of my own right away), but in the long run it was unnecessarily convoluted.  As a tense scene, it worked, but it still felt… off.  Eventually, we continue into Lestrange’s vault, and it just goes on a little long… which has the odd effect of making the horcrux they’re here to destroy seem less important than it is.  Actually, that’s a general issue I had- the importance of the horcruxes somehow didn’t quite come across with the urgency I expected.  That may partly be J. K. Rowling’s fault… I think maybe there were simply too many of them to be suddenly dealt with.  Especially since once we hear of them, one has been destroyed before we knew they existed, one has been destroyed off-screen, one took most of Half-Blood Prince and DH, Part 1 to get to, and the remaining 4 all have to be found and felled with in this final 2 hours… some during the huge, climactic battle.  By the time we get to Ron & Hermione destroying one back in the Chamber Of Secrets, I didn’t care so much anymore.  And we still had the slightly too-long, pace-killing scene where Harry has to talk the Grey Lady (Kelly Macdonald.  Again, EVERYBODY is in these movies) into revealing the location of yet another one.

Anyway, these bits only stand out because everything else happening is so close to perfection.  And they very well might come across better on future viewings.  That happens a lot.

So, the only thing left here is to give HP and the DH,Pt.2 a rating.  Which is a little tough for me, because even though it’s the second half of a whole, it was released as it’s own thing.  So, I feel it should be treated as its own entity.  And as a standalone movie, it’s obviously going to be a little awkward, especially at the start (much like Part 1 gets awkward at the end).  I gave the first half an 8 out of 10 on its own, and I feel pretty comfortable doing the same here, so…

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 1: 8 out of 10 Camping Trips

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2: 8 out of 10 Shards Of Broken Soul

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows (as a whole): 9 out of 10 Fantastic Conclusions

Bad Apple

Bad Teacher: I had high hopes for this one.  And while I certainly didn’t get a bad movie, I was a little disappointed in how strangely episodic it ended up being.  Again, not bad, just… awkward.

Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a shallow, manipulative, golddigging hot chick who loses her rich fiancée meal ticket and is forced to return to the job she hates- teaching.  When new, seemingly wealthy substitute teacher, Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), shows up at the school, Halsey decides she needs to make money in any way possible so she can buy a new set of boobs to win him.  Throw in a sugary, “you betcha,” rival love-interest for Delacorte (“Amy Sqiurrel,” played by Lucy Punch) and a gym teacher with the hots for Halsey (“Russell Gettis,” played by Jason Segal), and you’ve got what should have been a crazy, raunchy love quadrangle surrounded by Junior High School kids.

But it isn’t really that.

If you’ve seen the trailer for this one, you’ve seen most of the best bits.  My hope was that getting to see the setups to the jokes that sold the movie for us would make them even funnier, in-context, but instead they mostly play out as “oh, this scene is going to end in that joke we saw… soon… OK.  There it was.  NEXT!”  It’s a little shallow that way.  I certainly don’t blame the actors- they’re all really good.  Diaz attacks her role with the same kind of selfless abandon she brought to the Charlie’s Angels movies, Timberlake is shamelessly douche-y, Lucy Punch brings her best Sarah Palin-ish, insane-behind-the-eyes, aww-shucks-ness, and Segal (who I’ve been unfairly on-the-fence about since forever) gives us our relatable character- a regular guy who watches the insanity from just off stage left, patiently waiting for it all to come to a head and resolve itself.  And it does.

No, I think the issues with this movie’s herky-jerkiness (can I use any more hyphens?  Geez-US) fall on the shoulders of director Jake Kasdan and writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisendberg.  It’s a movie that really breaks down into a series of vignettes, loosely held together by its somewhat weak plot (Halsey needs money for boobs).  Timberlake and Segal seem to awkwardly pop in out of nowhere for their scenes, and Diaz, while really good, makes her change from shallow loser to thoughtful person of substance suddenly, with no real natural progression.  Also, the kids desperately needed some more screen time, and some more character depth.   You’ve probably seen the scene in the trailer where Segal is teaching the kids how to throw a dodgeball.  He calls the one youngster with the pale skin and the high hair, “Twilight,” so I expected this kid to have some background and more stuff to do.  He really doesn’t (and MAN, what a lost opportunity to bag on that shitfest of a movie series).  There’s also the bit (in the trailer) where Segal is arguing LeBron James vs. Michael Jordan with “Shawn,” so, again, I figured this would be an ongoing thing… but it ain’t.  No, instead, these kids are reduced to an amorphous background entity that only gets pulled forward when the story needs to tell a joke, sometimes pertinent to the plot, but often not.

But it’s still funny.  Pointless, but funny.  The best bits deal with the struggle between Halsey and Squirrel.  Punch is just so creepily sweet, nice, and insane, and Diaz does that evil bitch thing as a complete contrast, and it works so well.  I should also mention John Michal Higgins’ dolphin-obsessed “Principal Snur” and Phyllis Smith’s eternally awkward nerdy teacher, “Lynn Davies”- two fantastc characters in their own right.  But, once again, like Timberlake and Segal, they’re thrown in there randomly, do their funny thing, and are gone again for 20 minutes.

So, not a complete loss, for sure, but I wouldn’t kill yourself to get out there and see it.  Actually, it’s been over three weeks now (hey, I don’t get paid for this…), so for all I know it’s gone from theaters.   Nope- just checked, it’s still there.  That’s good.  Even if it isn’t great, I like to see a comedy like this stay the course, especially with pus-filled diarrhea like The Zookeeper infecting multiplexes nation-wide.  You know what, I sort of take back what I said at the top of this paragraph.  If you want to go to the theater and laugh, please go see Bad Teacher.  If you see The Zookeeper you’re part of the fucking problem.

6 out of 10 Bags Of “Medical Marijuana”

From Pixar With Love

Cars 2: I like Cars.  I still don’t get the hatred.  If you’re one of the people who thinks Cars is not good because it’s “Pixar’s NASCAR movie,” then 1. Get over yourself, you snob (look, I think NASCAR is silly, too, but live and let live, man), and 2. It’s NOT, yo.  It’s about getting away from all the fast-paced, big city, corporate, over-endorsed sports world and slowing down every once in a while.  Which actually makes it an anti-NASCAR movie.

Anyway, Cars.  Not my favorite Pixar flick, but certainly not my least favorite.  I think Up is my least favorite.  Don’t look at me like that.  I do love it, but if I had to make a list, it would likely be at the bottom.  Well, until now.

Cars 2 is currently my least favorite Pixar movie.  That may change when I see it again.  We’ll see.  Anyway, literally every single Pixar flick that has come out has done something new, either thematically or technically.  Cars 2 has not.  It plays out like a direct-to-video sequel that got some serious polish somewhere down the line  (sorta like Toy Story 2 did).  And since it has been polished, it must not be a turd, because you can’t polish those.

So, yeah- I liked it.  It’s an awkward mashup of James Bond and, well, Cars, and it kinda shoehorns its messages(s) into the narrative in a heavy-handed, obvious way, but it’s still a load of fun.  And just because it doesn’t do anything new, visually or dramatically, that doesn’t mean what we do get is bad.  Too many people are overly willing to shit on something simply because it doesn’t blow them away.  There are degrees, people…

Anyway, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) goes overseas to prove he’s a better racer than Francesco Bernouilli (John Turturro).  He brings along his friend, Tow Mater (Larry the Cab… fucking HELL.  It’s not just a stage name, it’s a fucking character name, and I refuse to write a character name when it’s playing another character.  Fucking Daniel Lawrence Whitney plays Mater.  There.), who gets mistaken for an American master spy and whisked away by British secret agent Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) to help uncover the mastermind behind an evil plot designed to discredit eco-friendly fuel by blowing up our car-friends.  “Fish out of water” wackiness ensues.

I really dug the James Bond-iness of it all.  The Pixar people do some serious 007 homage-ing with McMissile- he’s reminiscent of an Aston Martin, and he’s stocked with gadgets to get himself out of sticky situations.  I almost wish they got Sean Connery or Roger Moore… but, really, no complaints about getting Caine.  He’s just one of those dudes that oozes coolness, even if it’s only with his voice.  The action sequences are pretty damned exciting… but I’m an easy target- I love a well-filmed car chase.  I rewatched the beginning of Quantum Of Solace last night, and it’s DAMNED exciting.  Anyway…

…Larry The Bad Joke Guy.  OK, look.  I can’t stand that ‘nozzle either.  I don’t dig that whole persona he tries to pass off as reality.  I wish I could grab the people who love his act by their faces and scream, “HE’S MAKING FUN OF YOU, DUMMY!,” then slap them silly, but… I just can’t (wait… did I say something earlier about “live and let live”?  Fuck it.  I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite…).  However… I totally dig it in the context of these movies.  After all, this is where it belongs.  It’s a total caricature- the “dim rube with heart.”  And isn’t that what an animated movie is all about?  Seriously, you’re supposed to bring a level of over-the-topness to something like this, so as long as I don’t have to look at the moron doing it in real life, I can appreciate it for what it is.  It’s no different than Turturro’s snobby Italian racecar or George Carlin(RIP)/Lloyd Sherr’s eternally stoned VW Microbus (“Fillmore”) in its flamboyance.  Now if only Owen Wilson would take a page out of those guys’ books, we’d have an interesting lead character… but I guess they needed that one to be more tame, or something.

I do have a question here.  Why make a cool, exciting espionage flick with the power and prestige of Pixar (alliteration!) at your disposal… and set it in the Cars world?  Why not take this story and do something fresh and new, with newly designed and created characters?  The cynic in me says it’s because Cars is a toy-marketing cash cow and this flick introduces new opportunities to sell said toys… and I guess that’s right.  I mean, the B-plot about winning a race makes sense in the Cars-verse, and I suppose the A-plot about green fuel also makes sense… but the former is bare-bones and uninteresting and the latter feels like it was reworked after the fact to give weight to the cool spy stuff.  In any event, it’s another bit of awkwardness surrounding Cars 2.  It’s still a fun time at the movies, but ultimately it’s a bit pointless.

So, for the record, I’m not buying in to the negative hype that Pixar has made its first dud.  Cars 2 is still better than most of the non-Pixar computer-generated animation out there.  I’m not going to sit here and vehemently defend it, however.  I’m not sure it’s worth the energy.  It’s been two weeks since I saw it and there’s not a whole heck of a lot about it that stuck with me beyond a general feeling of “it was good” so, while I really want to give it a 7, I think I’ll reserve that verdict for a future viewing and for now give it a

6 out of 10 Evil Automobile Masterminds

P.S.  The song they play over the closing credits, “Collision Of Worlds,” by Brad Paisley and Robbie Williams, is one of the worst atrocities ever inflicted on human ears.  If you dare, CLICK HERE.

Trilogy Of Terrible

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: So… I wrote a review for the original Transformers back in 2007 and posted it on MySpace (for all you kids out there, “MySpace” is what we old folks used to call Facebook back in the day when phones had cords, email was written by pencil, and movies were all black & white and silent).  It’s a little out-there (even for me), poorly written (even for me), and tries a little too hard to be clever (even for me), but I stand by it.  Anyway, I mention it because while I could write a fresh, new review for this latest, uh, “film” in the series, I simply don’t have the energy.  Michael Bay has made the exact same movie three times now, so my original review still applies.  To update (for both Revenge Of The Fallen and Dark Of The Moon), simply plug in different actor/character names and unfunny “funny” scenes as needed.  That’s what Bay did, after all…

Originally posted July 5, 2007:

OK, look, I love a brainless summer movie just as much as the next guy, but when said movie is SO bad that it forces my brain out of its blissfully dormant state in order to deal with the complete and utter stupidity of what it’s experiencing, well… THAT’s something special. And yeah, it’s unoriginal and obvious to trash Michael Bay’s directing, but there comes a time when you have to call a spade a spade. This guy truly has no vision (shocker!). He takes the cheap and easy way out in almost every scene. And it seems like Bay knows this. He knows he’s got this very expensive turd on his hands, so he feels compelled to throw in as much creepy testosterone, “technological” sets, and, most of all, cheap humor as possible because, hey!, half of an audience laughing every 45 seconds or so at obvious, banal, potty-humor jokes means great product, right? “What’s going on in the movie? Oh, I dunno, but MAN was that part where Bernie Mac’s mom flips him the bird FUNNY.” “Look! They’re torturing that kid’s lovable car robot! I guess we have to feel bad because the sad, dramatic music tells me to… but why bother? I’m still guffawing over John Turturro’s unmenacing, late-second-act-arrival, “Snidely-Whiplash” antagonist getting peed on by said robot. HILARIOUS!” This film is so self-conscious that it doesn’t even trust that the audience will find the ridiculously attractive female lead ridiculously attractive. It has to take your hand and walk you through her hotness by showing shot after slow-motion shot of her waistline, her ass, her low-cut shirts… which, hey, being a red-blooded male, I’m all for, Jack. Problem is, it’s totally unnecessary here. Just let a hot girl be hot. It’s like printing the Cliff’s Notes version in the middle of a novel. We’ve all seen Maxim, Mr. Bay. We fucking get it. As for the robot design, well, I guess it’s pretty cool… for ONE robot. Problem is, there’s like 7 or 8 or 10 of them, and they all have that same design. So, when one is whaling on the other it kinda looks like, well, a car wreck, for lack of a better term. No idea who’s winning, who’s losing, who’s getting a robot face pummeling, who’s rolling around on the streets of Los Angeles causing serious collateral damage (that apparently no one sees or remembers because afterwards they dispose of robot-losers in the ocean so that the “evidence will never be found.” DUH.) until the sequence is over and some are left standing, and even then it’s a mystery because the good guys still all look the same except the one that’s dead. Oh, and one’s yellow, so THAT helps a little, too. And need I mention the “Quest For The Antique Spectacles Of Ultimate Power” sequence that grinds what little “narrative” this movie contains to an uncomfortable halt for like 45 minutes right in the middle? I don’t. And if you haven’t seen this movie, that’s pretty much all there is to know. Watching it won’t expand your experience- “Quest For The Antique Spectacles Of Ultimate Power” pretty much completely sums it up. Sorry about the spoiler. Not really.

Anything else? Well, Jon Voight is in it, I think. That Anthony Anderson kid shows up, yells something “funny” at his dancing fat friend, marvels at the advanced intricacies of alien robot computer hacking techniques, and eats some cop’s doughnuts. I guess that Shia TheBeef kid is pretty good… or at least WILL be in Indiana Jones IV. It was hard to tell in Transformers between him riding a pink bicycle into a tree, feeding painkillers to his Chihuahua in a leg cast (the dog, not him), and getting his pants pulled down by the Ewok-bot. Yes, I’m serious. You can’t make this stuff up, people. Unless, of course, you’re a Hollywood hired-gun who almost tried for something substantial with “The Island” before giving up completely and securing himself at least a couple of future paychecks by making this mentally challenged special about products that talk.

So, in conclusion, if you want to see a good summer movie, check out Die Hard 4, or Hot Fuzz, or even Spider-Man 3 (a flawed gem, to be sure, but come on… it gets completely destroyed by critics while this lump of aborted diarrhea gets a 75% “Cream of the Crop” rating on rottentomatoes.com? The human race is doomed.) If, on the other hand, you want a soulless, coke-addled frat boy to hold your hand and walk you through a petting zoo full of well-preserved dead animals, go see Transformers. You’ll have the time of your miserable, 3rd-grade reading level life. May you forever forget to breed.

-BC

P.S. Yes, there’s plenty more specific crap (pages and pages and pages) I could have highlighted in my, er… “review,” but that would be beating a dead horse, which isn’t necessary. Even with a dead horse covered in bullseyes and “Kick Me” signs like this one.

So… there you go.

For all three movies: 3 out of 10 Awkward Man-Screams Of, “OPTIMUUUSS!”