Eyes on the Prize

One of my resolutions Jan. 1 was to average a movie per week in 2008 (only movies in theaters count, sorry DVDs). I'm doing OK, but I need to pick up the pace just a bit and that will get harder and harder once "movie season" is over.

If you count multiple screenings of several movies (Juno, Iron Man, Indiana Jones IV, Kung Fu Panda, Get Smart and Tropic Thunder), I'm up to 30 of the needed 52. Mathematically, I should be at 33. There's still hope. Keep me in your prayers :-).

Pineapple Express, 2/5

Rated R. Click here to view the trailer.

I think my problem with Pineapple Express was that I wasn’t high when I saw it.

There were some laughs in opening scenes as Seth Rogen’s dope smoking, process server, Dale, rocks out to Electric Avenue and there are some laughs in the closing scenes as a trio of stoners (only two of them wearing pants) eat enjoy their Grand Slams at Denny’s. Other than that, you’d have to be more than half-baked to enjoy this odd little buddy comedy/“stoner-action” flick.

Dale scores some primo bud (can you tell I’m not used to the hip weed lingo?) called Pineapple Express (Hey! That's the name of the movie!) from his dealer Saul (a spaced out James Franco) and tokes up on his way to serve Ted (a strangely unfunny Gary Cole). Unfortunately for Dale, the man he is supposed to serve is also the marijuana King Pin responsible for Pineapple Express. Even more unfortunately for Dale, Ted, along with the bizarrely miscast Rosie Perez as “Lady Cop,” kill a rival drug dealer in plain view of our “hero.”

He of course freaks out, and drives away, but not before he tosses his joint out the window, a joint Ted immediately finds and smokes it (because that’s what you do with joints you find in the street: you smoke them) and realizes that the witness must be connected to Saul.

There are also two subplots: a creepy one involving Dale's high school girlfriend; and a stupid one involving an Asian drug cartel made up entirely (of course) of ninjas.

Hilarity ensues.

Wait, no, it doesn’t.

There is some pretty major violence going on though. People’s ears get shot off, innocent bystanders die, kids do drugs and one hit man gets crushed by a Daewoo Lanos.

Another dealer, Red (a semi-funny Danny McBride), gets shot at least seven times but is in no hurry to get to the hospital.

Let’s be honest folks. Can we all agree that we’re getting tired of Seth Rogen? He was funny and fresh in The 40-year-old Virgin, was oddly charming in Knocked Up and was good for a few laughs in Superbad but now he’s just wearing out his welcome. Rogen wrote Pineapple Express and Superbad in high school while he was high. In this movie, you can tell. Here he tries to create a modern day Cheech and Chong movie and he succeeds. Of course, I didn’t laugh very much at their movies, either. Heck, at least Harold and Kumar 2 had Neil Patrick Harris going for it!

The same criticism is true for producer Judd Apatow. Either evolve as a filmmaker, or at least give us more than a month between your offerings (Step Brothers).

James Franco has been getting a lot of buzz for his take on the blitzed-out-of-his mind pot dealer, but I really didn’t think he was that over the top or funny. Although, I will say he was infinitely more watchable here than in the Spider-Man movies. Mostly I just thought, “Wow, he must smell awful.”

As previously mentioned, Cole and Perez are both miscast and Danny McBride, while funny, was just kinda odd and out of place.

My solution? Either be half baked when you watch it, or rent Half Baked instead.

Remember kids, in the wise words of the cast of Saved By the Bell: There’s nope hope with dope.

Oh, and crack is whack.

Tropic Thunder, 4/5

Rated R. Click here to view the trailer.

Tropic Thunder is a stupid, goofy movie, but dad gummit it's funny. Yeah, it's a little edgy and has brought up few ill-informed questions about jokes about blackface and mental health, but it's mostly a genuinely fun movie within a movie and an absolutely perfect cast.

That cast includes Ben Stiller as washed up action star Tugg Speedman; Jack Black as an Eddie Murphy-like crappy comedy machine Jeff Portnoy; Brandon T. Jackson as an entrepreneurial rapper, Alpa Chino and Robert Downey, Jr. as serious Oscar winner who dyed his skin black, Kirk Lazarus. Steve Coogan plays the hilaroiusly inept movie director while Nick Nolte looks grizzled and authentic as Vietnam vet Four-leaf Tayback, the author of the book, Tropic Thunder. Danny McBride pretty much blows stuff up and loves every second of it. There's also a hilarious cameo by Tom Cruise and although his part is particularly foul-mouthed, it is truly comedy gold as is his extended hip hop dancing. Matthew McConaughey is also hilarious as Tuggman's Tivo-obsessed agent.

You get the plot from the trailer: Coogan is attempting to film the greatest war movie ever based on the experiences of Tayback. In order to whip his cast into shape, he, Tayback and his special effects man drop the cast into the jungles of Vietnam and send them off into bush telling them that hidden cameras will capture the cinematic action "guerrilla style."

Black, Stiller, Downey, Jackson and "straight man" Jay Baruchel (the faux-hawk guy from Knocked Up) traipse through the jungle covered in fake ammo and massive (blank-shooting) firepower. Since they're actors in a movie, they have no fear when they come across a Vietnamese drug ring with very real firepower. Sooner or later, Stiller is captured (because, duh, his character is supposed to be captured) and it's up to the rest of the unit to rescue him.

More than anything, the movie is a hilarious skewer of Hollywood. From the trailers that open the movie (Speedman starring in Scorcher VI, Portnoy in, The Fatties, Fart 2; and Downey in Satan's Alley, a medieval take on Brokeback Mountain; Alpa Chino in a commercial/music video for his energy drink, Booty Sweat), and Coogan's inept director to Cruise's take on execs and the "retard issue" (more on that in a minute), Stiller directs the movie to tear Hollywood a new one.

I already mentioned the cast is perfect, but Jack Black and Robert Downey, Jr. particularly stand out. Black actually looks like a convincing action star with bleached blond spikes and one heck of a (heroin-induced) war-cry. But clearly the most praise in the movie has to go Downey and his Kirk Lazarus. I was worried that the funniest parts had been spent in the trailer or that the joke might get too long in the tooth, but it started off funny and get kept getting better as Lazarus got more and more lost in the role refusing to break character even when the camera stopped rolling.

As for the blackface and/or retard controversy? Gimme a break. The movie makes it clear that Lazarus is a jerk who doesn't even know who he is as he pretends to be black. Likewise, it actually defends the "retarded community" by pointing out that Hollywood (and society in general) enjoys a feel-good movie about the mentally disabled, (Forrest Gump, I am Sam, Rain Main) but only as long the characters aren't "full retards." Stiller is actually pointing the finger at us and just how patronizing we can be.

Step Brothers, 1/5

Rated R. Click here to view the trailer.

Walking into the theater to see Step Brothers, I couldn't help but ruminate on Voltaire's Candide. I had just seen both Iron Man and The Dark Knight for a second time, and I was on a movie high. "Surely," waxed my inner Westphalian student, "surely, this is the best of all possible worlds!"

Wrong-o, pal! This is a the worst of all possible worlds if we allow unimaginative puss like this pass for a movie.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good Will Ferrell comedy with a little John C. Reilly thrown in. I LOVE Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Rickey Bobby and the "little baby Jesus" prayer scene throws me into fits of laughter, but there's a line between funny and being mean spirited and Step Brothers crosses it with relish.

The plot: Mary Steenburger and Richard Jenkin's characters marry, causing their 40-year-old sons, Brennan (Will Ferrell) and Dale (John C. Reilly) to live in the same room and learn to live with their new situation. They both live at home, have no jobs and still insist that Dad leave a $20 on the table for pizza. Why? Because producer Judd Apatow thinks it's funny, I guess.

They hate each other (of course) but slowly (or instantaneously) grow to be fast friends as seen in the trailer. (Note: They trailer makes these moments seem much funnier than they are in the movie.) They get beat up by (12-year-old) bullies, they hit each other with golf clubs, they fight with Brennan's sleazy younger brother and they have unbelievably filthy mouths.

The problem is that not one ounce of it is funny. Violence can be hilarious (see this scene) but here it's just disturbing. Adam Scott's character zooms right up to funny but then rockets by and just makes the audience feel icky.

Steenburgen and Jenkins' could have brought something to the table if they were blissfully unaware of their sons' failures to launch but they are aware and simply don't care. Step Brothers could have been funny if, say, Ferrell and Reilly were playing actual 14-year-olds but no, that's just too creative for this script. The poster is infinitely more funny than this movie.

Oh, I failed to mention that the script blames Brennan's and Dale's arrested development on President Bush. I'm serious.

There is one -AND ONLY ONE - glimmer of hope and that comes at the very end as a Billy Joel cover band headed by Horatio Sans is booed off stage and Brennan takes over the show, belting out a very passable version of Con te partirò. I actually laughed during this scene, which is more than I can say for the rest of the movie.

I squirmed throughout the movie and was embarrassed for the entire cast (especially for Oscar-winner Steenburgen, who is the subject of a slight "older woman" crush). I was embarrassed to be seen in that theater. I was embarrassed that my theater had chosen to show this film. I was embarrassed that so many people in my city thought it was funny. Why didn't the father and mother sitting in front of me remove their 12-year-old son from the theater? Why didn't I?

It’s not considered the best of form in movie criticism to quote another critic, but thinking about Voltaire got me stuck in English paper mode so here goes Roger Ebert's take: “Sometimes I think I am living in a nightmare. All about me, standards are collapsing, manners are evaporating, people show no respect for themselves. I am not a moralistic nut. I'm proud of the X-rated movie I once wrote. I like vulgarity if it's funny or serves a purpose. But what is going on here?”

I don't know, Roger. I don't know. But I do know that Mr. Apatow, Ferrell and Reilly aren't trying hard enough to tend their gardens.