Monday, March 17, 2008

Shawn's Witless Protection, Vantage Point and College Road Trip reviews

Well for those of you who thought that I had given up on this thing rest assured that I certainly have not. I saw a bunch of movies but just didn't get around to reviewing them because I was getting ready to head off to New York for 5 days. So I got back yesterday and now it's time to really start working on catching up on this damn thing.

2008 Movie # 28 - Witless Protection

I believe I predicted this would be the worst movie of February but it's too long ago to remember for sure and I'm just lazy enough to take the 10 seconds to check for sure. If that is indeed the case then at least I seem to have gotten one prediction in February right because my god, this thing is a sin.

I've watched the Blue Collar Comedy stuff and just well, it's not for me. I have no problems with anyone who does find it funny, I'm just not one of them. Well let me clarify that, I don't have a problem generally with people who like the blue collar comedy...but I do have a problem with those who find Larry the Cable Guy funny. Make sense? No? Maybe fuck off. The fact that this guy is a fucking millionaire for pretending to be a dumb hick who farts and makes unfunny, often racist, oneliners is just baffling to me.

I couldn't finish watching either Health Inspector or Delta Farce so this is the first one of his movies that I've had the pleasure of watching from start to end. Now this movie was a pretty huge bomb at the box office, but the fact that it made any money at all is just tragic. Maybe if it had 8 dollars total, provided by the Cable Guy himself, it would be acceptable, but to make millions of dollars...I don't even have the words for that.

The movie is terrible. It's not funny, it's mean spirited and racist, and just ridiculously unfunny. There is actually a scene where Larry's character is talking to an arab man and makes references to him being a terrorist, a towel/diaperhead, jihad, guantanamo bay, all in the span of about 30 seconds. Are you fucking kidding me? Are....you.....fucking....kidding.....me? I mean I normally don't have a problem with edgy humour but that's not even humour. That's just throwing a ton of racial slurs at a character. Trust me when I say that other races aren't treated well in this thing either. It's just of jaw dropping in a way to see something like this. It carries on throughout the whole movie so it no longer is just unfunny, but generally unpleasant.

Also I feel I should take the time in this review to address an important issue...and that is the immediate death of the joke of having someone saying "i have two words for you" and then saying one word. COME ON NOW! Can't we let this joke die?! Is anyone still laughing at it? Jeeeeesus!

Anyway fuck this movie and fuck everyone who is behind it's unholy existence.

0/5

2008 Movie # 29 - Vantage Point

I actually had fairly high hopes for this one. The trailers made it look promising, it had a very good cast attached to it and the premise was overall pretty cool. It just came down to the execution which in the end, sadly turned out to be a little on the lacking side.

The movie essentially consists of the same sequence of events retold over and over again from the vantage points of different characters. I know a lot of people hated this device and at first I got a little frustrated everytime that rewind noise would start up, but after a couple times I started to warm up to it. It became interesting to see how each character was involved and to start piecing everything together. It was annoying that each segment would always end with someone seeing something and acting all shocked. I guess it was their way of creating cliffhangers but it became kind of ridiculous by the end.

The acting was pretty good across the board but nothing really stands out as "oh my god this person was so good." Although Dennis Quaid is pretty much great in anything and Lost makes me an instant Matthew Fox fan anyway. Other actors like Forest Whitaker and Sigourney Weaver do just fine but they really aren't given a whole lot to do. Nobody is really in the movie for that long since it has to cram so many character stories into it's actually surprisingly short running time.

As I said before my main problem with this movie was the execution. They took what is a pretty interesting idea overall and just did it all in a very "meh" way. Also I found in the end things just weren't explained very well at all. We see who all was involved and there are the standard twists and shit, but we never really know why any of them did it. There is also a car chase at the end that, while not a bad chase, just feels a little out of place and pretty unneccessary really.

So while Vantage Point certainly can't be called a bad movie, I can't fully recommend it either. It kept me interested while it was going but in the end it just wasn't enough. I needed more than to just not be bored, I needed an actual intriguing and well done thriller. Sadly this just isn't the one to do it.

** 1/2 /5

and finally....

2008 Movie #30 - College Road Trip

I predicted a tie between this one and Horton Hears a Who as to what would be the worst movie of March. Horton turns out to be getting really good reviews so who knows, may end up actually enjoying that one. That's not going to be the case with this one however because it's going to take one doozy of a shit movie this month to top this one.

For maybe the third time, I don't find Martin Lawrence funny. I don't find cutesy Disney kid movies like The Game Plan funny. So putting these two things together is just about the worst thing that could ever happen to me. The trailers for this "movie" all looked godawful but I couldn't even imagine how terrible this thing would actually turn out to be.

The best way to describe this movie is that by the looks of things, the director at some point realized he was working with a terrible, unfunny script. So he figured the best solution to this problem would be to just have every single actor in the movie scream all of their dialogue and make wacky cartoon faces the whole time. Needless to say this didn't work and ends up making the movie not only really, REALLY, unfunny, but just flat out fucking irritating to watch. This thing is an exercise in awfulness. I don't think I can even do it justice in this review.

The movie takes all of the turns you would expect it to take, full of predictable jokes, lame and unearned sentimental moments scattered throughout and overall just garbage every way you turn.

I think that's really all I need to say about this one. I mean as with all the other comedies, all I can really say is whether or not it's funny and god lord this one is not funny. Under no circumstances should you go see this movie in a theatre, rent the DVD, download it, read about it, or even let someone talk to you about it. Just close your eyes and ears to its existance and let's hope we aren't forced to deal with another one of these movies in 2008 because that means I'll have to see it, which means I'll have to blow up Disney.

.5/5 (jesus how many of these am I going to give out)

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