The Single Mom’s Club Review
I kind of liked it and am having a difficult time figuring out why.
Occasionally I will see a movie that is so far outside the pram that my friends all ask “Why in the world did you see that movie?” This is not a question that haunts me however. As I am sitting in the theater waiting for the movie to start I can see the logical steps in my mind and life that led me to watching What to Expect When You’re Expecting or Pitch Perfect. It makes sense from the comfort of my theater seat.
Not so with this film. I’m still not sure why I saw it. I generally avoid reviewing Tyler Perry movies. Having not grown up in Black America I sincerely doubt my ability to accurately perceive what is good or bad in one of his films and a crippling fear of being perceived as racist or culturally insensitive keeps me away (on the other hand whenever they do films about White Trash America I am all over it. Be true to your heritage!). I see most of them but tend to wait for NetFlix. Also while I do feel OK about writing reviews about chick flicks it is not my personal interest and so they tend to slip the net more frequently than sci fi films.
However last night was St. Patrick’s Day and in spite of my Irish blood have always felt vomiting up green beer is the height to stupidity. I am not a big fan of bars and crowds of drunks and so found myself at loose ends. My movie choices were this one and About Last Night and honestly there is only so much Kevin Hart comedy I can absorb in a month (there’s the cultural insensitivity!). Plus this film is reportedly an original and I think About Last Night is a remake. Also watching That Awkward Moment has left a sour taste in my mouth for films about how easy it is for guys to hook up with super hot chicks (Not that I’m bitter. For the record the irony of avoiding such a film while skipping out on one of the biggest party nights of the year in order to sit by myself watching a chick flick in a theater eating popcorn and Jr. Mints for dinner is most definitely not lost on me.).
So I ended up in the Single Mom’s Club (Mom image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category) and truly expected it to be the chickiest of the chick flicks. I was pretty sure this film was going to cause my genitalia to be reabsorbed into my body and grow into a vagina and to be fair I did feel a little retraction of the testes (although when you think about it what am I really using them for anyway?). However as the film progressed I found myself engrossed in the story and discovered it was about women supporting each other in a good way, not about male bashing and pointing fingers at dudes.
The appeal of this film comes mainly from the characters, who are diverse and interesting. It is an assemblage cast and story but managed to avoid most of the pitfalls made by other crappy assemblage movies such as New Years Eve. The main trap it missed was it did not give us 14 different characters with trite, insubstantial story lines that mesh in only the most tertiary manner. Instead it gave us five reasonably strong characters who’s stories blended and interacted with each other in order to reinforce each in turn. It made me care about them all, the true sign of a decent film.
That is not to say this film should be up for any awards. The stories themselves are rehashed old After School Specials and are all resolved in the happiest, most trite manner ever. The single mothers struggle to make it as single moms and show that by…sitting around together bitching about their lives while drinking red wine and more or less letting their kids run rampant in the street (or so I assume. That’s what I would have been doing at age 12). Listening to a mom bitch about having to take care of her three kids when she doesn’t have to work and lives in a fairly palatial house kinds of lets the air out of the tires of tension if you know what I mean. Only one of the five seems to struggle in the classic “single mom” way.
But I guess a weak story can succeed of the characters are appealing. The story is of course of five single moms from different walks of life and cultural diversity. There is May (Nia Long-Boiler Room, Friday, Big Momma’s House), a newspaper writer who’s son feels the need to see his father (who has a drug problem we are told. You never see the man); Hillory (Amy Smart-Crank, Road Trip, the Butterfly Effect), a yuppie mother of three who’s lawyer ex husband is wrecking her in the divorce and who has a crush on her hot neighbor; Jan (Wendy McLendon-Covey-10 Rules for Sleeping Around, Bridesmaids, Reno 911), a driven book publisher who’s sperm bank daughter seems to hate her for being ignored; Esperanza (Zulay Henao-Fighting, Boy Wonder, Takers) a super hot mother who’s controlling ex husband undermines her parenting of their daughter just because he can; and Lytia (Cocoa Brown-Lakeview Terrace, Friendship!, An American Carol), a struggling working mom who is trying to keep her son from prison like his brothers.
All the kids go to the same exclusive private school and the moms are all called in to deal with their kids smoking and graffiti (someone call 1955 and tell them about the new preteen crime wave!). The principal tells them that the schools very progressive policy is to punish the parents when the kids get into trouble (I kind of like that policy. I see parents every day who deserve a good beating, especially when I’m at a 10pm movie showing on a school night and there are kids in the theater) and in order to keep their kids from being expelled need to work together to plan some kind of school fundraising event.
The five meet up and at first hate each other but in time become friends. They form the Single Mom’s Club in order to give them each time away from their kids by rotating babysitting duties. Each of them meets a dude (or in Esperanza’s case started with one) and support each other in dealing with their ex husbands, kids or whatever. Honestly that’s the story in a nutshell. Stuff goes wrong at a couple points but in the end they each find some kind of resolution to the major issue of their lives (or at least a new dude to date).
The stars:
Like I said before, a success in characters. None of them were Tyler Durden level of engagement but you got to like them all. Two stars. Acting was for the most part at least adequate if not good. One star. The film was a little sluggish at points but by the end it didn’t feel like the 111 minutes it actually ran. One star. It was a soft PG-13 but the dresses they stuffed Zulay Henao into made me realize it is my destiny to marry her (destiny is a harsh mistress). In fact most of the women were fun to look at. One star. It galls me to use phrases like “the bonds of sisterhood” but you could actually see them being formed and it was fun to see them support each other. One star. Not the huge waste of my life I thought it was going to be. One star. Total: seven stars.
The black holes:
If you really examine each individual story and the big story in total you realize this film is Baby’s First Single Mom Plot. The actual drama is minimal and you have all seen these stories in much more real circumstances. The single mom drama of Won’t Back Down was more impactful. One black hole. This movie is all about female characters and that carries through to the male ones. The women all were real and engaging and the men feminized caricatures of what women imagine dudes are good or bad. Kind of robbed the overall story of realism. One black hole. There was a weird thing going on during this film where I would like two or three scenes in a row and then hit one that just sucked. It was like eating grapes but one in four had a BB in it. One black hole. None of the kids were terrifically believable. That might sound churlish but I have seen great kid actors deliver amazing and most of these were at best mundane. There was one scene in particular between May and her son that had my eyes rolling. This might actually be a reflection on the director as it some directors seem more able to get good from kids than others. One black hole (and for the record I sincerely hope each of these kids grows up to be an amazing actor. They all have the potential). Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of four stars. That’s at the bottom of my good range (mediocre for me is typically 2 black holes to three stars) but still in the good. Worth seeing for the right person I’d say. However the filming looks like a made for TV movie so there is no need to see this on a big screen (in fact rumor has it they are making this into a TV show on OWN). Date movie? Sure. As long as you can get your date to associate you with the good male characters you will either get laid or the sweetest “let’s be friends” speech you ever heard (not that I’m bitter). Bathroom break? Assemblage movies rarely have critical plot scenes so pretty much anywhere you want. Your best choice would be the first time May is babysitting all 25 (or so it seemed) kids. Not a lot happens there.
Thanks for reading. My readership has shot up dramatically lately (in serious danger of breaking three digits) and I can only assume it is in major part thanks to you, my beloved regular reader. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu and hit the Like button up top if you would be so kind. Post comments on this movie or my review here and off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Have a great night. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 50 Patterns of Force
This is an episode that seemed really cool back in the 70’s but if someone tried to make it today they would be keel hauled. Damn political correctness anyway. John Gill’s choice to use Nazi Germany as a model for saving the Ekos economy could probably be classified under the “Seemed like a good idea at the time” heading (incidentally that is exactly what I want on my tombstone. No joke) but even as a political move it is a step towards disaster. Any time you ostracize or alienate an outside culture it is almost inevitable that humans (or human-like aliens) will take it to the odious extreme.
However I do appreciate the fact that this and A Piece of the Action are two episodes that did not try to convince us that an alien culture could so exactly parallel Earth that they get the exact same uniforms and names. At least John Gill would have had some inkling what an SS uniform was supposed to look like, although if I were him I might have used some of the principals behind the rejuvenation of Germany without using, say, swastikas, SS, or the name Nazi. Might look better at your inevitable trial.
The best part of this episode is the head Nazi talking about how racially inferior Spock is and how his skull indicates low intellect. If only he knew. Of course Kirk had already told Spock how he looks like a great Nazi. Not sure how I would take that if I were Leonard Nimoy. This new image of the main three I just uploaded to the Star Trek T Shirt category.
Interestingly enough this was the only episode banned in Germany until 1995. Some people have no sense of humor whatsoever. It has been my experience when speaking to Germans that they all like to pretend the years 1936-1945 never happened so that makes sense. This episode also drove home the importance of the Prime Directive. In the recent movies the Prime Directive has more or less turned into the Prime If It’s At All Convenient but if I start off on that this blog will go another 10,000 words.
Dave
Need for Speed Review
Was there a need for this movie?
I need to be careful when I speak of niche sub cultures if only because I am neck deep in one myself. If someone were to create a movie about the Warhammer world literally 99.97% of you would not only not know what the hell is going on or even care but I and my friends would be fascinated.
That being said my experience (from high school until late 20’s or so) with street racers is this: they buy a potential hotrod for about $10 grand, spend three years and $8 grand modding it up, and sell it for about $10 grand when they are a point away from losing their license for speeding tickets. None of them ever go anywhere (as far as I can tell neither Nascar nor F1 teams are recruiting guys who tear up 2 lane highways in a Honda Civic with a suspension upgrade and a B18 motor) besides back and forth down desolate highways.
(Also once I came across an accident scene where two guys were street racing on a foggy night and killed some poor guy on a bicycle. My sympathy for street racers is not terribly high.)
So I guess there is a chance that there is a huge sub genre of street racers for whom this movie would make sense. Unfortunately I like to believe there is a much bigger genre of people who enjoy scripts that are coherent. For those people this movie is pretty much a big waste of time.
I’m not going to say this movie was bad. Good and bad are relative things really. A salmon gets caught and eaten by a bear. Is that good or bad? Well, good for the bear but fairly bad for the salmon. If you approach this film expecting nothing but mindless driving action then in a sense it is very good. However if you hoped for stimulation of any part of your brain other than the stem then in another very valid sense this film is very bad. If this were the 50’s this movie would be the perfect drive in experience in that you could watch it as the mood suits you or spend the time trying to get busy with your date in the back seat. Ironically this film featured a big drive in scene. Where did they find a functioning drive in, exactly?
I will say I am a fan of real stunts and effects rather than CGI. It’s like they put some effort into it instead of trying to impress us with hi tech cartoons. The driving was impressive and required good choreography. If you are a fan of cool automobiles this movie will have you drooling as it is like the highlights of Top Gear done where they wreck half the cars. I appreciate a good ride (ask me about my 2005 Crown Vic. Believe it or not, there are people in this world who think that car is cool. I get about an offer a month to buy it) myself although am more inclined towards the American muscle cars featured at the beginning of the movie rather than the European racers towards the end.
The story, however, looks like they tried the old “Million monkeys on a million typewriters” approach but were about 999,997 monkeys short. The plot holes had plot holes. I don’t have all day to work on this review (driving to LA in my high performance Vic. I really shouldn’t watch race movies the night before a long drive) so will skip most of them, but how the hell can the main character avoid the combined police forces of like 22 states (who between them seem to have 2 helicopters and 5 cars) but some random Bubba rednecks can track him down on a road in the middle of no where? Also don’t you think the fastest Mustang ever built should be able to outrun a pickup truck and a couple of cement mixers? Also if you are in a high speed chase wherein several police officers are involved in crashes that might very well have killed them while on parole you are going to do a lot more than six months in jail
I think the best way to describe the story is it plays out like a video game. This is about right as the movie is based on a video game. It is true that some video games actually have amazing stories and complexities that would be the envy of most movies but EA is not know for being literary masters (or, for that matter, competent). It could be stated that in a B movie who’s main function is to provide another outlet for all the Fast and Furious fans a story is of tertiary concern and odds are the people making that statement are exactly the ones producing this film.
The story is of Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul-Breaking Bad, the Last House on the Left, Mission Impossible III), street racer and car mechanic. He enters a local race with his crew Benny (Scott Mescudi-The Bling Ring, 30 Minutes or Less, Fright Night), a pilot who specializing in stealing assorted aircraft and teleporting across the country in defiance of all known laws of time and space; Finn (Rami Malek-Night at the Museum, Short Term 12, Battleship), a mechanic who seems to want to be naked; Joe Peck (Ramon Rodriguez-Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Battle Los Angeles, the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3), another mechanic who drives the worlds largest pickup truck; and Little Pete (Harrison Gilbertson-Beneath Hill 60, Accidents Happen, Conspiracy 365), another driver and the younger sister of Tobey’s ex-girlfriend Anita (Dakota Johnson-21 Jump Street, Beastly, the Five-Year Engagement). They jump in a series of really hot American muscle cars and wreak havoc through the streets of some small town, avoiding cops with the help of Benny and literally doing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to other cars and the city.
Tobey wins and afterward is approached by Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper-Captain America: the First Avengers, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures (what’s the deal with this guy and movies with colons in them?)), a guy they all knew and hated in high school for some reason and who has grown up into a rich, arrogant jerk (while they all slave away as mechanics. I guess being a jerk has its benefits). Maybe they hate him because he is with Anita now? Seemed a little confused. Anyway, he comes to their shop the next day (Tobey owns it and his friends all seem to work there for free in exchange for use of an Xbox and giant TV). Apparently he has come into possession of the last Mustang Colby worked on and wants them to complete it. Turns out Tobey is near broke and needs the money desperately (remember that street racing equation I showed you at the beginning of this blog). They do it and sell the car to a rich dude and his super car chick Julia (Imogen Poots-That Awkward Moment, Fright Night, V for Vendetta) for $2.7 million (just to depress myself I calculated that that would buy 108 of my current car. Are there really people out there who wipe their ass with money like that? If you are such a person you are a pretentious ass hat).
After the sale they get into a fight and decide to settle it like all men do: in an illegal road race with millions of dollars worth of elite European racing cars. Pete joins in the race because…I don’t know? Dino had 3 cars? Tobey is about to win when Dino runs Pete off the road and he dies in a fiery crash. Naturally Tobey gets framed for it and spends 2 years in prison for manslaughter.
At this point we are reminded that this movie comes from a video game with the introduction of the Monarch (Michael Keaton-Really? I guess it has been a while since the original Batman and honestly all his best work since then seems to be cartoon voices so maybe he’s eager to get out there. Batman, Speechless, Jackie Brown. I’m particularily pleased to have found this Batman image in our Batman T-Shirt collection. It seems most apropos). The monarch is some rich guy who loves racing but spends all his time in his internet racing dungeon doing a radio show and puts together a race every year where people show up in millions of dollars worth of cars and then race for pinks. In a video game he would be the voice over cut scene you would see and listen to while the game’s next sequence is loading but in this film he fits in as organically and painlessly as a broken bottle in your next bowel movement. It really felt like the director ran into Michael at the local Starbucks and once they got him had to figure out a way to include him in the film at the last minute. Also Michael had a lot of other stuff to do and needed to film his entire performance in 12 hours so they set up a room in his house and bailed on all that pesky “interaction with other humans” business.
Tobey gets out and needs to get revenge on Dino by beating him in the big race that the Monarch is running. He calls the guy who bought the Cobra and offers to give him all the cars if he lets him use it in the race. The guy agrees but makes Julia tag along. At that point rent Cannonball Run and watch it on fast forward and you will get the middle 80 minutes of this film. In order to get invited into the big race he first has to attract the attention of the Monarch. To do that he goes on a driving rampage violating his parole and attracting the notice of every cop in the country. Fortunately for them there are only like 6 of them and they have never heard of a spike trap. However, while it might be easy to avoid capture by every cop in the USA it is nigh impossible to avoid being trapped by a half dozen rednecks in pickup trucks. Dino puts a bounty out on Tobey and the aforementioned trailer trash catch up to him on a road. Rather than accelerate to the Cobra’s reported max speed of 230 mph he opts instead to take them on a cross country road race with a bizarre helicopter rescue thanks to Benny in another stolen helicopter (don’t helicopters have keys or something?).
More driving madness ensues. The Cobra gets wrecked by yet more hillbilly mercenaries but Anita gives Tobey another car to drive in the big race. Racing starts, cars get smashed, about 20 police officers are either injured or killed, and Tobey is given a chance to prove what a good guy he is.
The stars.
In spite of my bitching about this movie I am a fan of Aaron Paul. In the few scenes where he was actually allowed to act he did a great job and reminded me why I loved him in Breaking Bad. One star. The cars were all pretty amazing. Even once they got out of the muscle cars that I love and onto the Euro stuff they were really fun to see. Two stars. Most of the driving action was really good and impressive. You have to give real camera work credit in these days of CGI mediocrity. Two stars. If you can shut off the part of your brain that craves a story more complex than “See Spot Run” this movie is pretty fun. Two stars. Total: seven stars.
The black holes.
The story was like if you tool all the worst plots from video games ever (including Pac Man) and used that to inspire your mediocrity. A crime against literature and really disappointed as the trailers really implied that there was more. One black hole. Every scene with the Monarch was teeth grindingly awful. To prep for this role must have listened to every radio personality ever starting with Hello, Vietnam and combined them into the worst amalgam shock jock ever. The use of his awfulness to punctuate the scenes was like throwing AA batteries on the floor of a roller rink. Whatever momentum the film had generated came to a screeching halt every time. Two black holes. Sorry Imogen Poots you are hot but your character sucked. Do you know a lot about cars or not? Can you drive more than 60 mph or not? What were you here to accomplish? One black hole. Most of the other characters sucked too but in particular I am going to ding this film for Benny, the pilot. Every time he showed up the believability of this film (all ready on the balls of its ass) nose dived. One black hole. This film seemed really eager to distract you from itself. It’s a race movie but let’s throw in a scene where one of the mechanics quits his office job naked. How about Benny in a stolen news copter using the camera to scope out girls jogging? One star. 
The incompetence of the police in this film and the complete disregard for the fact that your racing might have just killed dozens of people was annoying. At least Fast and Furious tries to keep from running civilians off the road. One black hole. The gullibility of Anita was really annoying, especially after Dino put out a bounty on Tobey. One black hole. Some of the action driving scenes were really dumb (especially the helicopter escape scene). One black hole. For that matter how exactly did the pick up truck guys catch them? Sorry but that part is still bugging me. One black hole. This film clocks in at a whopping 132 minutes and you will be feeling it’s length by the end. One black hole. Total: 11 black holes.
A grand total of 4 black holes. Should you see it? That’s an easy question to answer. If you like Fast and Furious then yes. You will get everything you ever wanted from a F&F film only with less chicks and slightly more naked man ass. If you don’t enjoy them then don’t bother. If you are a huge Breaking Bad fan and want to see Aaron Paul go for it but honestly he is not on the screen as much as you might like. Date movie? If your girl is into fast cars sure, but really not many more reasons. Bathroom break? I’d say the scene right after they drop Imogene Poots off at the hospital is pretty disposable. It’s just more story development and if you are in this theater for the story you probably don’t know how to use a toilet anyway.
Thanks for reading. My apologies for not getting this done on Friday but I had to drive to LA for a small Warhammer tournament (where I took best overall. Yah, me! I’m king of the world! (I mean nerds)). I’ll try to see something tonight and write it up tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Hit the Like Us on FB thingy up above and leave you comments on this movie or my review here. I do enjoy hearing from readers as long as you are not trying to sell fake Louis Vuitton bags. If you have an off topic question or suggestion (or even request) feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Mr. Peabody and Sherman Review
Set the Wayback Machine 92 minutes.
I think it’s fair to say I see way too many animated movies for a man my age (2 score and 4, although I like to think of it as 308 in dog years. Suck it, dogs! I am Methuselah to you!). This was a fact even before I started doing all these reviews so I can’t use this blog as my excuse. The fact is while chronologically I am middle aged I am a child inside. I don’t mean that in the asinine way hippies like to claim they find joy in everything and yuppies claim they wish they could be. My own childhood was on the bad end of the miserable spectrum and even at 12 I was pretty bitter and sarcastic. No I mean the things I thought were cool back then I still think are cool now. I like to think of myself as a big kid with body hair and a frustrated libido.
Thus I love good animated films. I tend to list my favs every time I review a kids movie so I will skip it. I am also not going to go off on what makes a good kids movie great for creepy grown men who sit by themselves in a theater full of children looking like a henchman to a Bond villain. What I am going to say is as an adult fan of kids movies who sees a lot of them I tend to have a more exacting tolerance for what is good and what is crap and to be honest this film felt really lazy and mediocre.
I suppose I should be honest here. I was not really a huge fan of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. I found it pun-tastic in a bad way and the only characters I enjoy were the villains (specifically Boris and Natasha and Snidely Whiplash. Snidely is one of the male role models my father failed to provide for me) and since Peabody’s Improbably History had no iconic villains I found his segments really boring and annoying. It was mostly a dog you mostly wish were put down and a super annoying kid you really wish the dog would bite.
So a film staring cartoon characters I have always wanted to punch in the face will have a hard time on my film dissection table right off. I will say this film kept a lot of the elements of the cartoons. Unfortunately they are all the elements I hated. Each segment of the TV cartoon was written in some kind of reverse engineering where they thought of the final pun and then came up with the story. The same seems true for each vignette here. Sherman is still the same annoying kid and handcuffing him to another annoying kid is not making him more appealing. You would think I would like Mr. Peabody as he is a brainy scientist but he is that special kind of brainy that somehow managed to avoid being socially awkward or obsessed with nerd interests (AKA anti girl interests) and I always end up hating those guys for not being ridiculed in 5th grade for showing up for Halloween dressed up as Spock. He should be in my camp but isn’t.
Then there’s the humor of this film. I’m somewhat perplexed as to who it was directed at. I have often said a good kids film needs some jokes for the adults but every one of these jokes was an esoteric historical pun that even a lot of the adults wouldn’t get and those of us who did would find them very ho hum. When you spend 10 minutes setting up a pun and it isn’t really laugh worthy go back to clown college. As a rule I expect good jokes in a film to be funnier than the crap I write in this blog every day. This movie didn’t really live up to my level IMO.
Finally there is the animation. No real thought or effort was put into it. The characters looked like slightly more real versions of the characters from the Incredibles. The problem is those characters hovered dangerously close to the Uncanny Valley and Mr. Peabody and Sherman look like they vacation there. Also the Incredibles was great for 10 years ago but times have changed and animation and the aesthetics have improved. The uncanny nature of them I found really off putting, and the computer generated feel of the animation made these characters really soulless. I yearn for the days of movies done with the help of South Korean slave animators.
The story is of course of Mr. Peaboy and his boy Sherman. In case you never watched his cartoon and aren’t sure who Mr. Peaboy is or why you should care don’t worry. 
He will do an extended monolog of his life and tell you in the most minute excruciating detail why he is like unto God (I mean Dog. Damn my dyslexia. Image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category). We learn that Sherman is going off to school after being home schooled by Mr. Peabody. Once at school Sherman gets bullied by an annoying girl named Penny (Ariel Winter-Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Speed Racer, Modern Family). I guess all those bullying campaigns have had no effect. Sherman freaks out and bites her, causing Mr. Peabody to get called into the office. There he meets a social worker of some kind named Ms. Grunion (Allison Janney-Finding Nemo, Juno, the West Wing) who has a clear axe to grind and tells Peabody that she is going to do an inspection and if she sees anything inappropriate or dangerous she will immediately revoke Peabody’s custody of Sherman (oh, yeah. In the cartoon the relationship between Sherman and Peabody was never discussed like most young boy/order male traveling companionship relationships from the 60’s. In this cartoon their relationship is VERY CLEARLY defined over and over again. Mr. Peabody is Sherman’s adopted father who insists the Sherman call him Mr. Peabody rather than dad. I can already hear the therapy sessions 20 years down the road).
Actually I’d like to speak a bit about this. The cartoon was purposefully silly and as such didn’t need an explanation as to what a dog and his boy were doing together. By setting up a complete legal case with a judge who may or may not have been tripping on acid when he made the call it just made the whole situation more ridiculous and thus harder to believe.
Mr. Peabody objects and sets out to prove what a great father her is. I mean, what could he do that could possible seem inappropriate for a father, aside from the fact that just the day before he nearly got himself and Sherman killed in the French Revolution, took Sherman swimming in a 16th century Parisian sewer (where Sherman most definitely drank the water), regularly takes him around using a time machine (CPSC approved, I’m sure), drives Sherman around NYC traffic in the sidecar of a scooter, wears no clothes except for a bow tie and glasses, and may or may not lick his own genitals in public? Plus he’s a dog. Let’s hope Ms. Grunion doesn’t find an uncovered swimming pool or hidden porn stash. Also how do you change a diaper with no opposable thumbs? That one is going to keep me awake tonight.
Anyway, Peabody invites Penny and her parents to his place so they can make up before the arrival of Ms. Grunion. After a rough start he charms the parents but Sherman is having a hard time liking or getting along with Penny. Eventually he caves and shows her the Wayback machine. They go back in time despite Mr. Peabody telling him to not even mention it (just goes to show how hard it is for a guy to say no to a pretty girl) and they hit ancient Egypt (for all his genius Mr. Peabody never thought to put a lock on his time machine? My car has a lock).
At that point time machine chaos ensues. They have to go back in time to save Penny. They travel around talking to assorted historical figures (I guess the Butterfly Effect is not in effect. Haw! For that matter every established concept of time travel is more or less thrown out the window, along with anything resembling historical accuracy. Remember when kids movies would at least try to educate? Well, no. Me either. But still). More weird stuff happens and the space/time continuum takes massive blunt force trauma to the head.
As per usual I won’t do my typical rating for a kids movie. The theater was packed and the kids in the audience seemed amused, so I guess it can be counted as successful. I was bored and kind of creeped out by the animation. I showed up late and got crap seats and honestly didn’t care. Another movie for the “Keep the kids entertained” pile but not one I think that adults will collect and want to see more than once. A lazy movie for lazy entertainment. Date movie? Meh. Something about this as a date movie doesn’t feel right. Bathroom break? Well, there is a lot of thinly veiled bathroom humor so odds are it will be on your mind. Most of the Mr. Peabody/Penny’s parents dinner party is of limited use unless you dream of seeing an animated dog reprise Tom Cruise from Cocktail.
Thanks for reading. Noting on deck today so I might just do another Star Trek thing later on. Please follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review please leave them at the bottom. Off topic questions and suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon. Have a great day.
Dave
(Note-Mr. Peabody and Sherman image courtesy of the Official Site)
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 51 By Any Other Name
For me this will always be the cuboctahedtral styrofoam block episode. Also the episode that proves that not all red shirts who die are male. I remember being actually shocked when Yeoman Thompson was the red shirt killed by Rojan. I thought nothing ever bad happened to hot girls in mini skirt Starfleet uniforms. Of course now that I think about it Yeoman Tina Lawton got turned into an iguana in Charlie X and Lt. Tracy got eviscerated in Wolf in the Fold, but for some reason when I saw this girl get killed I was truly surprised. Maybe because it was on an away mission?
This was also the episode that taught me the value of backless tops for women. If Kelinda is how the women look in the Kelven Empire sign me up. Of course when Spock was describing what he perceived as their real form it was pretty much a female Cthulu. Not sure how much a backless top would enhance that.
Here’s a weird question. The Kelvens make modifications to the warp drive to improve it dramatically. Didn’t Scott see anything that might have lead to an improvement? Sure they took all their gear with them but someone should have noticed something. Don’t they have security cameras of some kind on the Enterprise?
Sorry I was just looking at some images from the episode and lost about 30 minutes looking at pictures of Kelinda. I think I need to add her to my list of favorite Trek girls. Damn she was hot. Actress Barbara Bouchet comes from what is now the Czech Republic. I think I need to take a vacation there.
I just realized that this episode and The Omega Glory were back to back not only in release order but production and they both involved humans reduced to their base elements sans water. I guess if you are a writer on Star Trek and you come across an interesting idea you beat that dead horse until another script blelches forth. There is definite script trending in this show and no one thought of maybe saving the same idea for later on down the road. Oh well.
By the way a friend of mine writes a nerd mommy blog called Domestic Geek Girl and reviewed this onesie from our Star Trek T Shirt collection. I wanted to give her a shout so check out the review she wrote (also her baby is super cute in this thing. Definitely a future Janeway). If you are a mom and a nerd you will probably get a lot from her words.
Dave
300: Rise of an Empire Review
Slow Motion a go-go!
Have you ever gone to a truly epic party on a Friday night? One that you could consider one of the best of your life? An amazing house, great music, lots of cool people, hot chicks, and all the greatest food, booze, and drugs you could ever want? The kind of party where you have nothing but fun and excitement with no real repercussions or consequences? You know, the kind of party where the next day I say to myself “Wow, I almost got laid last night!” (wait is this keyboard on? Dammit! Image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category BTW).
Anyway, ever go to that amazing party and the next morning while basking in the afterglow (or puking up your hangover) you get a call from That Guy? You know who That Guy is. The guy who also had a blast and is 100% convinced that he can make lightning strike twice by throwing the exact same party the very next night, little realizing that most of the people who made it fun either are recovering or recognize him as That Guy and opt to stay in or do something else super fun and cool that I am not invited to. Also his house sucks, the only music he plays is his weird Spotify mix or his neighbor’s kid’s band, the booze is all the cheapest swill available, the drugs either scary or non-existent, and the only food he has is stale chips, cold pizza, and frozen cheese-and-broccoli Hot Pockets with no microwave. Sure, a few of the same people showed up and you can talk about the amazing party you went to last night but really you just stand around looking at each other and wishing you could go back in time 24 hours.
That’s pretty much what 300: Rise of an Empire is. The next day after party no one really wanted. It sort of has a similar greasy feel to it but beyond the fact that it’s bare chested Greeks swinging swords at Persians it is not the same amazing scene and you spend most of the movie wishing you were watching the original. I originally thought that this was another Zack Snyder event but once I ground my way through it to the extremely predictable ending I looked it up and realized Zack only has a writing credit. No, directing credit goes to some dude named Noam Murro, who has done 0.00 action movies and mostly did a couple of HBO movies (one of which was a documentary) and a Dennis Quaid film called Smart People, which netted less than $10 mil.
I know I rail against this every time I see a crap movie with a huge budget but see if you can follow the logic for me. You are a senior executive at Warner Bros. You green light a film and give it a $100,000,000 budget. You are looking for a director. You look at a list of people and think “You know who would be perfect for directing this $100,000,000 film production? Some guy who no one has ever heard of, has never done an action or adventure film, and who’s total box office receipts to date are about 1/10th of the money we are about to hand him. How perfect is that?” Seriously, this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night. Is there anyone out there who works in the movie industry who can shed some light on this for me? I will respect your anonymity but I really don’t think I can take Hollywood seriously if I don’t understand what combination of drugs and stupidity leads to these decisions.
Not to say that Warner is going to lose their investment. Thanks to the brain damaged decision making process that you, the American movie going audience, engages in it is proven that any sequel will automatically rake in 60% of the take of the original regardless of the merit of the film. 300 brought in $70 million its opening weekend. This turd is on track to earn $40 million, which is 57.1% of the original. Do any of you ever feel guilty for catering to a stereotype? On a completely unrelated note I cannot wait for the new Captain America sequel. It is going to be epic.
Before seeing this film last night I was talking about it with a couple friends who are active Frank Miller readers and they told me that his later work has been getting more and more misogynistic. After seeing this I can totally believe that as every woman in this film is either a murderous, evil sociopathic bitch or a rape victim. That says a lot about how Frank Miller and Noam Murro feel about women. There is a death scene where a very blunt and phallic sword is thrust through a woman in a blatant call back to a previous brutal sex scene. I find this attitude towards women ironic since the only redeeming feature of this film was apparent woman Eva Green. She stole every scene and was awesome. She also gave us a truly amazing nude scene and is the new love of my life (sexist I may or may not be, but definitely not misogynist. I love women).
This is a film that ironically suffers under the weight of it’s predecessor. 300 was such a huge success and pretty much established what a Greek or Roman film is supposed to look like that now every film has sweaty, bloody bare chested men hacking at each other in slow motion. This is the third film I have seen this year that could be considered “influenced” by 300 (fourth if you count Son of God) and honestly I am getting really tired of it. This film latches onto its predecessor like a tapeworm and spends most of the film sucking nutrients from 300’s small intestine. The call backs to the good film came with the rapidity and subtlety of a mini gun fired into a six foot block of soft cheese. Some directors might take pride in creating his own film and treat the call backs as the crutches they are but such distinctions are a waste of time for this team.
I’m also going to take issue with the title of this film and what exactly it is supposed to be. The film starts out 10 years before 300 and seems to imply we are going to see a film about the rise of the Persian empire but then it skips forward to the exact time of the Battle of Thermopylae. As far as I can tell the empire exists. Is this a prequel or what? A sidequel? I can tell you there was no sign of any empire rising in this film, so you can understand my simple minded confusion as to the words “rise”, “of”, “an”, and “empire” used in this title.
Also remember how 300 was about 300 Spartan warriors holding off the Persian army in a choke point? Well, now it’s about how Xerxes is the creation of some magic or god crap. Remember how the Battle of Thermopylae occurred in 480 BC? Well now we have prehistoric sea monsters because…well you know. Sharks are boring.
Anyway, one more thing and then I will get into the film. Let’s talk about filming and editing techniques. 300 more or less pushed the whole fast/slow motion action technique. It was used well and really enhanced the film. Well, this movie took that technique and has stretched it out to include literally every scene that does not actually involved people speaking. I’m not kidding when I say every freaking scene that does not have dialog is done in slow motion. Guy walking down a corridor? Slow motion. An exciting scene of oars hitting the water (done over and over again)? Slow motion. Ships crashing into each other? Slow motion. This film went a fairly measly 102 minutes but if you ran the whole film at real speed I doubt it would have been even an hour.
Oh, yeah. If you see this film I hope your favorite colors are grey, grey blue, and grey green because you are going to see a lot of it. The entire film felt like I was watching it from the other side of a fish tank in desperate need of cleaning. Even the blood looked grey. It honestly would have been less monochrome had they shot it in black and white. At least then our imagination might have filled in some color and we could have believed it was done for artistic rather than incompetent reasons.
I guess we can get into the story. The story starts off with the old king of Persia Darius (Igor Naor-Munich, Rendition, Green Zone) at the Battle of Marathon getting his ass handed to him by the Greeks. Thermistokles (Sullivan Stapleton-Strike Back, Gangster Squad, Animal Kingdom) is the Greek general and he picks up a bow and slow motion shoots Darius in the chest right in front of his loving son Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro-I Love You Phillip Morris, Rio, The Last Stand). Xerxes is heartbroken and once Darius finally shuffles off this mortal coil bitch admiral Atemisia (Eva Green-Casino Royale, Dark Shadows, Perfect Sense, my future wedding (hopefully)) convinces him that in order to challenge the Greeks he must become a god. He wanders the desert and takes a bath in magic fire water, emerging as the Bedazzled bald dude we know from the other film.
Skip forward 10 years and now it is up to the Athenians to beat his navy at sea while the Spartans hold him off via land. The Athenians are outnumbered like 50 ships to one but put their ships in a big circle like covered wagons and use that to defeat the first wave. Atemisia chucks her first general overboard and lets the next guy step forward and fail. At that point she goes on a diatribe lamenting the fact that she doesn’t have a man strong enough for her. She invites Themistokle to her ship for a parlay and they lay some pipe. He then rejects her offer to be her second in command and heads back to his navy. The next day blood is spilled, ships get rammed (more massively Freudian imagery BTW. The director of this film has phallus’s on his mind I think), and the “surprise” ending that they had been setting up since the end of the introduction surfaces. I won’t spoil it for you but if you can predict that a skunk is going to stink you will know how this film will end.
The stars:
I’m just going to say it; Eva Green saved this film from being a complete and utter disaster of Baby Geniuses caliber, and I’m not just talking about her topless scene. Every scene with her in it was fun to watch, which had the negative side benefit of making all the rest of the scenes that much harder to witness. However this section is about things the movie did right, and what they did right was cast Eva Green and give her a lot of screen time. Two stars. Eva Green’s topless scene (hey that rhymes!). One star. A lot of the action was pretty good if you are not already stuffed to the gills with Zack Snyder slow motion sword fighting. One star. I guess it was kind of fun to see some of the 300 characters, just like seeing a few of the people from the party the night before can be fun. One star. In spite of everything else it was based on actual events and kind of got most of it right. The Athenians did fight a navel battle while the Spartans were getting massacred. One star. Total: six stars.
The black holes:
The story and characters made very little attempt to engage the audience, at least as well as 300 did. One black hole. Except for Eva Green there was not a single character I cared lived or died. Thermistokles was either another bare chested Greek or annoying me with another “inspirational” speech. One black hole. The speechifying to really old really fast. One black hole. If you have a fear of losing your color vision this is not the film for you. Monochrome hell. One black hole. The misogamy has to be pretty blatant for me to notice and I was seeing it all over the place. Also enough with the phallic imagery Mr. Murro. We get it. Mommy and daddy didn’t love you enough. One black hole. This film was shot almost entirely in slow motion, a trend I find ugly as in most films I find myself wishing for a fast forward button. One black hole. The addition of magic and dinosaurs did nothing for this film. One thing I liked about the 300 was the fact that it could have been how events played out. If I want magic I’ll go back and watch the LOTRs. One black hole. This film couldn’t have stuffed in another call back or reference to 300 without bursting at the seams. One black hole. Also the whole father/son thing was a complete rip off of the first movie and 100% worthless. One black hole. Can someone please tell me what empire is supposed to be rising in this film? The Persian empire pretty much stayed established the whole time. One black hole. The addition of the “we fight for freedom and democracy” that the Athenians kept banging on about felt really out of place and annoying. How about you fight because the Persians want to conquer you? Seems like motivation enough. One black hole. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see how this film is going to end. Maybe it’s just me but predictable=boring. One black hole. Total: twelve black holes.
So six black holes total. Was it really that bad? Meh, probably not although I held myself back on the black holes. For example I didn’t ding them for completely worthless 3D. If you can’t get enough of slow motion swordplay and shades of grey is a turn on you will enjoy it. Most of my bile comes from the fact that this film is an insult rather than a tribute to the first amazing film. Date movie? Only if misogamy and rape turn her on. This film was made for dudes. Bathroom break? That’s easy. Any time you see Themistokles on the shore inspiring his men or making plans is the prefect place to bug out for a bit. Don’t miss the scene where he visits Artemisia on her ship or you will have missed most of the reason to see this flick.
Thanks for reading. Long one today but the films where I feel personally insulted tend to be the extended reviews. Join the tens of Twitter people who follow me @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film or my review are welcomed and can be posted below. Off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. I’ll see Peabody some time this weekend and write it up, and am thinking about going over the Golden Raspberry results too. That should be fun. Have a great weekend.
Dave
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 52 The Omega Glory
Whenever I find myself reviewing a Tom Clancy based movie I often talk about super patriotic Americans who may or may not be able to pleasure themselves while looking at an American flag. I am of course exaggerating (maybe. You all have yet to meet my cousin Matt) but there is a term known as “flag porn” for entertainment generated solely to show the world how cool USA is and the rest of the world sucks. (WW Champs image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category)
That’s pretty much what Omega Glory is. Kirk, as the studliest human in the universe, naturally needs the oportunity to tell the screen how great his “ancestors” were (that would be us, the audience). The bad guys are all dark haired, scrawny, backstabbing Asians and the good guys look like Neanderthal Nazi Party recruitment posters. It is even implied that the Comms conquered the Yangs through the deceptive means of biological warfare while the Yangs embody everything noble in both the white Americans and native Americans. Not the open minded approach that I believe Roddenberry wanted.
All that plus another dopey story. One of the weaker episodes from season 2. However, it does explore a great deal what the Prime Directive is and means in practicality. Would that JJ Abrams knew what it meant. That doesn’t really excuse the racism, the milking of another “parallel Earth” story, and the big ironic reveal being yet another random word coincidence in a language that the Omegans have no business speaking. On the other hand it is always fun to see Kirk get hit over the head with an iron bar by a woman.
Dave
2014 Post-Oscarlyptic Review
This is my chance to show the world how much smarter I am than the Academy. Sure, they have hundreds of thousands of collective hours in the film industry and actually saw all the movies nominated, but I have a blog dammit! Plus an opinion and ego that would put most of Hollywood to shame.
Actually I didn’t have a lot of issue with the winners of the awards this year. For the most part I agree with the Academy and am eagerly awaiting my invitation to join it. However I did review a lot of these and as always have my opinions. Based on my readership at least 14 humans in the world care what that opinion is. Like the real Oscars I will skip most of the technical awards unless I can think of something really funny to say.
Best Picture-12 Years a Slave.
This is a category where I get to feel like an ass as I managed to not see this film. I guess I felt I have enough guilt in my life already. From what I hear it was a great film and I will try to see it soon. Personally I would have chosen the Dallas Buyers Club. It was one of those movies that was so flawless I really didn’t feel the need to review it. My second choice would have been Her which I enjoyed tremendously. American Hustle felt like they were purposely making a film to win best picture, Captain Phillips lacked in character development, and at the end of the story Gravity was about a woman falling for two hours. The Wolf of Wall Street was great but honestly we’ve all seen it before from Scorsese. All of these films I thought great. I also managed to miss Nebraska (mainly because I thought it was a musical like Oklahoma) and Philomena never really surfaced at any of my local theaters.
Best Actor-Matthew McConaughey-Dallas Buyers Club
I totally, 100% agree with this. I thought he was brilliant. He starts off as such a reprehensible character and by the end of the film you are almost in tears for him. My second choice was Leonardo DiCaprio for the Wolf of Wall Street, but it was a long second. Christian Bale I couldn’t get over the bad 70’s clothes and comb over to notice him act (not really true, but they were distracting).
Best Actress-Cate Blanchett-Blue Jasmine
Again no disagreement here. She really pulled this one off in a way that amazed and stunned me. Unfortunately my enjoyment of this film has soured due to the recent sex abuse allegations against Woody Allen. I am going to have to seriously think about whether I need to keep supporting his film career by buying tickets. I mean, Adolf Hitler was a painter. Would I spend money to see an exhibit of his art? Probably not, unless the money generated went to sticking more hot coals you know where for him in Hell. I don’t know if the step daughters allegations are true or not but there seems to be a preponderance of evidence in support of it. I’m not saying Woody is on the same level as Hitler but if these accusations are true I think I have seen my last Woody Allen film. Too bad as I enjoy his work. All that aside I think Cate was brilliant in this film. None of the other candidates really stands out. If I had the power I would award Amy Adams for the Best Almost-Nudity in an R Rated Film. There’s another reason I’m glad American Hustle didn’t win best overall. Am I the only one who has heard “In for a penny, in for a pound”?
Best Actor in a Supporting Role-Jared Leto-Dallas Buyers Club
Total agreement here. I thought he was brilliant. Now if only he could learn to shut his piehole with regards to the transgendered community that would make me happier with it. Of course the whole thing about a straight guy playing a trans woman is insulting to my trans friends so I don’t know if there is really anything he could have done to keep his fat out of the fire. It just seems he could have done something more than nothing. I did really like Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips. Great portrayal. I don’t think Johan Hill deserved the win but I have to say I am a huge fan of his ability to play so many diverse roles. I listened to him on the Howard Stern Show and it struck me that his acting range is pretty huge. He could have kept doing more Superbad style roles for a few years and then been forgotten. He also has a great sense of humor.
Best Actress in a Supporting Role-Lupita Nyong’o-12 Years a Slave
Yes I will go see this dammit. I did like Sally Hawkins a lot and honestly thought Jennifer Lawrence did a better job than Amy Adams did in American Hustle.
Best Animated Feature Film-Frozen
This one category where I am sort of in disagreement with the Academy, except of the fact that I can’t think of a better film. If this were 2012 and this film had beaten out Wreck It Ralph I would have called it a crime against cinema. I found Frozen to be fairly mundane and formulaic. Also the soundtrack sucked. I’d say it was a toss up between this and Despicable Me 2. This is a good example of a big fish in a tiny pond. Had anything remotely decent come down the animated pike this one would have not even placed.
Best Cinematography-Gravity
Duh. This film was almost exclusively a cinematographic exploration. I’m not even sure how Prisoners got nominated, unless they are giving awards for the best Meteorological Control.
Costume Design-the Great Gatsby
Costumes was one thing this film had in spades. Anyone else see any irony in naming a film called The Invisible Woman as a candidate for best costume?
Directing-Alfonso Cuarón-Gravity
All the candidates I thought were great in direction, but when I think of the pacing and development this film was pretty well done. I agree.
Documentary Feature-20 Feet from Stardom
I don’t generally watch documentaries. It is enough work to keep up on current releases. Also if I wanted to see something on reality I would just watch my own life. Movies are all about escaping reality, not examining it.
Documentary Short Subject-The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life
See everything I said about documentaries above, plus where the hell do you go to see a short these days?
Film editing-Gravity
All of what I said about Alfonse above is reflected in the editing. No complaints here, although they all had great editing and pacing.
Foreign Language Film-the Great Beauty
Are you kidding?
Makeup and Hairstyling-Dallas Buyers Club
I can agree with that, although it would have been hilarious if The Lone Ranger had won it for it’s incredibly racially insensitive move of putting brown makeup on Johnny Depp and calling him a native American. The makeup in Bad Grandpa was great but if you are going to give it this award you would have to go back in time to 2002 and give it to Jackass.
Music-Original Score-Gravity
Music is one thing I rarely notice unless it is particularily bad or good. Since most of the songs in Saving Mr. Banks had actually been written for a different (better) movie I’m glad it didn’t win.
Music-Original Song-Let it Go-Frozen
Meh. The mediocrity of the music in this movie is one of the things that really turned me off. I suspect somewhere in the Academy floats a reminder that they need to brown nose Disney once in a while.
Production Design-the Great Gatsby
Fair enough, although Her was kind of brilliant.
I’m going to skip the rest as I have no exposure and not enough film knowledge to actually have an opinion. The one thing I liked about these Oscars is there wasn’t one film that swept it all away. I like it when different films win for different categories.
OK I gotta run. Thanks for reading. I did see Son of God and am on the fence about reviewing it. I have mixed feelings and I don’t see how I can do it without offending one side or the other. I guess I will chicken out unless there is nothing to see this weekend or I am really bored. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu and like us on FB. If you have comments on my comments feel free to post them here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 53 The Ultimate Computer
Star Trek has long been sited as the herald of most of our current technology. Cell phones, tablets, video streaming, virtual reality, even modern computers were first presented to Americans thanks to this show. In this episode we see the first stab at Artificial Intelligence (AI).
However what I love about this episode is not the presentation of M-5 as the future of computing but rather how brilliantly a space battle can be presented even without the benefits of CGI or even a special effects budget. You really feel the action of M-5 crushing the Lexington and the Excalibur from the bridge without needing to see the actual ships in action. I honestly think this was best done in Balance of Terror, but still very well done here.
(Image courtesy of the Star Trek T-Shirt category)
One thing however that I have always found annoying about Star Trek space battles is the image of crew members being thrown around the bridge and bulkheads. I know they stole that from Run Silent Run Deep and every other submarine movie but the fact is at the relative speeds they were running at anything capable of overcoming whatever the Enterprise used as inertial dampeners wouldn’t have thrown them across the room; it would have left a thin red smear on the bulkhead. Sorry Star Trek. I still love you but this has always bugged me.
Dave
Stalingrad Review
Mother Russia comes out with the mother of all mixed movies.
My relationship with foreign films, like my relationship with single women, is complex, ill defined, and a mixed blessing. A the same time I love them and hate them. Some movies take on a new approach that no one in our culture would ever consider and open my eyes to the perspectives of the world (Save the Green Planet). Other films go back and do something so retro cool it reminds us of how movies are supposed to be done as opposed to the inane glitz and gimmickry that is the current Hollywood norm (the Raid: Retribution, the Killer). Still others are just surreal and fun in dopey ways that delight the creative soul (City of Lost Children, Man Bites Dog, Delicatessen).
On the other side of the coin are movies that are just bad imitations of the Hollywood aesthetic and would have been better done (or not done) here in the US (The Warrior’s Way (<–one of my first reviews. See if I have evolved as a reviewer!)). The weird thing is Stalingrad manages to be both the good kind and bad kind of foreign movie at the same time.
On the good, you will never see a war movie like this come out of a Western studio. In our movies the heroes are always better trained, armed, equipped, and motivated than whatever unwashed rabble they are sent against. Even in the rare circumstances where a group of soldiers is cut off from support and grossly outnumbered they are still able to kill dozens of enemies for each one of theirs killed (Black Hawk Down, Lone Survivor, Saving Private Ryan). The best ones are where the enemies are not even human and can be mowed down with impunity.
In this film, at least for the first half, the story follows the reality of the Battle of Stalingrad in that the Wehrmacht is better equipped, trained, and tactical. Hundreds of Russian soldier die horribly in the first ten minutes in ways that make the Normandy assault scene from Saving Private Ryan look like a drive to your local mall. There is no glory in this film; the war is presented as horrible and awful as possible.
Unfortunately once the first 30 minutes are done the director starts channeling Hollywood, letting five guys take on the entire German army and hold them off. Once the stage is set the clear influence of Hollywood infects this film like a plague; super soldiers mowing down Germans left and right, two romance stories, and a villain so cartoonishly evil that they could have substituted Snidely Whiplash and I don’t think I would have noticed a difference. Then in the last 10 minutes the film stops being Hollywood and turns into the grim Russian war movie I was expecting to see the whole time.
So you understand my difficulty in reviewing this film. I would like to bitch about a very poor directing choice however. The movie rips off Saving Private Ryan almost completely including the flashback framing device. However in Private Ryan it made total sense and gave us an awesome reveal and in this film it was one of the most worthless and unnecessary devices I have seen in film in a long time. The whole movie starts off in Japanese and is about the rescue workers trying to save people after the big tsunami. I spent the first ten minutes not sure I was even in the right theater and if it hadn’t been for the Cyrillic lettering on the screen would have gotten up to check the marque and bitch to the theater manager. Then the actual movie starts and you more or less forget about it until the last five minutes when it returns with a vengeance and drops you out of the story with the abruptness of falling into a punji lined tiger trap.
By the way, it is my belief that you can often tell what the interests and fetishes of director are by what he or she keeps showing on the screen and it is apparent that director Fedor Bondarchuk has a thing for human beings being burned alive. That is pretty much what is shown for like the first half of the film (or so it seemed). Also since IMDB doesn’t have any photos for most of these actors I will have to skip my usual habit of identifying each one after mentioning their character. Honestly I couldn’t tell most of them apart during the film anyway and most of them don’t have any other credits. My apologies.
The movie starts off with foreign rescue workers volunteering to help in Japan. A Russian crew finds five teenagers trapped under rubble and the one guy who can speak German starts talking to them to keep them calm. He tells the girl that he had five fathers and once she questions that he launches into telling the story of his mother and five fathers at the battle of Stalingrad.
(Incidentally I found it more than a little weird that in order to calm down a hysterical German girl this guy is going to tell a story of horror and war wherein tens of thousands of Germans were killed or captured, only to be worked to death in Soviet prison camps. Of the 170,000 Germans in Stalingrad eventually only about 5,000 came home. Would you tell a trapped Native American stories about how your grandfather was an American soldier on the Trail of Tears? How about next time you tell a story about a little dog you had as a kid?)
Then the real movie starts with the Red Army advancing across the Volga. Their target seems to be three giant fuel depots and in order to keep them from falling into German hands the captain in charge orders them blown up. This causes most of the assault force to catch on fire but due to their strength of the Russian character still charge forward into the face of German machine guns while on fire (kind of dopey, and if this had been an American film I think I would have been rolling my eyes at that one. The Spirit of the Russian Soldier is a drum that gets beaten pretty regularly in this film. The Hammer and Sickle image is off of one of our funny political t shirts BTW).
Anyway, after getting their assault force obliterated five assorted soldiers and sailors take a building near the river. They are ordered to hold it at all costs. In the building lives Katya, a young girl who was abused by the Germans. She refuses to leave her home and hangs out with the soldiers. Meanwhile across the courtyard the Germans need to take the building and the captain is charged by his laughable evil colonel to do so.
There is a humanizing sub plot for the German captain where he loves a hot Russian girl but honestly that’s the rest of the story in a nutshell. The Germans attack, the Russians beat them back. The Germans set fire to Russian civilians. The five soldiers all come to love and care for Katya and one in particular may or may not have slept with her (little vague on this point). Meanwhile the German captain is obsessed with capturing the building while the colonel breathes down his neck and he does what he can to save Masha, his girl. I’m not going to spoil this one but remember this film is Russian so if you were looking for a happy ending skip on to the next movie.
The stars:
WWII movie. One star. It was nice to see something from the Eastern Front. Most Americans assume we won WWII but in truth it was the Russians who did all the heavy lifting and lost 20,000,000 people doing it. The main motivation for invading Europe from the West was to keep Russia from taking over all of it. One star. I liked the different approach to war films. It was a true team effort and the grimness of the Russians in the face of the better equipped and trained Germans was cool. One star. I actually really like the ending. Not all heroes have to ride off into the sunset with the girl on their arm. One star. Aside from the charge of the Burning Men (haw! That joke is way funnier if you live in the Bay Area) most of the action was cool and well done. One star. If you ever want to see how grim warfare can be, especially in an urban environment, this is the one for you (unless you saw Enemy at the Gates). One star. I liked the humanization of the German captain, and the effort to show that decency can exist in even the worst conditions. One star. In general a decent film. One star. Total: eight stars.
The black holes:
The flashback framing device was kind of idiotic, as well as derivative and completely unnecessary. It felt like we were watching two different movies. One black hole. I’m never a fan of villains who are evil just for evils sake. It makes them comical. One black hole. The Hollywoodification of this film was greatly to its detriment IMO. One black hole. The 3D and IMAX added nothing except for a motivation to write in some dumb crap in order to showcase it. Special effects should be used to enhance a story, not motivate it. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of four stars. A better than average score but on the B- side of the bell curve. It could have been a lot better. Worth seeing? It’s certainly a better WWII movie than Monuments Men, which should say something to studios who let actors pleasure themselves on the studio dime. I’d say yes, it’s worth seeing. It’s a pretty solid R and fairly brutal so no kids and probably no date. A romance in a film doesn’t add much to your dates enjoyment when most of the cast ends up dead. Bathroom break? That’s pretty easy. The scene where the five Russians throw a birthday party for Katya could be missed entirely, although in a perfect world you would have been able to skip the opening and closing bookends.
Thanks for reading. If the girl I’m supposed to hang out with tonight blows me off (a good likelihood in my experience) I will go see Son of God (that sentence taken out of context looks a little weird) although there is a big piece of me that is dreading it. Look for that review (plus more bitching about my dating life) tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Mostly I just post new reviews plus the series I am doing on Star Trek, although the other day I found a couple of funny photos. If you have a comment on this film or my review scroll down and leave it here. Also my SEO guy says I need more Facebook likes so click the little button on the top right. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Thanks again and have a great night.
Dave
