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    Goodbye James Gandolfini

    By Dave / 21st June, 2013 / T-Shirts, TV Show t shirts / No Comments

    I and pretty much everyone I know was saddened to learn of the death of James Gandolfini, or as he was more popularly know, Tony Soprano.  Everyone loved that show (Bada Bing image courtesy of the TV show t shirt category) and his character.  It can be said he was typecast and it would be true, but I think he was smart enough to understand where his strength was and embrace it.

    I, however, remember him for several other roles.  I loved him as General Miller in In the Loop (where he ended the film with one of the best lines ever), and will always remember him kindly for being one of the scariest movie character ever in True Romance (where he beats seven kinds of hell out of Patricia Arquette).  He was great in Get Shorty, creepy as hell in 8mm, and hilarious in the Incredible Burt Wonderstone.  His talent and sense of humor were tremendous.

    I hate having to write these and can honestly say I will miss him.  Seeing him in any film was always a sign that regardless of what else was going on in the film at least his part I was going to enjoy.  Farewell to an awesome character actor.

    Dave

     

    This is the End Review

    By Dave / 18th June, 2013 / T-Shirts, TV Show t shirts / No Comments

    Pretty freaking funny.

    It has been something of a golden period in movies for the last couple weeks.  Man of Steel, the Internship, and Now You See Me I quite enjoyed, and even the Hangover Part 3 didn’t make my stomach churn.  Now this film made me laugh my ass off, lulling me into a pleasant state of movie complacency with no danger at all of Hollywood using my lulled sense of movie danger to deliver a swift film kick straight to the groinal area.

    What’s that on the horizon?  Grown Ups 2?  Better make sure my cup is positioned correctly.

    So snide predictions aside, I really enjoyed this film.  I am not a stoner and yet I still really enjoy Seth Rogen films (except Green Hornet, of course), which tells me his comedy transcends the drug humor that it is based on.  If you have any kind of sense of humor you will laugh, if only at the self depreciation played at the expense of Hollywood stars.  Showing celebrities as shallow, self indulgent, drug and alcohol addicted horrible people may just be terribly accurate but it’s also hilarious, especially when they all get a biblical comeuppance.  I have to give massive props to all the stars of this film for being willing to play themselves so tongue-in-cheek, especially Channing Tatum and Michael Cera (George-Michael image courtesy of the TV Show T-Shirts).  I will have to give them each a notch up when it comes time to review their next films (of course since Channing Tatum’s next film is White House Down, yet another terrorists-take-over-the-White-House movie, he is already deep in the red zone).

    This movie was strange in that I couldn’t really decide which character I liked the best.  I am a Seth Rogen (Superbad, Pineapple Express, Green Hornet) fan and he was great, and his co-protagonist Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder, Million Dollar Baby, Knocked Up) was also great, but they were each occluded by the secondary characters.  James Franco (Oz the Great and Powerful, Spider Man 2, 127 Hours) was awesome, Jonah Hill (Moneyball, Superbad, 21 Jump Street) was hilarious, and Craig Robinson (The Office, Peeples, Hot Tub Time Machine) was the perfect straight man.  If I had to pick one it would have to be bad guy Danny McBride (Eastbound and Down, Your Highness, Up in the Air), who ended the movie in the coolest way possible for a bad guy.

    I am not a terribly religious person, and if you are or are not I am not sure how you might take this movie.  If you are very religious you might find the message of Armageddon to be a good thing and hopefully inspiring to the unbelievers.  On the other hand you might be annoyed at the fairly loose requirements for getting into Heaven.  If you are not religious the whole message may sit ill with you.  However, I submit that in any of these cases you lack the sense of humor to enjoy the film regardless.

    The story starts off with Jay Baruchel arriving in LA to visit with old friend Seth Rogen.  They go to his place to spend the day smoking pot and playing video games.  Seth cajoles Jay into attending a party at James Franco’s place.  The party is everything you ever imagined shallow Hollywood types indulging in, plus 3.  While the two are out buying smokes the rapture occurs, with all the good people lifted up into Heaven on blue beams of light while all the bad people (they never go so far as to use the word sinner) stay around and the world more or less blows up.  They run back to the house to discover that no one at the party noticed.  Apparently none of them were eligible for Heaven, as telling a statement as to what Seth Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg think about Hollywood as you can find.

    A giant fire filled sinkhole opens up in the lawn and sucks most of the party guests down.  Seth, Jay, James, Craig, and Johan barricade themselves in the house.  Next morning they discover Danny was passed out in the bathtub when he wakes up and eats most of their food.

    At that point it becomes Survivor: Satanic Apocalypse.  There are some great moments as the crew has to figure out how to find food and water, do a lot more drugs, and deal with Hellish demons.  At one point Emma Watson shows up looking super cute (I feel really creepy saying that, by the way.  Last time I saw her she was Hermione in Harry Potter.  Harry Potter, the Perks of Being a Wallflower, My Week with Marilyn) but gets the wrong idea about the crew and steals all their water.  They have to cast out Danny McBride after he abuses their water and food (he later shows up even more awesome that before).  They discover that redemption is still possible, but it’s not quite as easy as saying sorry.

    The stars. 

    Really, really funny.  Two stars.  I appreciate the self deprivation and social commentary.  One star.  Getting some of those stars to do what could readily be construed as not the most favorable roles image-wise must have taken some work.  One star.  The main characters are clearly real life friends, and the chemistry on the screen is palpable.  One star.  Pacing was excellent.  Movie felt just long enough.  One star.  All the characters were great.  One star.  Overall a fun time.  One star.  Total: eight stars.

    The black holes.

    The whole Biblical message could put both groups off equally.  One black hole.  Rated R for language, concept, and swinging male demon meat while not throwing the heterosexual (and lesbian) audience members anything is another waste of potential.  One black hole.  Total: two black holes.

    A grand total of six stars.  Really fun, really worth seeing.  If you happen to be a stoner I predict you will own a copy and find it even more hilarious when you indulge in your medicinal substances (“Ow my glaucoma!”).  Date movie?  Meh.  If your girl is a stoner sure but honestly this is a dudes film.  See it with your bros.  Bathroom break?  Nothing really stands out as being worthless.  The argument leading up to Emma Watson leaving could be missed pretty readily, but it’s pretty funny nevertheless.  Try to hurry.

    Thanks for reading.  I’m excited to see World War Z this weekend.  Look for that review soon.  I have a couple old films I never got around to reviewing I might do up this week.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  If you have comments on this film or my review feel free to leave them here.  If you have off topic questions or suggestions email them to [email protected].  Have a great day.

    Dave

    Man of Steel 3D Review

    By Dave / 14th June, 2013 / funny t shirts, T-Shirts / No Comments

    Movie of Steel.

    This film is in all ways a good, solid, and exciting flick.  There are some definite issues (which I will delve into with a secret sense of petty glee shortly) but in general it is everything I could have hoped for in a Superman movie.

    Of course that could be taken as relative praise.  Superman is one of the comic book heroes I just don’t really dig that much.  He is too powerful and too flawless.  All great heroes are tragic heroes, and in order to be a tragic hero you have to start from tragedy.  Everyone I bring this up with always says “His home planet blew up”.  Sorry, but he was an infant at the time and even if he had memories of it he really didn’t have the time to bond with his parents or planet.  He grew up in small down America with the Kents in a bucolic, Norman Rockwell-esque paradise.  You can’t compare that to watching your parents get gunned down by a mugger right next to you at age 10, or having your uncle get killed by the very man you let escape earlier that evening.

    This film manages to inject some tragedy into the Superman upbringing, which I appreciate.  I’m going to avoid spoilers but there was something that makes Superman’s life decisions all that more weighty (although in truth he could have easily avoided the bad situation.  After all, he is Superman).  However, any connoisseur of comic books or comic book movies will tell you that the strength of a film always resides in the strength of the villain, and in this case the new General Zod hit it out of the park.  He is in all ways cool and dedicated, and even more tragic in that he is not motivated by just being a power hungry dick but rather by a desire to save his people.  Tragic heroes are great, but tragic villains are awesome. The also managed to avoid the issue most origin stories have where they spend half the movie giving the guy his powers and the rest fighting some bad guy excaped from the deep recesses of the writers ass that we don’t care about (cough cough Green Lantern cough cough).  They accomplished this by integrating Zod into the story from the very beginning.  Well done IMO.

    The part I was looking forward to is while I am not really a Superman fan I am definitely a Zach Snyder fan.  300, Sucker Punch, and the Watchmen are among my personal favorites and I knew he wouldn’t let me down even given less than optimal source material.

    However, the film is not flawless and it would not be one of my reviews if I did not find a few things to nit pick.  First off how many freaking times to we need to see the Superman origin story?  I understand that Hollywood is terrified of anything that remotely smacks or originality or creativity, but the first Superman comic book came out in 1938 and has been running monthly ever since.  That’s 75 years of original story telling (over 900 issues) from which to derive something.  You are telling me that there isn’t a single story in all those comics that is worthy of fleshing out into a movie script.  I’m sure executives look at past movies and decide that if they can’t guarantee numbers close to the last movie they had better just regurjitate the same old song and dance.  Chocolate cake is great, but you would be surprised how quickly you can get sick of it if that’s all you eat every meal (in my experience it’s 5 days and 17 hours).  Origin stories redone are the chocolate cake every meal of movies.

    There are of course the typical plot holes most mainstream movies seem obligated to insert under law.  If the Kryptonians have a galaxy spanning star empire why did the not have a few ships lying around for at least some people to escape?  What exactly killed all the off world Kryptonians?  If they have the resources of the universe at their disposal why did they need to remove their planet’s core for energy?  If the Kryptonians know that living on a planet with a yellow sun gives them super powers why didn’t they all move to one millenia ago?  Apparenlty they were on Earth 20,000 years ago.  How is it a random scout ship just happens to have a Superman costume on board featuring the family crest of the -el family?

    These plot holes were weighty and distracting, and had the pace of the movie stayed the same in the last half as the first half they would have been the lighter fluid to ignite my barbeque briquettes of hate.  Fortunately once the action started the movie went from a plodding 4.5 to a rock hard 9.8.  It’s hard to find a movie slow when someone is throwing a freight train at another guys head.

    The last thing I’m going to bitch about comes from our good friend science.  I can’t believe I’m explaining this again (this is like the 5th movie that made this same mistake) but saying something is made up of an unknown element not found on this planet makes you sound like a moronic Neanderthal puzzled by the invention of fire.  A high school chemistry class will tell you that elements are comprised of protons, neutrons, and electrons.  Each element is assigned an atomic number that corresponds to the number protons in the atom.  Thus Hydrogen has one proton, Helium 2, etc.  Between 1 and 118 there are no unknown elements, and at the higher the number the more unstable and difficult to produce.  Ununoctium, atomic number 118, has only had 3 atoms produced ever.  The idea that a whole ship is created from an element that is unknown yet still functional (not super heavy, super unstable, super radioactive, or a gas) is laughable, and would have been easily avoided just by substituting “alloy” or “compound” in place of element (remember transparent aluminum?).

    Electron image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category.

    All these aside, really good film.  Let’s get into the story, shall we?  There are some spoilers incoming, so skip ahead to the stars if you find them annoying.

    The film starts off on Krypton, a harsh planet that looks suspiciously like the cities from John Carter of Mars.  Jor-el (Russell Crowe-L.A. Confidential, Gladiator, Master and Commander) has figured out that the planet is going to blow up but can’t find a ship big enough for him and his wife Lara (Ayelet Zurer (why does that name sound more Kryptonian than Lara?  I got rejected by a girl named Lara a few months ago right here on Earth)-Vantage Point, Munich, Angels & Demons) but hey happen to have a baby buggy sized ship perfect for young Kal-el, who just got born.  Jor-el infuses Kal-el with some kind of genetic blueprint for the entire Kryptonian race (they are all cloned.  Kal-el’s birth is the first natural child birth in centuries).  Meanwhile General Zod (Michael Shannon-Take Shelter, Vanilla Sky, Pearl Harbor) is trying to lead a coup against the ruling council.  He gets shut down and sentenced to the Phantom Zone.

    Cut forward 33 years and Clark Kent (Henry Cavill-the Immortals, the Tudors, Stardust) is drifting across the world, helping people upon occasion but generally trying to stay out of trouble.  His childhood is revealed in a series of flashbacks but if you really need me to tell you the Superman origin story let me know what Buddhist monastery you grew up in.  He shows up at a ship stuck in a glacier from 20,000 years ago.  Turns out to be a Kryptonian scout ship where he learns his origin from his holographic father.  He also meets Lois Lane (Amy Adams-the Muppets, Catch Me if You Can, Enchanted), who later tracks him down at his family farm.

    Meanwhile, Zod has escaped from the Phantom Zone and want’s Superman’s DNA literally.  He also wants to xenoform (the term used in the movie was terraform, but that is completely incorrect.  When we turn an alien planet into something resembling Earth it’s terraforming.  When aliens turn Earth into an alien environment it’s xenoforming.  I know.  I’m a prickly hedgehog, but these things make me sad in the face) Earth into another Krypton, resulting in the death of all humans.  Superman gets his ass kicked but later comes back and whales on some Kryptonian baddies.  Really that’s it.  The story is pretty linear.

    The stars. 

    Superhero action on par with the Avengers.  Also during the course of the film the collateral damage is astronomical.  More than once you see Superman or Zod get punted through three or four skyscrapers only to have them collapse completely.  Awesome.  Three stars.  Henry Cavill did really well as Superman.  One star.  I liked all the stuff on Krypton, which kind of made up for the fact that they were forcing me to watch the Superman origin again.  One star.  General Zod was pretty amazing.  Two stars.  Looking at the broader cultural impact of an alien on Earth was pretty cool.  One star.  I was particularly pleased with the scene where the military is trying to attack the Kryptonians and gets their asses handed to them.  One star.  Actual excitement for a change.  One star.  The ending while was pretty cool, and it wasn’t all Superman.  One star.  Overall a great time watching.  Two stars.  Total: Thirteen stars.

    The black holes.

    Superman origin and General Zod again??  One black hole for blowing out their originality fuse.  I know it’s petty, but that alien element thing really bugs.  I will roll it together with the xenoforming issue and give one black hole for crappy science.  I’ll throw in the other plot holes as well.  One black hole.  I really didn’t like Amy Adams as Lois Lane.  She just didn’t have the grit I expect from Lois Lane.  Sorry Amy.  You are hot.  One black hole.  The PG-13 rating was an anchor around the neck of the action.  The really went out of their way to hide the horrible things that were going on.  There was no way Superman and Zod had the fight they did in Metropolis without killing a half million people.  One black hole.  Pacing dragged in the first half, and I was feeling every one of the 143 minutes on my bladder.  One black hole.  Total: five black holes.

    A grand total of eight stars, and my rousing endorsement of this film.  If you can avoid all the petty issues that grind on me like a sandpaper jock strap you will enjoy the hell out of it.  Date movie?  Only if you have a cool girl who wants to see this.  She will probably enjoy it, but this film will neither help nor hinder you getting her clothes off.  Bathroom break?  Any of the scenes involving Martha Kent in the last half of the film are pretty expendable.  I liked her but she did not contribute much to the character development after the mid point.

    Thanks for reading.  Movies like this make me glad I got into doing reviews.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  Post comments on this film or my review here, and if you have an off topic question or suggestion feel free to email me at [email protected].  Talk to you soon.

    Dave

    The Internship Review

    By Dave / 13th June, 2013 / Comic Book T-Shirts, Superman T Shirts, T-Shirts / No Comments

    Wedding Crashers hits Google.

    The weirdest thing about this movie is I didn’t hate it.  I have heard nothing but how awful it is from a bunch of other reviewers and I went in with my bile gun loaded for bear, but by the end of it I found myself kind of having fun watching it.  It was like going in for a horrible root canal only to find the dentist is extremely generous with the anaesthesia and is a super hot, well endowed brunette who likes to lean in close while working, if you know what I mean.

    That’s not to say this film is necessarily good.  It’s derivative of other films in the same way saying a photocopy is derivative of the original document.  Anyone remember the movies Meatballs, Revenge of the Nerds, Big, Sleeper, and Old School?  Vince Vaughn sure does, and “borrowed” heavily from all of them while writing this film with Jared Stern.  The formulaic and predictable story caged in Vince and Owen Wilson’s comedic ability, and for the most part the film was chained down with too many straight men (or women).  Having the middle aged main guys surrounded by 20 year olds and yet are still the wild ones was more than a little disconnected, and there was an underlying message about how hard it is for current college graduates to find work that was kind of a bummer.

    Yet all that aside I found myself laughing a lot.  Of course I had a lot of personal connections to the film that most of you would probably be missing.  First of all I live in the Bay Area and have any number of friends who work at Google, so the environment they portrayed made a lot of sense.  Whenever they showed a scene in San Francisco or Palo Alto I could thing “Hey, I had a friend who puked on that corner”, which always improves a personal connection.  Also the job that the main characters were doing at the beginning of the film (manufacturers rep) I have done myself for most of my life and I have worked for agencies exactly like the one they showed, so I could see a lot of humor that others might not.

    This film also serves as some kind of Google marketing ploy, but what message it is supposed to impart I don’t know.  On the one hand they seem to be showing Google as the coolest, most fun place to work in the world and all the employees are infused with “Googliness” (a term that comes up more times than it should in this film.  More times=more than zero IMO) and a desire to make the world a better place with answers to questions like “do midgets have night vision?”.  On the other hand the film seems dedicated to showing Google employees as the biggest dorks in the history of dorkdom (this is coming from as big a dork as you will ever meet in your lifetime) and the whole company as so bogged down with nerd culture and hippy dippy bull that you wonder how they can successfully turn on the light switch without falling down and breaking something.  Kind of a mixed message. By the way, based on how much I pay every month for Google AdWords, I can tell you they are not not interested in making money.

    The film starts off with Billy (Vince Vaughn-Wedding Crashers, Dodgeball, Mr. and Mrs. Smith) and Nick (Owen Wilson-Zoolander, Midnight in Paris, Drillbit Taylor) working as sales reps when they find out their boss (John Goodman-Argo, Monsters Inc, the Big Lebowski) just closed down the company.  They are desperate for work (at one point Nick takes a job with his brother-in-law, played hilariously by the great Will Ferrell).  While looking for work Billy managed to sign them up for an internship with Google.  They are accepted for the thinnest of reasons and relocate to California.

    Once there they are literally the odd men out.  They are insulted by their intern nemesis Graham (Max Minghella-the Ides of March, Art School Confidential, the Social Network) and are teamed up with the rest of the cliche rejects; an over achieving Asian guy (Tobit Raphael-no other credits), a wannabe geek slut (Tiya Sircar-Friends with Benefits, Hotel for Dogs, 17 Again), a depressive hipster anti-socialite (Dylan O’Brian-The High Road, Teen Wolf, the First Time), and the nerd team leader Lyle (Josh Brener-Big Bang Theory, the Condom Killer, Glory Days).  Nick also meets his super hot but over worked love interest Dana (Rose Byrne-Get Him to the Greek, 28 Weeks Later, X-Men First Class).

    They are then injected into an Apprentice style competition with the other teams and thanks to Billy and Nick start loosing pretty badly.  Billy managed to get the team to bond during a game of Quidditch (no joke.  By the way, I don’t care how geeky you are no one on this planet would ever choose to be Hufflepuff).  At that point if you have ever seen Meetballs you can pretty much predict where this movie is going, only with less sex, camping, and actual physical activity.  Billy and Nick take the team to a PG strip club.  They meet a guy who looks a lot like Professor X.

    The stars.  Funny moments, and if you are looking for a lesson in the value of teamwork and fair play look no further.  One star.  I’m not a huge Owen Wilson fan, but I like Vince Vaughn and his chemistry with Owen is a winning combination (actually I liked Owen a lot in Zoolander).  One star.  I would risk serious bodily harm and/or death to have dinner with Rose Byrne, and Tiya Sircar is pretty easy on the eyes.  One star.  The team, while all plucked from the Tree of Cliches, were all different, decently written, and managed to contribute to the film.  One star.  I like the guy in charge of the interns (Aasif Mandvi-the Last Airbender, Spiderman 2, Dictator) a lot.  In fact all the supporting actors were pretty good.  One star.  The cameo by Will Ferrell was pretty good.  One star.  Overall entertaining.  One star.  Total: seven stars.

    The black hole.  Not particularly original.  One black hole.  The whole film was pretty clearly either bankrolled by Google or the writers have a secret love obsession with it.  They couldn’t have painted Google to be cooler or neater if they wrote in a device that turned raw sewage from the Google campus into life giving ambrosia.  One black hole.  The movie felt long and stretched.  It could have lost about 20 of the 119 minutes without losing much.  One black hole.  Total: three black holes.

    So four stars.  Not awesome, but I don’t feel like I wasted my time.  You might not get so much out of it if you are not really familiar with Google and/or being a sales rep, but overall you will probably enjoy it.  There is nothing here requiring a big screen so feel free to NetFlix it.  Date movie?  Sure, why not.  It’s cute, feels good, and not a lot of serious competition in the hot man department unless your date has a thing for blond guys with broken noses.  Bathroom break?  There is a scene towards the last 1/3rd where the team is trying to sell Google advertizing to a pizza restaurant and failing that doesn’t add a lot to the story.  Go then.

    Thanks for reading.  I’m seeing Man of Steel in about 40 minutes so look for that review tomorrow (Man of Steel image courtesy of the Superman T Shirt category).  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  If you have comments on this film or review feel free to post them here.  If you have off topic questions, suggestions, or are Rose Byrne looking for a dinner date (I can promise you won’t be bored, Rose) email me at [email protected].  Thanks and have a great day.

    Dave

     

    The Hangover Part III Review

    By Dave / 10th June, 2013 / T-Shirts, Transformers T Shirt / No Comments

    Not as headache inducing as the last one.

    I have definitely been remiss in writing up my reviews lately, which is too bad as I have seen a couple of movies that are deserving of reviews.  The fact is just when I think my life cannot get any busier somehow it finds a new, higher gear I didn’t even know existed.  I need to stop doing so much stuff (for example, this last weekend I spent in Hartford getting my ass handed to me at Warhammer.  ETC restrictions suck).

    So I saw this film and have to admit it was much better than the Hangover Part II.  Of course they could have shown us file footage of bowel cancer surgery and it would have been funnier and less disturbing that that pile of tripe.  However, even without the last one to compare it to this would have been a fun, enjoyable film at least worth putting on the same shelf with the original Hangover.

    The one thing they brought back that was completely missing from the last one was consequences.  In the first film every thing they did had some kind of unpleasant payback; steal a police car, get used for Tazer practice.  Steal a tiger from Mike Tyson, get punched in the face.  In the second film they guys bumble their way through Thailand with nary a single major consequence worth mentioning.  The thing is it’s consequences that make movies good.  As soon as you figure out that there is no way that anything of a serious or potentially deadly consequence can happen to the main characters all tension bleeds from an action film.  Likewise in comedy in order for a situation to be funny there has to be some kind of repercussion for stupidity.

    In this film the paybacks are back, and they even call back to the last film and inject some consequences for those actions.  I don’t want to spoil the film too much but sufficed to say every time the guys (especially Alan) do something dumb they pay the price for it.

    I will throw in one complaint and that is the whole premise of the film is the guys get hammered and drugged and wake up dealing with the consequences while trying to piece together what happened.  Thus the title the Hangover.  This one is more about dealing with the further repercussions from the first film than anything else, and has no drug induced blackouts whatsoever.  I can’t complain too much as I bitched mightily about how the last film was a blatant remake of the first one and at least they wrote an original script here.

    This film is also the darkest of the three (where have we heard that phrase before?) with guys actually dying (or being killed).  That does cast a slight pall over what is generally supposed to be pretty light fare, but honestly the humor was still decent and it didn’t detract from the enjoyment.  The real strength of the Hangover has always been the chemistry between Phil, Stu, and Alan and this film definitely captures this.  The humor is there, but unfortunately there is a slight smell of desperation as they studio tries to wring the last bit of milk from this otherwise dry cow.

    Transformers T ShirtThe movie starts Chow (Ken Jeong-Hangover, Community, Transformers Dark of the Moon.  Image courtesy of the Transformers t shirt category) escaping from a Chinese prison (ever see the Shawshank Redemption?  If not you won’t be annoyed at the clear rip off here).  Meanwhile Alan (Zach Galifianakis-the Hangover, Due Date, the Campaign) is being weirder than usual.  His antics with killing a giraffe cause his father (perenial supporting characater actor Jeffrey Tambor-Arrested Development, There’s Something About Mary, Branded) to die of a heart attack.  His family is concerned with him and wants to get him committed to a rehab clinic.  Is brother-in-law Doug (Justin Bartha-the Hangover, National Treasure, Dark Horse) calls in the remaining wolf pack members Stu (Ed Helms-the Office, the Lorax, High Road) and Phil (Bradley Cooper-the Hangover, Limitless, Silver Linings Playbook) to convince Alan to go.

    They go on a road trip but on the way are stopped by a local gangster (John Goodman-the Big Lebowski, Argo, Monsters, Inc.).  It turns out the Chow stole $21MM worth of gold from the guy and he wants it back.  He kidnaps Doug and gives the rest of the gang three days to find Chow and his money.

    With that flimsy premise set the gang are on their way to hilarity.  Honestly the story doesn’t do much more that give the three set piece after set piece to have their wacky adventures in.  Chow is funny and messes with the gang.  Turns out that he and Alan are great friends.  The story actually leads up to a conclusion and lessons about friendship are (sort of) learned.

    The stars.  Better than the last one.  Normally that would not warrant a star (I always feel movies need to stand on their own) but the last one left such a bad taste in my mouth I feel like I need to say something.  One star.  The great chemistry between the three main characters is as strong as ever.  Two stars.  Mr. Chow is as funny as ever.  One star.  A few really good laughs in there like delicious chocolate chips in a kind of bland cookie.  One star.  I can’t really put my finger on it but in general I was entertained and pleased.  One star.  Total: six stars.

    The black holes.  A lot of this film was sucking on humor fumes, and looking for the funny in anything.  One black hole.  It’s hard to find funny in a scene where two guys just got shot in the head.  Kind of sets the tone off.  One black hole.  Calling it the Hangover when no one is actually hung over.  One black hole.  Total: three black holes.

    So a grand total of three stars.  You can take it or leave it, honestly.  If you saw the other two and the last one sufficiently lowered your expectations you will probably enjoy it a lot.  If you are a massive fan of the first one and managed to miss the second I don’t know if this will help you at all.  Nothing visually screams for a big screen so I think this is very NetFlix-able.  Date movie?  Meh, not so much.  I don’t see this helping your campaign out much at all.  Bathroom break?  Nothing sticks out in my head as being truly worthless, but nothing really sticks out as being a must see (except for the Chow escape from the hotel room.  Don’t miss that.  In fact most of the Chow scenes are pretty good).

    Thanks for reading.  More soon I promise.  I need to get back on the case.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  If you have comments on this film or my review feel free to post them here.  Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected].  Have a great day.  Talk to you soon.

    Dave

     

    Goodbye Iain M. Banks

    By Dave / 10th June, 2013 / star trek t shirts, T-Shirts / No Comments

    I in all ways qualify as a fan boy.  I am really into and obsess about certain nerd sub cultures and will fight tooth and nail to defend my position against the ignorant savages who want have deluded themselves into believing that the Star Trek reboots were decent films, or that Superman is as good a comic book character as Batman, or that the Alliance is better than the Horde because the characters are prettier (2009 Star Trek image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirt category).  If you ever get me into a discussion of the relative merits of the new Star Wars verses the original three prepare to be either bored or enthralled (depending on your own fan boy status) for several hours as I discuss exactly how Lucas failed and betrayed us all in excruciating detail.

    The thing is I am for the most part I am a fan boy of characters and concepts far more than people.  I am a huge fan of Han Solo but given the opportunity to meet Harrison Ford I could take it or leave it.  My love of Han never got me to become a big fan of Indiana Jones.  The point is that one of the few actual real life humans I am a fan of is the late, great Iain M. Banks.

    I wrote something about his developing cancer a couple months ago so I am not going to gush on about how great his books are or how much they always meant to me.  If you are that interested you can check out the blog I did back then here.  Sufficed to say he was one of the few people in the world I would have gone to great lengths to meet and discuss his work with, and with his passing yesterday the world feels like a more bleak place for me.  Anyone who knows anything about Science Fiction (or just dark, gothic fiction) knows what he was to our beloved genre, and I hope you all take a minute out of your day to reflect and appreciate what a rare gem he was; a truly creative and humorous soul in a literary world cluttered with sparkly vampires, dragons burning sky worms, and every other rampantly prolific author of pulp designed to regurgitate every trite sci fi idiom as a bland paste.

    Iain M. Banks, I for one will miss you.

    Dave

    P.S. Mr. Banks managed to finish his last novel three weeks before his death.  Not at all surprisingly it is about a man with cancer.  It is called The Quarry, and I recommend we all buy and read a copy as a tribute to a great author.  I am looking forward to it.

    D.

    Now You See Me Review

    By Dave / 1st June, 2013 / T-Shirts, Zombie t shirts / No Comments

    I am at a loss for a clever subtitle on this film.

    Hey, I can’t be brilliant every day.  Just most days.  If this movie had sucked I would have had some decent ones like “Now you shouldn’t”, but the fact is I quite enjoyed this film.  It’s no Citizen Kane, but it has a lot of the things I enjoy in a film: a complex story, some very engaging characters, and intriguing plot twists.  The story is relatively light and it ramps up the hokey-meter as it crosses the finish line, but if all you are going for is entertainment this is the film for you.

    This is one of those movies that manages to hide all it’s plot holes behind other plot holes passed off as complex plot twists.  In other words, if there is a gaping plot hole dangling they explain it with magic (literally) and don’t really bother to detail how exactly things actually worked.  On a different day I might bitch heavily about that, but given the last few movies I have seen have been dismal and the whole premise of this film is magicians who rob banks I am more than willing to let those issues fade under the warm glow of suspension of disbelief.

    This will be a short review as movies that I enjoy but have no real draw into (in other words, not science fiction) leave me with not a lot of opinions.  Movies that suck or that I feel betrayed me somehow tend to be the longest (cough cough Star Trek cough cough) with movies that I love in a genre that I love being the second longest.

    The story.  Four street magicians (Jesse Eisenberg-30 Minutes or Less, Zombieland, the Social Network; Dave Franco-Warm Bodies, 21 Jump Street, Fright Night, Zodiac; Woody Harrelson-Zombieland, Natural Born Killers, No Country for Old Men; Isha Fisher-Rango, Wedding Crashers, Rise of the Guardians) are recruited to perform the greatest magic show ever.  (Zombieland image courtesy of the Zombie T Shirt category)  They each have their individual skills: Merritt (Woody) is the mentalist (and easily the most entertaining character), Daniel (Jesse) is the fast talking card trick guy, Henley (Isla) is the showman (showwoman, I guess), escape artist, and general eye candy, and Jack (Dave) is the young hustler/pickpocket con man.  They set up their huge show in Las Vegas with the aid of their benefactor Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine-Children of Men, Dark Knight, the Prestige), a wealthy business tycoon.

    During their performance they magically rob a bank in Paris.  The FBI is called in headed by Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo-the Avengers, Shutter Island, Zodiac) and Interpol agent Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent-Inglorious Basterds, Don’t Worry I’m Fine, the Concert).  However, no charges can be leveled unless the FBI wants to admit they believe in magic.  They track down TV magician debunker Taddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman-the Shawshank Redemption, Driving Miss Daisy, Glory) and ask him to help but he’d rather pursue his own agenda.  At that point it is a crime mystery except the criminals are infinitely more clever than the FBI and spend most of the movie making them look like fools.  Twists are twisted, some tricks are revealed, and in general a good time is had by all.

    The stars:

    Generally a fun, interesting story.  Two stars.  All the characters were great, especially Woody’s.  One star.  I like a movie where it is OK to root for the criminal.  One star.  Acting was good.  One star.  I thought I had the plot twist figured out early, but instead it was something else that caught me completely off guard.  One star.  The writers of this movie expect most of the audience to at least have a triple digit IQ, which I appreciate.  One star.  Two bonus stars for not being a waste of my time.  Total: nine stars.

    The black holes:

    This film definitely put suspension of disbelief through a workout, and if you let yourself really think about it you realize there is no way they could have planed for all this.  One black hole.  In the last half of the film this film wandered very close to the border of “magic is real” hokeyness and in the last 10 minutes sneaked under the wire without actually doing anything.  One black hole.  While this film was fun and interesting, it wasn’t terribly exciting.  Lots of time spent on making it look cool and polished without increasing my heart rate.  One black hole.  Total: three black holes.

    A grand total of six stars, a very credible score.  Worth seeing if you just want some good old fashioned entertainment.  Date movie?  Yes if you have no alternative.  There is nothing here to really turn her on (unless she is turned on by stage magicians, which is actually a whole other set of problems) and the two guys are hipster dreamboats, so you could lose in the comparison.  On the other hand nothing here will turn her off.  Bathroom break?  The convoluted nature of this story means if you miss two minutes you could be greatly diminished in your understanding of the film.  Try to hold it.  If you can’t I’d say the airplane scene where everyone is flying to New Orleans.  I don’t recommend it though.

    Thanks for reading.  I still need to write up Fast and Furious and will see Hangover 3 tomorrow.  Lo does my cup runneth over.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu (a friend of mine retweeted my Tweet for my After Earth review and readership shot through the roof.  If you happen to be one of my 6 followers please retweet.  That would be awesome.).  Post comments on this movie or my review here, and if you have any off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected].  Talk to you soon.

    Dave

    After Earth Review

    By Dave / 31st May, 2013 / cheap t shirts, T-Shirts / No Comments

    Afterbirth.

    Once in a great while in the reviewing world there comes a confluence similar to all the planets in our solar system lining up to destroy our home world (wouldn’t that destroy all the planets?  Why are we special?) where an absolute shyte movie comes along with a name that readily lends itself to an obscene, biological, or scatological pun like this one.  On these rare occasions there is much rejoicing in the secret kingdom in my head (mostly filled with robots, bacon wrapped everything, and women who don’t consistently treat me like I just made an obscene, biological, or scatological pun) and I declare a the day a personal holiday.

    It is always painfully obvious when a Sci Fi movie is created by people who don’t really know much about Science Fiction (I’m looking at you, Stephanie Meyer).  The underlying belief seems to be that if you just put in a space ship and some kind of alien creature the nerd fan boys will love it (alien image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category).  Nothing could be further from the truth as Sci Fi fans are among the most opinionated and discriminating fans out there.  We aren’t reality TV watching Neanderthals who happen to enjoy Star Trek.  Most of us not only watch Sci Fi movies and TV shows, but read a lot of Sci Fi fiction novels, comic books, and graphic novels.  This exposes us to a breadth of stories that go beyond the usual Hollywood mundane-o-trope, thus requiring something decent to intrigue us.  True, cool special effects are entrancing but without some decent framework to hang them on we might as well be watching fan generated CGI action clips.

    The biggest problem with this film is it is just dead boring.  Do you know what is exciting in a film?  If so write a letter to Will Smith and M. Night Shyamalan and tell them what it is, because they both apparently don’t have a clue.  They seem to think having Will Smith yell at his son over a radio while the kid wanders around a forest surviving the exciting dangers of cold temperatures and local wildlife is exciting.  Sure that worked out in the Grey but that movie had a number of cool supporting characters all dying one at a time in painful and creative ways.  It also had Liam Neeson as the main protagonist, not a teenage squeaky voiced kid supported by Will Smith pretending to be the Terminator.  The lack of a true antagonist made the plot seem more like watching a dull episode of Survivor Man, and the dysfunctional relationship between the father and son was as sleepy as an episode of Jerry Springer where the entire ensemble dosed Ambien.  The kid just doesn’t have the acting chops to carry a film like this solo in my opinion.  I should feel guilty for disparaging Jaden Smith’s acting ability, but that kid is 15 years old and richer than I will ever be (at age 15 I was still dumpster diving for aluminum cans for pocket money.  He doesn’t need my good opinion to find happyness (haw!)).

    A big personal problem I have with this movie is it is another Science Fiction film that treats science like a wad of toilet paper after a particularly messy bout of explosive diarrhea (there’s the scatological joke.  All I need now is an obscene one to complete my trifecta).  This might get a little boring for those of you without an inclination towards science details, so if you don’t like science skip ahead a couple paragraphs (and savor the irony next time you power up your iPhone).

    First of all, asteroids travel through space in very predictable patterns.  Furthermore, the are eminently detectable through basic means such as radar.  There is no such a thing as an “asteroid storm” that can be triggered by whatever propulsion system you are using (gravametric something, I guess).  Also, I’m sure 2,000 kilometers sounds like a huge distance to someone with no idea what they are doing in space, but that is pretty much right on top of something and if you were traveling that close to any large concentration of asteroids (storm or otherwise) I’d say fire your navigator.  Also, meteors are relatively common in space.  Odds are your high tech ship should have some kind of defense against them.

    The writers also seem to think that traveling to Earth from another inhabitable planet is like driving to the 7-11.  When we get to Earth it seems that all signs of human civilization can be overgrown by nature’s beauty and all the creatures can evolve into slightly different human killers in about 1,000 years.  Sorry that’s not how it works.  The planet is a pristine wilderness with no sign of human habitation at all.  Also, why abandon it at all if the only issue is some killer baboons?  There was something about needing fluid in you lungs in order to breath (???) but that all seems workable.  Also somehow over 1,000 years the Earths climate had changed so that it is a beautiful temporate world during the day but cools down to far below zero at night (complete with snow and frost.  I guess 1,000 years is plenty of time for the flora and fauna to adapt to that) but there are thermal vents and hot lava all over the place to help Kitai not freeze (where was this taking place, Hawaii?)

    Final thing before I get into the story is if you have ever wanted to know what Dianetics is about but like me swore to never again read another L. Ron Hubbard book after grinding through Battlefield Earth (five of the worst books I have ever read) then this film has you covered.  There is a lot of talk about fear and how it is only a creation of the imagination.  I don’t know if Will Smith is a Scientologist but I think he might gain some fans from that church.

    Sigh.  The movie.  It starts off with an annoying monolog by Jaden Smith (The Karate Kid, the Day the Earth Stood Still, the Pursuit of Happyness) about how Earth was destroyed by humanity (how, exactly?) forcing us all to abandon the planet (all 5+ billion?  No one at all opted to try to make it on Earth?) and the creation of the Rangers in order to find homes for everyone.  Once out in the universe humans are attacked by aliens called Ursa’s who look a little like a giant human centipede made out of Gollums and who can smell the pheromones created by fear.  The Rangers discover that if they can completely control fear the are literally invisible to the aliens (does that sound a little weird to anyone else?  The aliens literally cannot see a human that is not experiencing fear.  How then does it not constantly runing into rocks and the like?  Is it smelling the fear of the tree it just didn’t smash into?  It is implied that their fear sense is genetically created in order to hunt down humans, but if that is the case why fear?  What happens if a human is asleep?  Do they just walk by?  Instead of fear pheromones why not tune your sense of smell to detect…humans?).

    Anyway, Jadens character Kitai Raige is in the Ranger academy and just got rejected for advancement for…some reason?  The writers of this film obviously feel that plot details are for amateurs.  His father Cypher Raige (Will Smith-I, Robot, Men in Black, Wild Wild West) is a general in the Rangers (and also somehow the most awesome human in the history of the universe.  His name alone should tell you that) and the guy who invented the no fear thing (called Ghosting).  His relationship with his son could be described as frosty, if the relationship between two robots on a car assembly line could be called warm.  His wife Faia (Sophie Okonedo-Ace Ventura: When Nature Call, Aeon Flux, Hotel Rwanda) wants them to bond better and suggests taking Kitai on a trip with him to…somewhere?  Some other planet I guess.  They climb aboard a giant metal stingray and fly off.

    There is an Ursa in a Dr. Suess pod in the hold.  The ship’s propulsion system triggers an asteroid storm (just typing that makes me want to scrape my fingernails off) and the ship has to FTL somewhere quick.  Naturally instead of heading to it’s point of origin it chooses Earth, a Class One Quarantine World where it has the most boring crash landing ever (seriously, you couldn’t even give us a cool crash?  That’s another thing The Grey had that this one lacks.  Having your protagonist wake up after a crash is dead boring).  Somehow Cypher managed to survive being sucked out a hull breach with only two broken legs.  Kitai survives fine, while the entire rest of the crew dies horribly.

    Naturally the distress beacon was on the tail of the ship, 100km away along with the Ursa.  Kitai is sent off with some breathing liquid and a spear (you know, it’s too bad that with all their advanced technology this futuristic society couldn’t come up with some kind of hand held device that projected small metal bits at high velocity.  I’m no scientist but I bet something like that could potentially be very damaging to biological creatures.  Thank God Kitai had all the best technology of the Roman Empire at his disposal) to recover it.  At that point the boredom, which had been trucking along at about a 4.7, ramps up to 11.  You know he’s not going to die, so realistically all you are seeing is some kid tramp through a national park.  Sure, he gets attacked by some baboons, and picked up by a giant vulture as baby vulture food but helps it out against some kind of giant ocelots (by the way, the vulture later saves his life by building a nest around him and lying on it to keep him warm.  Can someone explain how that makes sense?).  Turns out Kitai is haunted by the death of his sister.  Eventually he makes it to the tail section and has to discover the secret of Ghosting in order to fight the Ursa.

    The stars. 

    I don’t know.  I am a fan of Will Smith but there was nothing of the Will Smith I like in this film.  No humor or cleverness at all, and nothing to illustrate his acting range.  He spent most of the movie looking and acting like an angry wax bust of himself.  The special effects weren’t that awesome.  The alien looked like someone threw clay at a wall and painted it grey.  Nothing you haven’t seen in 100 other alien films.  All the other creatures like slight variations of existing Earth creatures.  Kind of lazy IMO.  I think the only thing I really like was the spear Kitai carried around could morph into all sorts of different weapons.  That was kind of cool.  One star.  The ship was kind of cool looking if you like fish.  One star.  I suppose I can throw in another one just for the fact that they tried to make a Sci Fi movie and it has been a kind of slow lately in that genre.  One star.  Total: three stars.

    The black holes.

    OMG boring.  Two black holes.  Jaden Smith started the movie with some kind of ill defined accent that faded in and out and ground on my nerves.  One black hole.  Treating science the way a dingo treats a baby.  Two black holes.  Dialog from Hell.  One black hole.  Putting all the character pressure on a kid who doesn’t seem to be able to carry the acting.  Also his character was wimpy and hard to identify with.  At no point did I remotely care if he lived or died.  One black hole.  A lot of the film was taken up with preachy monologs, or flashbacks of no purpose.  One black hole.  Starting the film with an annoying monolog and then never using it again (monologs to establish plot points is a lazy scriptwriters tool).  One black hole.  As predictable as saying a red stop light will eventually turn green.  One black hole.  I find the whole “Sci Fi as interpreted by non-Sci Fi people” thing more than a little insulting.  One black hole.  Total: eleven black holes.

    A grand total of eight black holes.  It galls me to rip into a Sci Fi movie like this as I want to see more of them being made but we need to keep our standards up.  The whole piece appears to be an ego project for Will Smith to showcase himself and his son as super awesome and as such is a waste of time for most of us.  How much time do you really want to spend watching video of your coworkers 8 year old kid in a 3rd grade production of Food and Nutrition, the Musical?  That’s pretty much what this feels like.  I was more than a little shocked to learn this film only ran 100 minutes.  Seemed like a lot more than that.  Worth seeing at all?  Maybe if you have a fantasy about seeing Will Smith with a flattop and/or are a Scientologist.  Date movie?  Only if being painfully bored turns her on somehow.  Bathroom break?  From five minutes after the crash until Kitai finds the tail section and the Ursa it is one long bathroom break.

    Thanks for reading.  Follow me on Twitter if you could @Nerdkungfu.  Comments on this film or my review can be posted below.  Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected].  Talk to you soon.

    Dave

     

     

     

    Welcome to Remake Hell: Escape from New York

    By Dave / 30th May, 2013 / Movie T-Shirts, T-Shirts / No Comments

    Yes, in the hopes of sucking more money from the current generations wallets (and just plain sucking) Hollywood is developing a remake of the great Escape from New York.  This is aggravating on a whole new level, as everyone knows it was truly Kurt Russell as Snake Priskin who made this movie (I could find an Escape image in the Movie T-Shirt category, but I did find this cool Pork-Chop Express one from Big Trouble in Little China).  Rumored actors include Tom Hardy and Jason Stratham, who are both fine in their own genres but honestly I really don’t believe either of them can really pull off the truly bad ass, one eyed, gravely Snake that is required.

    In addition, the time is all wrong for this movie.  Like when they did Red Dawn the point is the circumstances have changed, making the major plot point of the film (Russia invading USA) seem a little ridiculous.  When Escape was made New York City was in a downward slump crime wise that made the idea of the entire island of Manhattan being turned into a penal colony entirely reasonable.  Today Manhattan is the most prime real estate in the USA and there is no way the base premise is going to make sense or seem at all serious.  If you really want to do this you should make Escape from Detroit (no offense to my fine Detroit readers, but you get my point).

    Anyway, I found a list of other bad remake plans so look forward to more of these post as I explain why each of them is going to suck.  I might have to revisit this one again soon.

    Dave

    Epic Movie Review

    By Dave / 29th May, 2013 / Movie T Shirts, T-Shirts / No Comments

    That’s Epic the movie not my most Epic movie review ever.  That one has yet to be written but if I were to choose on from what I have written so far I would probably go with the Host.

    So I have been at a gaming convention all weekend and have not had a chance to write anything up.  I have seen this film, Fast & Furious 6, and a Bollywood zombie flick called Go Goa Gone.  I opted for this one as the last review I did was huge and long and a lot of work to write and these kids films are generally easy to do.  Plus I have a ton of work to do today so I’m going to get this one out fast and do the furious ones tomorrow (haw!).

    So another animated film from someone called Blue Sky Studios.  The only thing they have done of note to date was the entire Ice Age series (unless you consider Aunt Fanny’s Tour of Booty an unsung classic), which I have managed to miss in it’s entirety.  Something about that series never drew me in.  It just looks trite and bad campy, like the Three Stooges meets Tele Tubbies (Stooges image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category).  I’m sure it’s a classic but when I tell my animation fan friends I have never seen it the don’t shoot hate rays out of their eyes at me like they do if I say I have never seen every Pixar movie 14 times, so I am willing to bet I shouldn’t regret my decision.

    So what do I think about Epic?  Entertaining enough, with high production values.  I did see it in 3D, a format that animated films is particularly (and in most cases singularly) suited for.  It was polished and well crafted, if more than a little formulaic.  I have seen some praise for this being the first Blue Sky production featuring a female protagonist, but honestly she was not exactly a paragon of feminine strength.  She spent most of the time either being rescued by assorted male characters or carrying around a fragile seed pod in a pretty clear allegory to pregnancy.  I suspect if they could have found a plot device to have her barefoot in a kitchen there wouldn’t have been much internal debate among the writers.

    As is my policy I will not be doing my usual stars/black holes.  It is a waste on kids films IMO.  I judge these things by how much fun the kids in the audience seem to be having and for the most part it was a good time (also judging by the number of crying babies there were a number of kids who never saw more than a lot of green blurs.  Do theaters make 3D glasses for infants?  Do we really know what kind of brain damage 3D potentially could be doing to infants?  Most parents suck).  They all seemed to be laughing to a certain extent (although not as much as a lot of other kids films) and there were cute creatures to keep them entertained (the hand of the merchandising arm was pretty visible at a lot of points).

    That’s not to say there weren’t issues here.  The main one seems to be the formulaic nature of the story, and the focus on kids humor while leaving the adults suffering.  Unlike other recent bad kids movies like Escape from Planet Earth I can’t say this film wasn’t written with adults in mind.  There were some very adult concepts addressed here such as dysfunctional families, child emancipation, and the death of parents and/or kids.  The problem is these adult concepts were dead boring and not at all funny or remotely entertaining.  Some of them were even a bummer.  It was like watching Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood cut together with Philadelphia.

    The other issue I had with this film was the animation of the human (or human-like) characters.  I won’t say the animators went to school in the uncanny valley, but they definitely went to summer camp there.  This is a problem endemic to CGI animation films with delusions of grandeur.  The characters look almost human enough to be actual actors but are still off enough to make them kind of hard to look at.  The overall effect is like watching a cut scene from a decent video game.  Ironically the target audience (kids) probably couldn’t care less about the humans looking like humans, and other, better films generally don’t mess around with it.

    I’d like to give one more criticism to this film and that is the overwhelming need the studio feels to hire big name actors and celebrities to do the voice over work.  Does the studio really think that rabid fans of Beyonce, Colin Ferrell, or Josh Hutchinson are going to come see this film in order to hear the melodious sound of their voices?  They are effectively hiring amateurs to do the voice over work (qualified actors and performers all, but none of them are known for their animation work) with the net effect of the voices never quite seeming to match the character on the screen.  You see a fairy queen but all you hear is Beyonce.  Is Billy West really that hard to hire?

    Anyway, an abbreviated story synapses (hey, I’ve got things to do today).  A girl with the awkward to say name of Mary Katherine (try it.  It does not roll off the tongue.  Also whoever submitted this film to IMDB made the really bad choice of listing all (and I mean ALL) of the voice actors alphabetically, making correctly identifying who did what or even what the names of all the characters are a serious chore so I am going to blow it off) is coming home to visit her dad after the implied death of her mother, who had also seperated from him.  The reason for the seperation and possible future estrangement from his daughter is her fathers obsession with finding tiny little humans (or fairies) who live in the forest.  Turns out they are real, and are responsible for keeping nature and rot in balance.

    The queen (Beyonce) is due to pick out a new heir in the form of a seed pod.  While doing so the Boggans (the rot creatures?  Not sure what they were about) attack under the lead of their king and try to steal the pod.  During the fight the King of the Boggans son is killed, as is the Queen of the …?   (Not really sure what they were supposed to be called.  Also how did this film keep a G rating exactly?).  MK (her preferred shortening.  Good choice) happens upon the dying queen and gets shrunk down in order to guard the seed pod.  At that point she is joined by Ronin (Collin Ferrel) and some rejected kid named Nub (Josh Hutchinson), whose father was Ronin’s friend and was killed by Boggans (G rating again).  They go on a quest to see some dude who has all the forest knowledge and are joined by a slug and a snail, who are the films comic relief (rather effective, actually, although if you feel your kids movie is in need of active comic relief perhaps you need to rethink the base concept).

    At that point it’s a forest dungeon crawl.  The Boggans get the pod.  The others have to sneak in and save it.  The king wants to have the spirit of the queen reborn as a something evil so he can corrupt the forest.  I don’t want to spoil this film for you, but in a shocking surprise good triumphs over evil.

    So, decent for your rug rats.  They will be entertained.  I don’t know about 3D for kids (or adults, for that matter.  I say there is a good chance that 20 years from now we look back on 3D like we now look back on thalidomide).  If you can get your neighbor to take the whole raft of kids I’d say go for it.  If you are stuck with the chore this might be a chance to play with your Google Glass.  Bathroom break?  Any of the scenes involving MK’s father are the equivalent of packing peanuts in a shipment of clothing.  Feel free to skip out then.

    Thanks for reading.  Fast and Furious tomorrow, plus I still need to see Hangover 3.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Post comments here if you like regarding this film or my review.  Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected].  Talk to you soon.

    Dave

     

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Welcome to the Raging Nerd Blog

Readers from our previous incarnation may well wonder why we fell off and then had to change our URL but the fact is I got busy and stopped writing for a while. During that time someone bought up our URL. However I always felt the blot name didn't really accurately represent all the bile I had to share with the world regarding most nerd topics (like my burning hatred for JJ Abrams)so in truth I am quite happy with the new URL.

Disclaimer-You might not like some of the things you read on this blog. You might not like any of the things you read on this blog.

It should be noted that all opinions and theories offered up on this site are just that: opinions and theories. We the writers have no inside information on Hollywood or the film development process and except for a single film class in college and a couple of books have no formal education in film. Views regarding the value or lack thereof of any film on this blog are strictly our own opinions based on what we like (and having seen thousands of films) and should not be considered an authoritative recommendation. We invite you all to see every movie we review and then decide for yourself the relative value of the film and these reviews. In fact, feel free to post comments on these reviews and we will be happy to debate it with you should you feel we am off base. Bottom line, these are all our own opinions, make up your own mind, and if a film looks interesting thanks to the extensive marketing campaign go see it. Someone has to keep really good trailer makers employed. We really don't expect most of you (or any of you, for that matter) to agree with us (me in particular although it puts a smile on my face when you do).


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