IHAO on ... Cuban Fury

Let's take a quick break before tomorrow's big horror review, finishing up all the Saw film franchise in one month.  Let's go with ... a dance flick romantic comedy starring the fat guy from those Edgar Wright films.  Yup.  Let that sink in.

I know, right?  Like a movie whose plot is just an episode of Dancing with the Stars.

Plot: As a young kid, Nick Frost's character, Bruce, was a salsa prodigy.  But just as he was about to win every award for salsa dancing as a kid, bullies made him eat the sequins on his shirt and beat him up in a puddle.  He quite after that.  25 years later, Rashida Jones moves to England, becomes his boss, loves salsa, so he gets back into salsa to win her heart.  But Chris O'Dowd from the IT Crowd and a bunch of other stuff, he is a big douchewaffle about it all and tries to steal the girl away from our fat dancing protagonist.  He doesn't, because of course he doesn't, that's not even close to a spoiler, it is just an obvious culmination of a stock film plot.

The movie is fine.  Shot very well, with great colors and some great actors, like the ones I mentioned above, plus Ian McShane, Kayvan Novak, and Olivia Colman.  But the film doesn't really ... do anything new or interesting.  Just your standard tropes.  The closest, and best scene, is a dance fight between Chris O'Dowd and Nick Frost.  But even that isn't really all that mirthful.  It's fine, just not great.

The problem with a romantic comedy that the male is the lead character is that it points out a huge problem in most writing: writing women tends to be one of the hardest things for men to do.  And Rashida Jones, who is a perfectly likable and fine romantic opposite for Nick Frost, ends up looking like an idiot because of the pacing of the film.  On top of that, it also means that the film focuses on the non-romance parts, with Chris O'Dowd being a sex-obsessed jerk, and the entire focus of the obstacles for the B-plot, which ... should be the A-plot, since this film is about the romance, except it is about the dancing.  Really, it is about watching Fat Guy Dances, a lot like how Here Comes the Boom is about Fat Guy Fights.  And just like Here Comes the Boom, this movie is fine, shot very well, has some stock characters, some decent emotion, and is clearly a labor of love, since Nick Frost is doing all his dancing, as do all the actors.  And that's pretty cool.

Best shot in the movie, this one.

There is some fun to be had in this movie, some great dancing, and some decent acting.  But it is basically forgettable beside the dancing.  If I wanted to watch a dance movie, I would watch Footloose or Take the Lead.  If I wanted to watch a romantic comedy, I would watch ... golly, so many other things.  I just cannot think of a reason that I actually care to watch this film again, even if it is pretty good.  I hope that there are others out there to love this film, because it is just quirky and different enough to be someone's favorite.  But its shortcomings in the script and my lack of interest in watching the same tropes as Happy Gilmore and Here Comes the Boom again means that this one just isn't going to be for me.

Grade: B

IHAO on ... Gigli

/\// tOrtUrE-jEssEl-A-thOn \\/\

And so the torture begins.  I thought it'd be interesting to see the scores of each of these films, and compare them all with my own grades, just to see how everything fares.  And why not start with what some consider the worst film of all time ...

Rotten Tomatoes - Critics 6% ; Audience 13%

Flickchart - 28311 of 28311 i.e. the worst ranked film

IMDB - 2.3 rating

Metacritic - 18

Amazon.com - 2.4 stars

Here's the plot: Batman is a leg-breaker for the mob is sent to kidnap a guy's mentally handicapped brother to help with prosecution.  His boss doesn't trust him, so he sends a Jennifer Lopez sized lesbian to help for some reason.  And then ... they talk to each other forever.  There's the plot.  Oh, and the sideplot is finding Baywatch, the real place and going there.  Some kind of symbolism, though I cannot put my finger on it.  It is mindboggling.  It all gets tied into his love of an Australian accent too.  I just do not get it.

Affleck is surprisingly pretty great in this.  He is interesting, engaging, funny, endearing, and sympathetic.  On the other hand, J-Lo is a terrible actress with these huge long monologues.  Just absolutely terrible.  She sounds like she is saying the words for the first time at all, like she has never heard the words before.  Not only that, she is un-relatable, too perfect, and just generally not only irritating, but boring.  She absolutely ruins the first hour of screen time she has.  The movie is fun and kind of interesting for the first 13 minutes and twenty seconds ... then she gets on screen ... and this gets terrible.  Absolutely absolutely terrible.

Music is atrocious and on the nose, or non-existant, or really REALLY out of place.  And a lot of the editing is absolutely terrible.  The lighting is useless and TV at best, and the cinematography is nothing.  Just shots of their faces as they talk.  And all they do is talk.  Talk talk talk talk.  Nothing HAPPENS for SOOOOO long.  It is a slog to sit through.  The script is not good, with a lot of really terrible bits, including three or four huge long monologues for Lopez, who did I mention before does terribly?

The above is the exact OPPOSITE of what I was feeling at any moment.  Also, I wanted to include a gif of a funnier bad movie.

Also, what's the purpose?  Why does this movie exist?  You gotta ask yourself that, because a lot of films exist for many different reasons.  And this one, written and directed by the same man, he obviously had some purpose.  But I could not tell you as I watch this what it possibly could be.  Is it just to make a drama?  Was it to chase down an Oscar?  I'm absolutely baffled about the message this film is trying to get across and its purpose as I'm watching it.

Around the halfway point, though, it started to touch on some interesting things.  It started to touch on masculinity and femininity, not gender, but how one acts.  The very masculine female Ricky and the just now realizing more feminine male Gigli have a pretty profound and interesting conversation, and the film's purpose finally starts to peek its head around.  I was really digging it, and their sex scene was really hot.  It's like it was from a different movie.  The plot starts kicking in, with a really great performance from Al Pacino.

But eventually, we start slogging back into the talky-talky boring garbage and contrived romance tying everything up in tight bow, with no consequences for anyone that we are supposed to "like." *sigh*  But for a short while it was really turning into something worth watching!  It is so unfortunately how much it isn't worth watching it became again.  That's the best way to put it, this film is just not WORTH watching.  It isn't anywhere near bad enough to be hilariously bad and enjoyable.  It is nowhere near good enough to be engaging and enjoyable.  There are bits that are pretty good, and one entire scene driven by the Pacino that is excellent, but ultimately, it wasn't worth seeing.  The first hour was torturous boredom, and while it got better, the glaring technical missteps are just not enough to elevate this movie.  It sits right in the middle for me: mostly boring, and mostly boringly made.

Grade: C

• June 3^rd – Gigli (from Rachel Runion)  Grade: C
• June 4^th – Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (from Joel Gould)
• June 5^th – Lenny the Wonder Dog (from Jason Schmidt)
• June 6^th – The Cat in the Hat (from Josh Hendricks)
• June 7^th – The Cat from Outer Space (from Nicole Clockel)
• June 8^th – Popeye (from Drew Turner)
• June 9^th – SURPRISE JESSEL'S ALMOST-MOST HATED MOVIE!!

IHAO on ... Someone Like You

After watching (500) Days of Summer, and it making me real mad, the door was opened to watch what I considered a better film that did the same kind of thing, looking at a doomed relationship and what all that actually means, but from the female perspective.  And DING DING DING I finally got the chance to pull out my favorite Chick Flick.  Hence, today’s review.

This movie is a chick flick.  There is no way around it.  (500) Days of Summer did not have that distinction to fight against.  And the title, marketing’s decision, is awful and says nothing about the film.  And if you get your hand on a DVD of it, the back of box blurb is completely awful.  And look at that poster up above.  It doesn't tell you ANYTHING!  What a worthless poster with a worthless title.  But if you can make your way through all the sabotage, what you find is a movie that I find to be legitimately great, with excellent themes, acting, direction, and writing.

Ashley Judd plays Jane, an important backstage person getting line-ups for a midday talk show Diane.  She works with Eddie, played by Hugh Jackman (in his first screen role, I believe) and new character, Ray played by Greg Kinnear.  Jane and Ray start a relationship, one that is doomed from the start, and out of that, she creates a theory: the New Cow Theory.  And things kind of start to roll out of control from there, both in her personal life and in her professional one.  I don’t want to give too much away here, because it is actually a pretty interesting and well-earned plot progression.

Oooo, plot progression, whatever film nerd.  It's a chick flick so it has to be immediately disregarded.

The strength of the film comes from the really incredible acting and writing.  Kinnear, Judd, and Jackman just do incredible work here, especially Judd.  And all the second tier characters and actors are also great: Marissa Tomei, Ellen Barkin, Catherine Dent, and Peter Friedman, all excellent.  We watch over the course of almost a full year these relationships grow, blossom, die, change, and just come across as incredibly grounded and believable, while still being able to be heightened and enjoyable for film.

The flick isn’t perfect.  But I don’t think it made any choices that were bad or poorly-thought-out.  I think it succeeded in everything it tried to do, and in most ways it did it even better.  I highly suggest this film, just remember, even if it is the best of the genre, it is still that genre, so it might be a slightly hard pill to swallow.

Grade: A+