Thankfully I was able to find a 2D viewing.
Fluffy superhero fun. Not up to Iron Man levels (oh, Iron Man) but certainly acceptable for what it is.
The Thor dude is quite pretty, don’t ya know. And Idris Elba is fantastic, but I couldn’t stop wonder whether he was wearing colored contacts the whole time? The actor playing Loki was suitably creeptastic.
And there you have it. Good summer fun if you need a couple hours of air conditioning in your day. 🙂
The best use of 3D I’ve ever seen.
The inside-the-cave stuff in this movie is SO COOL. The cave itself, the drawings in the cave, the way those primitive artists used the 3D bumps and bruises of the cave to enhance their drawings, the calcite stuff that has formed over everything, creating the most awesome stalactites and glimey goopy stuff you’ve ever seen.
If only it was a silent movie….
I mean the narration has a lot of really dumb stuff. I went with two academics and they were both really frustrated by the things the filmmaker chose to talk about (and the things he didn’t). And there were some really REALLY ridiculous parts, especially in interviews outside the cave.
Like when the dude wearing reindeer-skin boots and poncho plays the starspangled banner on a flute made from the tendon of a bat? (I AM NOT JOKING.)
There was one cool interview — with these two people who are figuring out which drawings came when i.e., “so first there was this, then 10,000 years later someone added this, then 4,000 years later, a bear scratched this up here”…but a lot of the interviews SHOULD have been done in the person’s native language and subtitled (as a few were) b/c the ones done in English had a lot of places where the person was obviously struggling to find the right word and ended up sounding much less smart and insightful than they probably really are.
Thumbs up for getting to be inside the cool cave and the use of 3D and the really really cool stuff you see. The cave is AWESOME.
Thumbs down for the narration, most of the interviews, and some really ridiculous speculation. Including, especially, the albino alligator stuff which was just BIZARRE and out of left field.
I think a lot of people are probably going to hate this movie. It’s certainly heavy-handed and over the top and JGL is doing one of those “so much against type that there are times you don’t believe it” roles.
But I really enjoyed it and really this is a movie about the kid. Not JGL, not Dwight (Rainn Wilson), not Portman. The kid and what he needs and how he grows.
It’s hard to watch, there is some ick. But not “scar you for life” ick, just uncomfortable.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
It’s true, I AM the only person in America who didn’t find this movie hysterically awesome.*
Yes, it WAS funny. Sometimes painfully so (as in laughing so hard your cheekbones hurt).
It was also really, really, REALLY STUPID and I think they made some really bad choices that made the movie nearly unwatchable to me (although, as I said, NO ONE ELSE seemed to mind at all). For example, I would have cut Every Single Thing to do with her roommates and living situation. None of those scenes were a) at all funny (gawd no) or b) at all connected to the “plot” such as it is.
Also: the only one way in which this is “Bridesmaids” plural is by including the other really dumb things like the “we all get food poisoning and puke/vomit/diarrhea into the dresses we are trying on” ridiculousness. This movie is really only about the one bridesmaid and I think eliminating all that stupidity would have been a better choice as well.
Sure, Jon Hamm and Melissa McCarthy were very good in their (unusual for them) roles. But both those roles really seemed like sketch comedy add-ons. Let’s throw in a really crass icky guy! Let’s have one of the girls be all butch and nasty but really have deep insights! That sounds good! (It was amazing they could make McCarthy look that unappealing, though, wasn’t it? She’s really quite a pretty girl.)
I have been listening to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcasts lately and I was just SO disappointed to hear Linda Holmes talking about how this is a movie that finally shows how she and her friends actually relate! That girls have inside jokes just as much as boys do! Really? THIS is the movie where you see that? I saw a movie where girls only relate to each other when they are talking about their relationships with boys.
I was not a fan. But given how the rest of the world feels about this? You probably will be.
*Actually a couple people I talked to this weekend also said they found a lot of it disappointing. But that was a month after I had seen this movie and been the only one with a negative opinion so far. So for the sake of this review, that conversation hasn’t happened yet. 😉
SPOILERS AHEAD.
I saw a review of this on Ebert Presents (my new addiction, thanks Dad!) and HAD to see it.
Juliet Binoche is really fantastic in it. Her emotions are so on the surface that there are parts where you find yourself cringing, but it’s fantastically played.
There was some discussion in the Ebert Presents review of whether you believe the conceit of the movie, or how you choose to interpret it: 1) are they meeting for the first time? Or 2) are they actually married and playing a “we just met” game in order to have a conversation about the state of their relationship?
T. and I both agreed it HAS to be #2. Has to be. If it’s #1, her character is completely insane. And we’d prefer not to think that, as it’s so, so, so well played.
Oh oh oh oh !!!! Oh, Kevin Smith fans, this movie is SO GREAT. You are going to LOVE IT when it comes out…in September? I think. Or October. It’s So.So.SO!! Good.
And non-Kevin Smith fans? This is an outstanding movie about a very topical issue. Seriously. I know that’s not what you’re expecting but it’s true.
I took a friend to see Kevin Smith live last year (or whenever, I don’t seem to have reviewed it here) and he returned the favor by taking me to this screening.
I really thought this was fantastic. Tightly edited, well-written, keeps you engaged and intrigued and worried…. John Goodman is fantastic. The creepy kid (you may know him as Cassidy from Veronica Mars) is fantastic. The directing is wonderful.
Smith is only going to make one more movie after this (seriously, that’s it) and when you see him talk (he did a Q&A after this) he is SO beyond self-deprecating about his skills as a director. He’s wrong, really wrong, and that’s too bad.
See this when you can. It’s well worth the $$.
Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as March. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…
There are two movies here. There is a sweet, intelligent comedy saying some interesting things and exploring characters you might like to see more of. And then there is the really, really stupid movie about the stupidest dumb jokes you’ve ever heard and some of the worst physical comedy you’ve ever seen onscreen.
The sweet intelligent comedy is completely dragged down and destroyed by the stupid not-funny parts and unless you are into “setting your fart on fire” (literally) comedy, you wil find yourself very disappointed by what could have been but wasn’t.
They could have cut John C. Reilly’s entire part and that would immediately make this movie far more enjoyable and better-written.
Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as February. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…
Not a smart or well-written comedy. Not a movie that makes much sense.
If you think the stars are pretty people, you will have that to enjoy when they are onscreen.
But it’s one of those movies that makes you regret the fact that “rom com” and “chick flick” have become things producers try to make, because they fall far, far, far, far short here of what those types of movies could, and should, be.
But you should have known all that from the previews. I certainly did. I just wanted to look at pretty people for a couple hours, so I went anyway. 🙂 There’s no accounting for it.
Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as February. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…
This is a bad movie in many, MANY ways, but perhaps worst of all in its timing. These are not the people to feel sorry for in a depression / recession / whatever this is. Some idiot who makes six figures but spends so much that when he’s out of work, he is losing his house within three months? There are honest, hard-working, NON-slimeballs out there who’ve been laid off solely due to the economy and looking for jobs for forever and I don’t know WHO the producers of this movie thought could POSSIBLY have been an audience for this. But the fact that they have all gone off and started a new business together by the end? COME ON.
Almost ALL the characters in this movie are complete jerks. I love you, Ben Affleck, for giving me The Town but whatever made you think this movie was a good choice? Not only is it an ill-timed movie about jerks but your character is the biggest jerk of all. His KID is more in tune with the reality of the situation and he completely blows him off.
Also some of the non-Boston actors in this movie have The Most Ridiculous Overwrought Boston Accents you have ever heard (Kevin Costner, Rosemarie DeWitt, I’m looking at you two in particular).
The only thing I unequivocally liked about this movie was Rosemarie DeWitt’s wardrobe. (Mostly jeans, cute boots, snug sweaters.) That is IT.
Tommy Lee Jones played the most interesting character…but being the most interesting of this bunch is not saying much.
Bad, bad, and hey, bad.
Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as February. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…
The people who made this movie seemed to have missed a very important element here: ladies do not go to Jason Statham movies to see him wearing a buttoned-up cardigan the entire time. He is shirtless once, maybe twice, IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE.
They so missed the boat on that one.
Some fun fight scenes. But you know, it’s not his best movie. (I recommend The Bank Job over all others, of course.)