Wow, what a dud. Badly-acted, inanely-scripted, edited into oblivion and heavily reliant on special effects that wouldn’t pass muster in the kind of 2nd tier Hong Kong (or Bollywood, for that matter) cash-in in otherwise best resembles; this would be a shoo-in for a lot of year-end “worst” lists save for the fact that no one but hardcore “Dragonball” fans will take much notice of it now OR remember it a week from now. It’s not just a bad movie – it’s a dull, lifeless one.

Let’s be clear, though: There’s ABSOLUTELY no reason for anyone to see this unless they’re already a devotee of Akira Toriyama’s seminal manga/anime franchise… and even then it can only possibly be of interest as a curiousity item for fans who feel like watching the unwieldy result of trying to rework Toriyama’s offbeat scifi-fantasy spoof of Chinese mythology and martial-arts manga into the framework of an American superhero movie – primarily “Spider-Man.”

The original “Dragonball” applied a gonzo sheen to the ancient Classical Chinese novel “Journey to the West.” Taking place in a vaugely futuristic world of magic, monsters and kung-fu; it followed the friends and associates of gadget-girl Bulma and Goku – a hyperactive feral child with superhuman fighting skills, mysterious powers and a dubious origin – on their quest to collect seven lost “Dragonballs” with which one can summon a dragon and make a wish. The new film keeps that basic outline but moves the premise to a world dissapointingly closer to our own, reimagines Goku as a power-concealing undercover nerd in High School a’la Peter Parker and bumps eventual-baddie Piccolo to the forefront early on.

The “international” cast does what it can in what amounts to another fundamentally-empty Fox cheapie hoping to cash-in on a name brand. James Marsters comes off the best under heavy makeup as Piccolo, while Chow Yun Fat (seriously?) looks like he’s having fun as lecherous martial arts teacher Master Roshi and Emmy Rossum deftly approximates anime sex-appeal in a ridiculous hairdo. Justin Chatwin as Goku is very nearly the least interesting male lead since Robert Pattinson in “Twilight.”

Skip it.

Let me join the choir of broken records on this one: DON’T read this or any other review, just go see it before the “secret” gets out. If there’s any justice in the world, this film is about to leave theaters full of people who showed up for a second go at “Paul Blart” (which really isn’t bad and doesn’t deserve the slagging it’s getting in comparison to this superior but largely unrelated film) shell-shocked and rattled like nothing they’ve experienced in recent memory. Don’t you wanna be there for that?

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For those of you who either ignored the above advice or took it and just came back, here we go:

In the broadest sense, O&R is a grim subversion of the current most-reliable comedy trend: Movies about socially-inept, comically-derranged man-children living in their own deluded world where their meager job or position is of huge importance – even though they’re largely incompetent at it – but who are basically harmless and thus likable in their wackiness (see: 95% of Adam Sandler movies). O&R changes-up the game with a diabolically-simple swap – removing the “incompetent” part. And the “harmless” part.

Seth Rogen’s Ronnie Barnhardt is an overzealous mall security guard who envisions himself as the Dirty Harry (or is it Maniac Cop?) of commercial-district suburbia, and up to a point that’s about as funny as you’d expect… except that he’s NOT inept or incapable: He’s FREAKISHLY “good” at what he thinks his job is. He’s a crack shot with his beloved gun collection, he’s in surprisingly spry shape for his, er.. “shape,” he’s got a creepy talent for earning fealty from other small-time malcontents and – most importantly – he’s a very REAL physical threat to those who cross him. This is no endearingly-disconnected goofball, this is a bona-fide psychopath BARELY kept in check by bipolar meds. That’s the gag: The other characters don’t know everything “we” know, so they keep treating him like an over-imaginative dork while the audience knows the frightening truth that Ronnie really IS the tormented lethal-weapon he thinks he is… in fact, he’s even worse than that: Ronnie thinks he’s Harry Callahan, but he’s REALLY Travis Bickle.

Events conspire to push Ronnie’s hero fantasies over the edge: A trenchcoat-clad “flasher” is tormenting girls at the mall, including his longtime crush Brandi (Anna Faris as possibly the best “unlikable” female lead in a decade or more.) Ronnie elects himself chosen by providence the bring the “case” to a close, leading him to butt heads with the real police (Ray Liotta), make his move on Brandi and go off his meds. None of these things are good, but the bigger problem is that their consequences can’t STOP him: Ronnie is NOT a guy who self-destructs – his psychopathy explodes outward, anhilating those around him but leaving him relatively unscathed and oblivious.

The film itself is somewhat imperfect. It sometimes seems to drop off-tempo jokes into scenes just so there can BE a joke, and it’s ending possibly goes on one or two beats too long (you may be too shocked to care at first glance, however.) But it’s made brilliant by it’s fearless sensibilities, it’s rather “Watchmen”-like examination of the kind of lunatic that actually takes to vigilantism and its performances – including a scene-stealing a possibly career-changing comic turn from Michael Pena.

Honestly, I’m actually a bit disturbed at how “relatable” Ronnie is at some moments. By the time the film wraps up we know he’s lethally-unstable, a stalker, a racist, potentially a date rapist… but there’s a certain real “vengence of the underdog” angle to his delusions that from certain angles you (or, at least I) could halfway sympathize with. At one point he and Pena team up to lay a horrifically-violent beating on a gaggle of grade school aged skateboard-punks and, well… on the one hand I “understand” that this is meant as a further clue as to how far-gone Ronnie is, but on OTHER hand I have worked in a mall and damned if I didn’t get a MASSIVE vicarious thrill watching him break a board over one of the little brats skulls. I think this is part of why the film works, though – this ISN’T a fantasy of a crazy guy, this is a crazy guy who exists by the thousands all over the place and maybe to a degree inside more people than would like to admit it.

Final Rating: 9/10

Yikes, looks like I missed some days. Ah, well, here we go…

FAST & FURIOUS:
God, but I hate this franchise even as I like most of the people in it. This new fourth installment acts as though #2 never happened (while a brief character-cameo in the first scenes establishes that #3 has YET to happen) reuniting the main cast from the first for what turns out to be a pretty generic smuggling caper. The most interesting part is ruminating on how much has changed since the original, when Paul Walker was a blandly-irritating youth icon in the Tiger Beat mold, Michelle Rodriguez was still riding the wave of post-“Girlfight” hype and Vin Diesel was a new star just starting to emerge into “name status.” Now, eight years later, Walker is cementing status as a “grown” star with offbeat projects like “Running Scared,” Rodriguez has spent the recent past better known as a tabloid fixture for arrests and bisexual adventurism than as an actress, while Diesel is still trying to pick up the pieces of a career that followed bad advice into “next big thing” action heroism and ran smack into a wall. Sadly, Jordana Brewster (also back) remains a criminally unappreciated actress.

ADVENTURELAND
It’s a story about a rich (but not rich enough, it turns out) high-minded college grad who’s forced by financial circumstance to spend a summer working at a creaky amusement park in his hometown. There, he meets (can ya guess?) an interesting crop of quirky but endearing characters and falls hard for a girl who (betcha can’t guess!) is as hard-bitten and experienced as he is naive (aww, how’d ya guess?) but is hiding a secret pain. Okay, so originality isn’t it’s strong suit, but it’s the details that count: What at first looks to be the umpteenth knockoff of Caddyshack gets it’s mileage from making it’s stock characters just real enough to feel surprising even though all the beats you’re expecting are there. Kristen Stewart is the standout as the female lead – she’s so good in this it makes me even sadder to think about what appearing in the awful “Twilight” series is potentially going to do to her career.

So, evidently Jackie Earl Haley is Platinum Dune’s new Freddy Krueger.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118002124.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562

Called it!
http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2009/03/guess-what-i-just-got-back-from.html

This is big, BIG news for Haley – a few years ago he was a beyond-forgotten former child star (from the original “Bad News Bears”) only to re-emerge back onto the scene with extraordinary roles in “All The Kings Men” and “Little Children;” and now in 2009 he’s the unquestioned breakout star of “Watchmen” and set to take the lead role in a major studio franchise film. The guy’s a terrific actor, and he deserves all this success and more.

EVERY “spooky guy” actor in the business was on the short-list for Krueger, so it’s a pretty big coup for him… but I’m thinking it’s actually Platinum Dunes “lucking out” in this case: “Watchmen” has turned Haley into a GOD in the eyes of the buzz-controlling Film Geek audience that would otherwise have been bound to raise an entire production-runup’s worth of negative noise at the idea of anyone other than Robert Englund playing Freddy.

In any case, I’m REALLY happy for the guy. It’s just, y’know, a shame that the movie is still going to suck 😉

Oh, and hey: Here’s the newest OverThinker piece – Part I of a Sonic The Hedgehog overview:
http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2009/04/episode-twenty-one-sonic-in-crisis-part.html

Dreamworks Animation is unfairly held to the impossibly-high standards of rival Pixar because both deal primarily in 3D Computer Animation films, despite often working in wholly different genres and styles: Pixar, with the exception of the breezy (and forgetable) “Cars,” works in big-scale whimsical fantasy-dramas that happen to be cartoons; while DWA, with the exception of the “Ice Age” films, focuses on lightweight high-concept pop comedy… it’s like comparing The Three Stooges to The Seventh Seal because they’re both in black and white. Basically, it’s not fair to ask “Monsters vs. Aliens” to live up to, say, “The Incredibles” when they have such wildly different goals and DNA.

Which isn’t to say that MvA is a great film, just a decent one with a few moments of real joy. It’s fast and enjoyable enough, but hovering at the margins are scraps of in-jokey movie-geek-mana that suggest a potentially more interesting concept watered-down a bit to fit in DWA’s expected quota of gags and pop-culture references. But it’s “good enough,” overall.

The idea is that the government has been maintaining a facility to house various “monsters” over the years, all of whom are unsubtle references to iconic 50s movie-monsters: Missing Link (read: Gillman aka Creature From The Black Lagoon,) Bob (read: The Blob,) Dr. Cockroach (read: The Fly) and Insectasaurus (read: Japanese “kaiju” monsters, though which one specifically would be a spoiler) are the mainstays; recently joined by Ginormica (read: The 50 Foot Woman) a young woman turned into a giantess after being struck by a meteor on her wedding day. Said meteor and it’s giant-izing power are sought by alien baddie Galaxor, who launches an invasion of Earth which the Monsters are mobilized to counter – despite having little experience or training as to using their unique abilities for combat; particularly Ginormica (real name Susan) who just wants to earn freedom to return to a normal life that she (somewhat unrealistically) hopes is still waiting for her.

As is usually the case with these things, it’s more fun when the Monsters are hanging out bouncing their personas off one another than it is when all the sturm und drang gets going, but it’s all impressively mounted and never wears out it’s welcome. The “spectacle” part is helped ALOT by the presence of Insectasaurus, a skyscraper-sized irradiated fuzzy-bug with the mental state of a baby puppy (the army leads him around via a blinking light dangled from a helicopter) the damn thing is too fun for words. Reese Witherspoon has the mostly-thankless task of playing Ginormica as the “straight” role to the craziness around her, but she makes it work.

It’s not QUITE as good as I’m given to imagine a movie about Gillman, Fly, 50 Foot Woman, The Blob and a Kaiju fighting aliens could be, but it’s decent and the 3D gags are impressive.

Ghosts terrify me. Both the idea of them and the real thing. I firmly believe (“know,” really) that I’ve encountered what I’d have to call ghosts twice in my life. The second encounter was physical (I’m quite certain that it touched me) and was sufficient to send me running into the night like a scared little toddler. This is different, btw, from me saying that I have some solid theory as to exactly “WHAT” a ghost is in a spiritual sense or otherwise; there’s simply no other term to describe the phenomena I encountered on these occasions – and no other term to describe my reaction other than abject mortal terror. I am scared of ghosts like I’m scared of no other ‘unreal’ thing.

As such, bad ghost movies are my LEAST favorite type of bad movie, because they force me into a critical paradox: When it comes to horror movies, the question of whether or not it’s “scary” is generally supposed to be an all-powerful measure which can render all other issues moot – if it “works” at scaring you, then clearly the bad acting, directing, etc. didn’t “matter,” right? Problem is, I’m going to be “scared” by ANY ghost movie, even a bad one, which puts me in the unpleasant position of explaining how a horror film that terrified me was still crappy regardless. So, basically, if you want a four-word review of this film: Scared me, still sucked.

We’re in familiar “Amityville” territory, story-wise: A troubled family moves into an old dark house that does EVERYTHING it can to advertise itself as haunted even BEFORE they find out it’s an abandoned funeral home (complete with untouched, fully-stocked morgue!) and things start going bump (preceded, of course, by an on-cue drop in the ambient noise) in the night. They need the house because it’s close to the hospital where the eldest son is undergoing experimental Cancer treatments, a plot-device which does double-duty at keeping them from moving out AND explaining why people don’t believe the kid’s visions. Said kid, by the way, is REALLY asking for it: Following a nightmare in which he encounters a specter in the basement, he immediately decides thats where he’ll keep his bed. Not the smartest move he’ll make.

The “what’s going on” is predictable as hell, a half-hearted grab-bag of every haunted house cliche in the book including but not limited to grave-robbing, necromancy, wronged kids, seances, ectoplasm and excuses for the employment of the old spooky-old-timey-photograph routine. For what it’s worth, I can safely say the film also employs just about the stupidest excuse for getting the lights all turned out in recent memory. Virginia Madsen plays the mom, while Elias Koteas does what he can in a simply AWFUL role as a fellow cancer patient who AMAZINGLY turns out to be a ghost-busting priest. What’re the odds?

Here’s one of those movies who’s screenplay seems to have come from a writer thumbing through “Us,” “People” or some other worthless checkout-counter pablum, reading about pop-culture non-words like “man-date” or “man-cave” and going “A-HA!” I’m not sure if that’s where “I Love You Man” came from, but that’s what it plays-out like. Is it funny? Sure. But much like the non-words forming it’s high-concept, nobody will remember it in a year or less.

Paul Rudd is playing a realtor named Peter who’s impending marriage has inadvertently sent him into a mini-crisis – amid his consideration of a “best man,” his family and friends point out that he doesn’t have (has never had, really) any close male friends; certainly not a “best” one. The reasons for this are easily divined: Peter is the Perfect Boyfriend, a one-man girl-drink-mixin’, chick-flick-toleratin’, problem-listenin’ machine who’s dedication to pleasing his ladyfriends has left him without a discernable male social life. Now, the poor guy is seeing pairs of Good Buddies everywhere he looks; so he embarks on a quest to “pick up” some Y-chromosomed compatriots.

So, it’s the “formula” of a romantic comedy applied to a story of platonic male friendship. There’ve been worse ideas. The film is at it’s weakest (though still amusing) early on as it name-checks the tropes of “man-dates” and expected gags – with the hysterical exception of Thomas Lennon (your go-to-guy for ambiguous homosexuality) as an “ideal” suitor who’s notion of “man-date” is significantly more literal than Peter’s. The film get’s to it’s “point” when Peter meets slovenly uber-masculine slacker Sidney (Jason Segel) and they hit it off… to the point that it starts to cause some friction with Peter’s regular fiancee-centric life.

Yes, it’s another scion of “Clerks” in which a guy’s rocky road to adulthood is impeded, commented-on and (maybe) helped by his wackier best bud. But it’s reasonably funny, even if it won’t likely be remembered as a high point in anyone’s career.

Most “twist” movies are thrillers, aiming to end on a “WHOA!” “Duplicity” is definately a twist-movie, but it’s content to end on an modestly-upbeat “Heh.” In exchange for the lack of thrills, we get a lot of very talented actors (AND Julia Roberts… ahem…) exchanging witty espionage banter that the film hopes we’ll find exponentially funnier through the magic of ironic juxtaposition, i.e. all the skullduggery is between rival cosmetics tycoons.

Roberts and Clive Owen (THE go-to-guy actor when the breakdown calls for “James Bond only not”) are a pair of rival spies (formerly CIA and MI6, respectively) who meet-cute again (or do they?) on opposite sides (or are they?) of the hired counter-intel teams for two New York cosmetics barons. One of the CEOs (Tom Wilkinson) is sitting on a secret miracle product (or is he?) sought by his rival (Paul Giamatti.) The pair of spies, who had a prior romantic encounter years ago (or is it ongoing?) hatch a plan to double-cross both sides and make off with the Big Money themselves. The timeline cuts back and forth between the present-plan and the past of the two leads, aiming to keep the audience guessing as to who’s been on who’s side and for how long.

It’s all suitably breezy and well paced, and it’s doing it’s damndest to recreate the “sophisticated” (read: “detached”) couples-sparring that informed oldschool caper/romance flicks like “The Thomas Crowne Affair” or “Charade;” but in the end it’s a house of cards stacked entirely too high for the flimsy material said cards are made of… though, it must be said, it MIGHT have helped to not hinge so much of the film on the concept of Julia Roberts as a source of potent sexual power. Nice effort, though.

If you’re considering seeing “Knowing,” (the new Nicholas Cage movie) I reccomend that you do so AND that you do so immediately without reading any reviews whatsoever. It’s a solid, wholly watchable and entertaining thriller; but it’s REAL pleasures are in the fact that well more than HALF of it remains magnificiently unspoiled by the trailers – meaning that you here have the rare opportunity to be genuinely gobsmacked by WHERE a major studio movie actually “goes” and “ends up.” How often does that happen.

If you’ve seen the trailers, you know that Cage is playing a college professor who discovers a child’s “drawing” of seemingly random numbers inside a 50 year-old Time Capsule recently unearthed; and shortly thereafter discovers that the numbers work out to a pattern that seems to predict the dates of the last 50 years of major disasters… and a few more to come. That’s ALL anyone should know going in, if anything. If this does any kind of business this weekend, people are going to be “WTF??”ing about it at every available water cooler all week starting monday, so you might as well get in on it NOW.

Because YOU demanded it, because YOU wanted it, because… eh… THEY were willing to put it up, here’s my full video review of the movie everyone will be lying about having seen in theatres and knowing was a classic “the whole time” about a year from now, once again courtesy of the fine folks over at The Escapist:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/embed/622

Once again, PLEASE visit The Escapist’s actual site after watching the video. These guys are fighting the good fight, bringing REAL intellectual debate to the geek universe, and they deserve your support: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-presents/622-MovieBob-Reviews-Watchmen