Up in the Air – entertaining, but ultimately disappointing

Posted on January 25, 2010 by roguespirit

Up in the Air deals with a difficult and timely topic – people getting laid off and having their lives destroyed. At the same time it sort-of deals with another timely issue in society: the ridiculous (and pernicious) positive thinking and self-help crap these poor people are fed as their lives are being destroyed.  “This is the start of a new life …” is how it goes, talking to a 55 year old guy in bad health who knows nothing else besides this job he has done his entire life, and who has no way to feed, shelter or care for his family.

But herein lies the problem with the film. The film shows no balls when dealing with these issues. It never seriously objects to any of this, and never questions why these people are getting laid off (answer: to make obscenely rich stockholders even richer.) And it never dives into the issue of why these people are so completely and utterly destroyed when this happens to them (answer: the systematic dismantling of our social safety net, including health care of course, and at the same time the systematic discouragement of mutualism, cooperativism, human community, and anything that has the potential to bring people together and insulate them from being chewed up and spit out by corporations and the rich and pampered elite who run them.)

You see Clooney very charismatically firing people, handing them a packet that contains “their future,” and that’s that – you never find out how many of these poor slobs are able to gloriously reinvent themselves and earn anything close to their former salary. The film can admit this is “challenging” work, but can’t bring itself to admit it is obscene work. It never even tries to make the kind of broad, powerful statement this topic is crying out for.

Basically, these issues wind up being mere context, set dressing, for the personal plotline involving Clooney’s character, who is (as a side job) a ridiculous wannabe self-help guru telling people to jettison everything that “weighs them down,” including their family, friends, etc.. The filmmakers really capture the look and feel of these horrible seminars he holds in dreary hotel conference rooms (having been to a few myself.) He is helping to rot away our cooperative, communal tendencies with his stupid bullshit, but as his own family and a budding relationship with a bitchin’-cool woman he meets on the road start to collapse this absurd edifice he has constructed for himself (and sells to others) he softens and begins to grow. The movie captures this quite well and even somewhat movingly.

George Clooney really is the new Robert Redford – just put him on screen and you’re three-quarters of the way there! The man is just so warm, so electrifying, so winning! His acting is totally beside the point, although I should add that he does a really nice acting job in this film. His star power and charisma make the whole movie work. Plus, Clooney and Vera Farmiga have FABULOUS chemistry! They’re like a glamour couple out of a 1940’s movie. The actress playing the girl (Anna Kendrik) is solid, but far from electrifying.

In the end, I liked Clooney and Farmiga, and I enjoyed the personal story of Clooney and his relationships (I wasn’t blown away by the story, mind you, it was enjoyable.) But because there was such a strong and obvious emphasis placed on the issue of people getting laid off and destroyed – an incredible amount of on-screen time is spent on this, indeed it is literally a continuous theme throughout the movie – the movie’s refusal to make any kind of courageous or powerful (or even noticeable) statement about it all really left me cold and disappointed. In the hands of a better writer, this could have been one hell of a film – an opportunity was definitely lost. Just think what Victor Nunez in his prime could have done with a topic like this, for example.

I also found the ending a bit disappointing – sometimes I wish these filmmakers would just nut-up and take a chance, rather than playing everything all post-modern all the time.

Still, see it for Clooney, Farmiga, and a good (rather light) story about a charismatic man sort-of learning to let people into his life.

Posted in 2009 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jellyfish (Meduzot) (2007) an interesting little film

Posted on January 22, 2010 by roguespirit

Jellyfish reminds me so much of the style of filmmaking that characterized the independent film renaissance of the early-to-mid 1990s – sparse music, uncluttered plots, well-written dialog, warm and simple presentation of characters, moments of deep emotion captured with tenderness, and a complex but pleasing resolution which leaves a lot up to the viewer. As someone who loved the early indie movement, I really enjoyed this film. The acting, pacing, and direction are all done very well. I wouldn’t call it a great film (I’m not sure if I would watch it again – I might) but it is a high-quality film: interesting, entertaining, thought-provoking, and crafted with skill.

I highly recommend that you put Jellyfish on your Netfilx cue and check it out!

Posted in 2007 | Leave a comment

Forgetting Sarah Marshall – a sweet but flawed movie

Posted on January 22, 2010 by roguespirit

My main association with this film is the ad campaign here in New York back before the film came out, where the phrase “I hate you, Sarah Marshal” was plastered on wild signs everywhere. This made me curious about it, but then the critics panned it and we stayed away. Well, my wife and I finally checked this film out on DVD last night. We really enjoyed it.

Forgetting Sarah Marshal is way better than the critics lead us to believe. It is really a sweet movie. Some of the comic writing is really great. The problem for me is that it is a bit uneven. Segel unfortunately relies a bit on Judd Apatow-type shit for laughs (the film is much funnier when he doesn’t) but even the low ebbs of its comic unevenness never dips to the insulting and idiotic level of Apatow-Rogan-Smith. The film hangs together really well, and the main character traverses a very pleasing and heartfelt story arc of personal redemption. My wife and I both really liked the fact that his character is treated so nicely and warmly by everyone else in the film- the usual formula in 21st century comedy is for this kind of character to be universally despised. Very refreshing!

Jason Segel is becoming one of my favorite actors. He just has something: the voice, the facial expressions, the easy-going energy and charisma, and the ability to play sad-sack or bizarre characters while giving them genuine dignity. He is terrific in the lead role. Paul Rudd has a bit part in which he is absolutely fabulous, and the chemistry between Segel and Rudd is amazing, just as it is in I Love You, Man. The character of the crazy English rock star is perhaps a bit too derivative of Nigel Tufnel at times, but he has some great lines and Russell Brand gives a really good performance – he actually makes you genuinely like the weirdo, and that’s saying something!

Poor Kristen Bell. Well, at least she got to be Veronica Mars for three years. Now she going to be playing dumb blonds for the rest of her life. But she turns in a solid performance as Sarah Marshal.

I am not sure that I would watch this film again, but I can tell you that I would watch it again in a second over any of the crap that Judd Apatow, Seth Rogan, and Chris Smith put out! It is a very satisfying and pleasing movie from start to finish. It’s good for a few good laughs and doesn’t leave you slimed. Netflix it, and check it out!

Posted in 2008 | Leave a comment

Invictus – another mediocre Clint Eastwood Movie

Posted on January 11, 2010 by roguespirit

Okay, let’s cut right to it, shall we. Despite all the critical acclaim and the awards, Clint Eastwood is really not a very good filmmaker. I’m sorry, he just isn’t. He’s not bad, I suppose, just kind of mediocre. Invictus suffers from the same problems all his other films suffer from. His direction is ponderous. It lumbers and is very predictable. All his scenes seem canned. For example, the scene where all the black security guards and all the white security guards are brought together uncomfortably – this scene just feels, sounds, and looks exactly like every other scene of this sort he’s ever made. Ditto with the cutesy scenes of Mandela. Ditto with EVERY scene, actually. And Clint’s camerawork, visual scene structuring and editing are all really sub par. Visually the film has this uninspired and boring uniformity about it. Compare Clint on this score to someone that really knows what they’re doing – Friedkin, Fred Zinnemann, Pauka, Sidney Pollack, Costa Gavras…  I rest my case.

The film is not well made as a biopic / political drama. A good film would have dialog to explain Mandela’s history. Why was he in prison? What did he accomplish while he was there, and how did he do it? How did he get elected? What’s the deal with his wife and family? What was he really facing as President of a torn country? What were his other leadership strategies. More talented writers could have easily built all this into the dialog. It doesn’t matter that egg-headed, intellectual snobs think every one should know this history – 1) they don’t, and 2) even if they did, it needs to be in the film anyway, to give texture.

A.O. Scott thinks this is a great sports film. It’s not a great sports film. A great sports film would have been resourceful enough to at least explain the rules of rugby and give you a better sense of the game, the players, the coaching, the strategy, and the international pecking order of clubs. It would have found a way to make watching the matches exciting (hell, Whip It was more exciting, and much better as a pure sports film, incidentally.) And a great sports film would never use extended slow-mo at the climax scene, which destroys all momentum.

And then there’s the reading of the poem Invictus. Any decent filmmaker would have made sure that the audience could understand what Morgan Freeman was saying when he narrated it. I caught about 80% of the words – simply unacceptable.

I’ve always considered Morgan Freeman the ultimate cheese-ball actor. I heard so much about how this was the role his was destined to play. Is everyone right about this? Well, if we judge his acting on how well he disappears into the role, I would say he is only moderately successful. Most of the time, I didn’t get the impression of a strong, almost saintly leader. I got the impression of Morgan Freeman slouching, sticking his lip out and trying to talk like Nelson Mandela.

Anyway, this is not a bad film, just kind of bland and predictable. Both my wife and I agreed that it was rather surprising how decidedly uninspiring this film is, given its subject and plot. That tells you something.

Posted in 2009 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Leap Year – It’s not as bad as everyone says

Posted on January 11, 2010 by roguespirit

15 minutes into Leap Year, I leaned over to my wife and asked “why do we like Amy Adams?” Her answer was “she has a great nose.” I thought “yeah, that just about sums it up.” Great nose, great hair, great face – the appeal of Amy Adams in a nutshell. Sure her acting can be downright cartoonish at times, but who really cares. It’s not like she a bad actress – far from it. She is capable of overcoming her cartoonishness (Sunshine Cleaning) even if she doesn’t in this particular film, and she disappears into roles better than Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts, for example.

Leap Year is not nearly as bad as everyone is making it out to be. It’s WAY better than Did You Hear About the Morgans! It’s way better than The Ugly Truth or It’s Complicated. The critics hated it because it’s about finding love and rejecting material wealth for a more meaningful life. The comedy in the film is a bit labored, but the more serious stuff is done reasonably well. Amy Adams has never looked more beautiful in her life, and she and her co-star Matthew Goode have pretty good chemistry. Plus, the cinematography of Ireland is stunning, and I don’t mean this as an afterthought. The majesty of the setting blends beautifully in the context of the story with the awakening of Amy Adams’ character. She is endlessly confronted with this quite, subtle, eternal beauty – both in the terrain and in her accidental traveling companion. It’s not the smoothest film in the world, but it does work. And the ending is quite satisfying.

I may have been a bit kind to this film in the review. It’s far from a great film, to be sure, and I doubt I will ever feel the need to see it again. But if you like Amy Adams and silly romantic comedies with a heart, put it on your Netflix cue!

Posted in 2010 | Leave a comment

The Lovely Bones – a weak story, weakly told

Posted on January 11, 2010 by roguespirit

The whole point of The Lovely Bones, as I understand it, is to chronicle how the family slowly heals and moves on. Unfortunately, this is the one aspect of the story and the film that are not done very well. It spends a lot of time on visuals of Suzy in “the in-between,” and it spends a lot of time on the sicko and his compulsions, neither of which is very interesting (or important, frankly). But in the end the various members of the family seemed like cardboard cutouts. Who were these people, really? The emotional impression these characters make is like a sketch outline: the father becomes obsessed with the murder, but he’s kind of dumb and un-resourceful so he fails and his life stalls in the process; the wife can’t take his behavior so she moves out (for most of the film); the crazy grandmother takes over the family (mostly for “comic” relief); the second daughter is smart, driven and sympathetic to the father’s obsession; the would-be boyfriend (of Suzy’s) is devastated and mopes around. Really, it gets no deeper than this.

The casting is good, but the actors have almost nothing to do. Rohnan is perfectly cast as the daughter, and comes off the best because her main assignment is to stand there and look adorable and innocent and otherworldly, which she has covered in spades. Wahlberg is warm and effective in his role, but he doesn’t have that much to do. Weisz is also good, but has even less to do. Susan Sarandon is disastrous as the grandmother.

Tuchi’s character is the most cardboard of them all. Who the fuck is this whack-job? How does he earn a living? How did he evade capture all these years? He frankly doesn’t seem very smart. He digs a big fucking pit in the cornfield in back of his house to kill the girl in, and then does a crappy job filling it in and leaves garments with her blood on them at the site. He keeps the girl’s body in his basement. He makes no pretense of being anything other than a really creepy weirdo who does nothing but sit in his house. His alibi in the police interrogation is pathetic: he was just in his house all day (and he isn’t even sure about that) with no witnesses. As he talked to the police he looked and sounded like the dead girl’s body was right under his sofa cushions! Plus, he’s obsessed with little girls’ doll houses. It’s just plain bad writing that the police weren’t all over this guy, especially since the big fucking pit is right behind his house! The police in this story remind me of Sheriff Lamb in Veronica Mars, which is pretty sad.

And why did it take the father so long to consider this ultra-creepy weirdo across the street? Instead he has to wait until the last role of film is developed, where he sees Suzy’s picture of this guy talking with the father and mother? Ridiculous! Wahlberg is carrying on to the police about looking at tax returns to find suspects with THIS character living across the street?! Get real!

Now that I am writing this review, this film is seeming even worse than my initial impression. If I was that father, I would have been like – “okay, her blood and clothing were all over this really deep, elaborate pit that was dug in the cornfield that she walks through everyday coming home from school. I can place her at the school pretty late (I wouldn’t spend critical time wandering around asking total strangers across town if they’ve seen my kid, I’d phone the school and all her friends and construct a timeline of her location), so she most likely was intercepted on the way home. Any obvious clues sticking out? Yeah, a HUGE murder pit dug on her route home and used to murder her. I’d go out there and dig up the soft earth – get its dimensions. That pit obviously took a while to dig (it’s like fifteen feet deep, after all) so the killer is probably local, probably was able to case her route home from school pretty easily … and most likely totally fucking bonkers.”

You don’t dig a pit 15′ deep, 10′ long and 6′ wide, by hand in a flat barren field surrounded by houses without someone noticing something. Chances are some kid saw “a old white guy with a mustache, shoveling and carrying two-by-fours out to the center of the cornfield.” Or maybe something like: “oh yeah, there was this huge pile of dirt, eight feet high, in Mr. Whosis’ back yard the day before.”

But let’s say no one saw this guy’s construction zone, which I simply can’t believe. I would look around the neighborhood and think:  “For starters, is there anyone in the neighborhood on a regular or semi-regular basis who looks at all suspicious? Oh yeah, how about the major-league weirdo across the street who can’t look anyone in the eye, who’s communication style screams deep and significant mental disturbance, who is handy with tools, who acts guilty ALL THE TIME, who does NOTHING, has NO job, NO friends, NO family, NO wife, NO kids … and whose house is right near the big fucking murder pit! Let’s start with him!”

This is step one. Then you hire a private investigator to look into the guy. Did he lie about having once been married? That should be pretty easy to ascertain. Did he move around a lot, and did his relocation pattern happen to coincide with grizzly unsolved murders of cute young girls? Did he ever hold down a job? If so, talk to his supervisors. See if they’re still alive! How about where he lived? Was his landlady ever murdered in an unsolved crime? How does he currently survive with no job? Build a picture of this creep.

Then check around town. Check the local hardware store. “Yeah, he bought 20 two-by-fours, a shit load of nails, and a hinged metal grate – wouldn’t say what it was for.” If not, check the not-so-local hardware stores. The guy is unforgettable, so where ever he bought the stuff from, they’ll remember him.

Then the PI breaks into the house and has a good look around. I’d follow the creep to the grocery store and when he goes in, slash all four tires – that should give the PI plenty of time to find any evidence. Where it goes from there depends on how responsive the police are.

What can I say about this film? The story is silly and unconvincing. The acting talent is wasted, the CGI looks fake (as it always does) and the film is a downer. I say skip it.

Posted in 2009 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jennifer’s Body – cool teenybopper horror

Posted on January 3, 2010 by roguespirit

Jennifer’s Body is a smooth and cool teenybopper high school horror film in which a indie band of Satan worshipers abducts and scarifies a girl they think is a virgin in order to rise to the top of the crowded indie scene. Only the girl is not a virgin, which means she becomes (by virtue of their particular ceremony) a flesh eating demon who then begins preying on boys in the school.

This film is pretty tastefully done for what it is. It is not super deep, and it doesn’t want to be. It has really good high school sass lines, a kicking soundtrack, a fairly coherent story, and Megan Fox is an undeniable BEAST. This last fact is very important, because really the whole point of the movie is watching her strut around luring boys to their doom. Amanda Seyfried is adorable as the homely best friend who has to try to stop the killing rampage.

It’s always nice to see Adam Brody in a roll … any roll. He is great playing the very limited roll of the leader of the indie band of Satan worshipers. But I worry that his career may be on a downward trajectory. He is a good actor, is cute as hell, and is very warm on screen – he should be landing better rolls than this.

As for the extended lesbian kissing scene between Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried (which serves absolutely no purpose in the film, other than to get people’s blood pumping), it is really poorly filmed. It’s filmed so close that all you see are mouths. The point of it is not to make a study of mouths! The point is that you have these two bitchin’-hot women kissing each other – it only works if you can actually see them. A real opportunity (of sorts) was missed here. They should have studied the lesbian kissing scene in Cruel Intentions to see how it’s done, not that I am a connoisseur of lesbian kissing scenes, mind you.

Anyway, this film is a fun diversion as long as you don’t take it too seriously and don’t expect it to be any more than it is.

Posted in 2009 | Leave a comment

Sherlock Holmes – Victorian Robo-Warrior

Posted on January 3, 2010 by roguespirit

This film grated on my nerves. I held my ears for much of it, it is so loud and irritating. The jangling music nearly drove me insane. It features many scenes where frighteningly large metal objects fly through the air at tremendous speeds and narrowly miss smashing people into smithereens. The super-gray cinematography makes it look like a video game, and as someone who loves the earthy, natural look of the classic 70s films I found it very hard to watch after about 5 minutes. The herky-jerky camerawork doesn’t help either.

The story is kind of fun, but at the same time a bit irritating and unimpressive. None of the elements is terribly effective or convincing: not the murders, not Holmes’ logic, not the hokey black magic crap, nothing. Everything is spoiled a bit by being so over-done. And making Holmes and Watson into a pair of bitchy queens just didn’t work for me.

Basically, Sherlock Holmes is Jason Bourne, ripping up Victorian England like a tornado. He is an iron man, impervious to pain and with bionic limbs. I guess they figured that the real Sherlock Holmes just wasn’t going to fly in this day and age, and maybe they are right. Basically, this film is yet another stage for Robert Downey Jr. to over-act on, and I must admit he is in fine form. If you love Robert Downey Jr. you will probably want to see this film at some point, just to soak him in. Jude Law, being the fine actor that he is, plays off him quite well while smartly staying out of his way for the most part.

In the end, though, the stupid cliches just did me in. The big french bruiser-guy that Holmes has to fight (seemingly for half the movie.) The Rachel McAdams evil flirt / girlfriend character (poor Rachel McAdams – why on earth did she take this roll?) which no actress could pull off, the part is so canned and uninspired. The generic evil guy, who looks and sounds like every other generic evil guy you’ve ever seen in movies, right down to the bad teeth. The only thing I liked is how the dog kept getting drugged out of its mind by Holmes: that was cute, but hardly a foundation capable of supporting an entire movie.

As vehicles for Robert Downey Jr. go, I suppose this film is not terrible. The film is way better than Iron Man, for example. But I found the film kind of boring despite all the frenetic action, and it is certainly not a film I would ever see again. It’s a good film to relegate to your Netflix cue for a desperate evening in the distant future.

Posted in 2009 | Leave a comment

It’s Complicated – It’s Disappointing

Posted on January 1, 2010 by roguespirit

Despite the fun and promising preview for It’s Complicated, it turned out to be a disappointment. It has major script problems and in my opinion almost everyone in the film is miscast. Basically, in the first third, Alec Baldwin holds the film up by doing his fiendish, Alec Baldwin thing, but after that the story just sputters, his shitck starts getting old, and the film gets downright boring.

I will never understand the universal admiration for Meryl Streep. I’ve warmed to her (a little) late in her career, mainly because she is just so cute now in these lighter roles: this, Mama Mia, Julia Childs, etc. But she is really not a very good actress. Take this film, for example. Almost every line she delivers, and every body movement she makes, contains a patented Meryl Streep tic. She is nothing but tics – she’s as bad as Julia Roberts in this regard. I swear, she has about twelve ways of delivering lines, and they are the same movie after movie after movie. Why is she considered the greatest actress of our generation? I will never understand it.

Compare her in this role to Kate Winslet who played a similar role in the last Nancy Meyer film, The Holiday. There is no simply comparison: Kate Winslet’s considerably more natural emotional range, her warmth on screen, her ability to blend with her co-stars. She blows Meryl Streep out of the water. For just one example, think about the scene in The Holiday where she is blind-sided at the holiday party in the beginning by the public announcement that the man she is in love with (Rufus Sewell) is getting married to someone else – the look on her face when Sewell sheepishly meets her eye: I’ve never seen Meryl Streep communicate so much emotion with a look. Kate Winslet is the real thing; Meryl Streep is all hype – on this, I am adamant.

Steve Martin in not an actor. I’m not sure what he is these days. He is like a line-delivering robot. His emotional range is ZERO. His vocal inflection is ZERO. He is like a piano with one note. And his range of facial expressions is ZERO, although this is partly because his plastic surgery is nearing the tipping point. His eyes look so bizarre at time I could barely stand to look at him. Watching him in scenes with Streep is kind of painful – they’re both these cold, narrow actors, and on top of it all they have no chemistry.

As for the supporting players, they are also problematic. In the all-important role of the son-in-law, John Krasinski (who has a bit part in The Holiday) just does not have the comic timing or the presence to inhabit the role effectively. The other kids are just annoying, and seem like cardboard placeholders.

As if all this is not enough, the story and the arc of the central character don’t really make sense, mostly because Steep’s character was not developed well enough to make her decisions seem plausible. And they pretty much lifted the fantastic musical themes in The Holiday and plunked them down in this film, except that they don’t work in this film.

All in all, it’s pretty much a waste of time.

Posted in 2009 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Did You Hear About the Morgans? – please: enough with Sarah Jessica Parker already

Posted on December 22, 2009 by roguespirit

At first pass the problem with Did You Hear About the Morgans? is the weak and uninspired script. But then you remember that Hugh Grant is so talented he routinely pulls off mediocre crap. So what really went wrong? Three words: Sarah Jessica Parker.

Whatever you think of Sarah Jessica’s acting ability, she is undeniably a very cold and unfunny actress. The only other time that a Hugh Grant film has completely disappointed was 9 Months, where he was paired with Julianne Moore, who although infinitely more talented than Sarah Jessica, is similarly cold and unfunny. Hugh Grant himself is a bit cold – he needs to be paired with a warm female co-star. Think about his best films – Andie MacDowell: warm. Julia Roberts: warm. Drew Barrymore: warm. Toni Collette: warm. Rachel Weisz: really warm! Renée Zellweger: warm. All Hugh Grant needs is a decent match to work off of, and he is magic!

Imagine for a moment if they had cast Reese Witherspoon opposite him in this role. What a difference! Even with the lame-ass script they might have almost pulled it off, especially if they gotten some better music for it. At the very least his character’s interest in getting back together with his wife would now be plausible! How about Jennifer Garner, she’s pretty warm and funny. Even Sandra Bullock would have been a distinct improvement!

Instead, Sarah Jessica Parker sunk him like twelve-ton anchor.

Okay, let’s just face facts, shall we? Sarah Jessica Parker is a horrible actress. She kills any movie she’s in. She has zero on-screen presence or charisma. She’s ice cold. She is totally unfunny, with no comic timing. She has an irritating voice. Her acting is uniformly wooden – she has this unique talent of making you not care about anything she says or does on-screen. Her attempts at emotion are laughable, and when she goes “heartfelt” it induces nausea. She is not a good physical actress. And last but not least, she is (in my opinion) really unattractive, at least by Hollywood A-list standards. How on earth did she ever become a star? I will never understand it. Think of all the incredible actresses out there who never get any roles, outside shit that no one ever hears about. Laurel Holloman, for example – simply fabulous,  NO ROLES! How about Jennifer Ehle: fabulous, but the only way she can get 4 minutes on screen now is if she shaves her head and plays the pathetic, dying wife of some scum-bag, crooked cop. I could go on, almost endlessly. But good ole Sarah Jessica keeps raking in the plum roles.

But the script is still a huge problem. Let’s not kid ourselves, a film of this kind really does not need a fabulous story, but the story does need to be at least somewhat dignified. Here, the story is downright embarrassing in its complete lack of originality or tastefulness. It’s like they’re just recycling clichés from bad 1980’s films. They even dredge up Witness at the very end. It’s horrible!

They even managed to totally screw up the funniest line from the preview – the thing where Hugh Grant is reasoning with the 12′ grizzlie bear who is about to eat him. Not only do they destroy the spontaneity of the line through endless repetition of the joke’s components leading up to it, but they use an alternate take of the scene, one that’s not funny. It’s like they have no idea how comedy even works. Actually, if you really compare the way the bear scene is edited in the preview and in the movie, it becomes clear that the makers of the preview were way more talented than the makers of the film. Very sad.

Okay, enough. Skip it.

Posted in 2009 | Leave a comment