Hotshots Movie Reviews
Hotshots Movie Reviews by Dan Culberson
“The Adjustment Bureau” Gimmicky Love Story
Mar 10th
“Gimmicky Love Story”
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in a love story set in a modern world of fantasy which argues that the fate of the world is predetermined by a group of men all wearing dark suits and hats.
However, when you learn that the film is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, that premise doesn’t seem so unreasonable.
And then when an important person in the plan doesn’t want to follow his predetermined destiny, what happens to the plan and the people pulling his strings?
When we first meet those men in suits and hats, Richardson, the team leader played by John Slattery, says to the team, “Everybody needs a vacation. Even us.”
The immediate object of their adjustment work is David Norris, a charismatic young man running for senator of New York. However, when something embarrassing from his past is revealed, he loses the election.
Then when he believes that he is alone in the men’s room and is rehearsing his concession speech, a beautiful young woman named Elise comes out of one of the stalls, where she had been hiding from security for having crashed a wedding in the hotel.
They talk. They bond. They kiss.
And then they part, and all David has is her first name.
Then years later, they accidentally meet on a bus when David is going to work for a big corporation. This time Elise writes her phone number on a card for him, but again forces intervene, and they have to part suddenly.
However, when David gets to the offices where he works, he sees something that he wasn’t supposed to see, and the Adjustment team has to intervene. They take him aside, explain what is going on, and Richardson takes the card with Elise’s number on it.
You see, the fate of the world has already been planned, and it will be screwed up if David and Elise get together. Therefore, the Adjustment team has to keep them apart by interfering with any circumstances that would allow them to get together, because they would fall in love and ruin the Adjustment team’s plans.
But now David doesn’t want to play by the rules and live according to plan anymore.
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU has an interesting concept, but is basically a gimmicky love story.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Cedar Rapids” Two Bags of Peanuts Up
Feb 28th
“Two Bags of Peanuts Up”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
CEDAR RAPIDS is a pretty good comedy about a weekend at the annual convention for Midwest insurance salesmen that takes place in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
I know what you’re thinking.
“Cedar Rapids is large enough to handle a convention?”
It stars Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, who seems to appear in all comedies of this sort, and Anne Heche, who should appear in more comedies of this sort.
Helms plays Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman who lives and works in Brown Valley, Wisconsin, and Tim is so naive that he has never been on an airplane before the one that takes him to Cedar Rapids for the convention.
On the other hand, back in Brown Valley, Tim is having sex with the recently divorced Macy Vanderhei, played by Sigourney Weaver, who just happened to have been Tim’s seventh-grade teacher.
And yet Tim is so naive that one time after sex, Tim tells Macy that he used to look at her in class and think dirty things, and then he says, “Did you ever used to look at me and think dirty things?”
Anyway, when the star salesman in Tim’s insurance company suddenly dies, Tim is chosen by the boss to go to the convention instead, and the boss warns Tim to avoid another salesman named Dean Ziegler “like the plague.”
Of course, Tim is so naive that he calls Macy when he arrives to describe the hotel to her, but then guess who ends up sharing a hotel room with Tim.
Right. Dean Ziegler!
Dean is played by John C. Reilly, and he takes it upon himself to show Tim how to have fun at a convention, so to speak.
Another experienced conventioneer is Joan, played by Anne Heche, and she joins them for a lot of extra-convention activities, as well, but Tim is so naive that when they all go skinny-dipping, Tim goes Skivvies-dipping.
Tim thinks that insurance agents get a bum rap, but then he discovers how the star salesman he replaced managed to win the Two Diamond Award at the last two conventions, which his boss ordered him to win this year on his own.
Tim is so naive that two bags of peanuts on the airplane cause him to say “Awesome.”
CEDAR RAPIDS is funny, and I give it Two Bags of Peanuts up.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Just Go With It” Thanks, but No Thanks
Feb 17th
“Thanks, but No Thanks”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
JUST GO WITH IT reminds me of that old joke that is an example of a backhanded compliment: “You know, for a fat girl, she doesn’t sweat much.”
In other words, for an Adam Sandler movie, it has Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman in it.
Here is another example: For an Adam Sandler movie, it has beautiful Hawaiian scenery in it, as well as a beautiful swimsuit model by the name of Brooklyn Decker.
And then when you learn that this embarrassment of a movie is a remake of the delightful 1969 CACTUS FLOWER starring Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, and Goldie Hawn in an Academy Award-winning performance, you have to admit that of all the Hollywood remakes of previous films, this is one of them.
After all, even the 1969 movie was a remake of a Broadway play, which was a remake of a French play, which for all we know could have been a remake of one of Aristophene’s lost Greek comedies.
Here is this century’s version of the plot: Sandler plays Danny, a plastic surgeon who years ago had his heart broken when he overheard his fiancee and her bridesmaids talking about him on the day of their wedding, which broke his heart and caused him to call off the wedding.
Danny accidentally discovered that wearing a wedding ring even though he wasn’t married was a chick magnet, and he says, “Being fake married is the only way I can be sure I’ll never get my heart broken again.”
He is a pig, right, Ladies?
Then one day Danny meets Palmer, played by the swimsuit model, and he decides that she is “the one.” After all, what man wouldn’t fall in love with a swimsuit model?
Unfortunately, Palmer discovers Danny’s fake wedding ring even though he isn’t wearing it, she likes him well enough to want to marry him, but first she insists on meeting Danny’s “soon-to-be divorced wife.”
So, Danny does what any pig would do. He talks his assistant, Katherine, played by Jennifer Aniston, into posing as his wife in order to keep the ruse up, and how long do you think it takes the audience to say, “I know where this is going”?
Right, after they have already paid to see it.
JUST GO WITH IT caused me to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
