Posts tagged Movie Review
“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.”
“Rabbit Hole” Movie as Therapy
Feb 15th
“Movie as Therapy”
RABBIT HOLE stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as Becca and Howie Corbett, whose four-year-old son Danny was killed eight months before the movie starts, and so you know it’s not a comedy.
The adaptation from the play of the same name, which won a Pulitzer Prize, is very good, but unfortunately the movie is not.
In fact, you could sum up the story with a simple “Woman loses son offscreen, woman loses husband on-screen, woman gets husband back, they heal.”
Roll credits.
Of course, both Kidman and Eckhart are good in their roles, and Kidman received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for this movie, but just as you have heard of a “one-trick pony,” this is a one-note movie.
The title comes from the title of a comic book created by one of the characters in the story, which deals with parallel universes, and Becca tells him that she likes that idea, because then the one we are in might be “just the sad version of us” and that “somewhere out there, I’m having a good time.”
See? Definitely not the feel-good movie of the year.
Becca lies to a neighbor who invites her and Howie over for dinner, saying they already have plans, when they don’t.
She and Howie haven’t talked at all about having another child, and they haven’t even had sex since Danny died.
She drops out of the group therapy sessions for couples who have lost a child that she and Howie have been attending when the discussions include too much God talk for her taste, especially when one grieving mother says that she takes comfort in believing that her child died because God wanted another angel.
And she starts lying to Howie when she befriends the teenage boy who was responsible for Danny’s death.
On the other hand, Howie is not entirely blameless, either, when the growing distance between Becca and him causes him to consider other ways to heal his grief, without telling Becca.
Becca’s grief causes her to lash out at her mother, played by Diane Wiest, and even her sister, who is planning to get married, but then the subplots feel more like failed attempts to add a couple extra notes to this one-note movie more than anything else.
RABBIT HOLE is pretty much movie as therapy.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
