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“When in Rome” Can’t Say Enough Bad about It
Feb 11th
Can’t Say Enough Bad about It
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
WHEN IN ROME calls itself a romantic comedy, or “rom-com,” but is so bad that it deserves a new label of “abom-com,” for abominable comedy.
The only reason this movie will be mentioned again this year is if another movie is so bad that it is compared with this one.
Here is how bad it is. You know what a “Greek chorus” is, a group of actors in a drama who participate in or comment on the action?
This movie has what could be called an “idiot chorus,” and not only one, but two! Both the female lead, Kristen Bell, and the male lead, Josh Duhamel, have a group of three friends who just look goofy and act dumber than the leads.
Bell plays Beth, who has the unlikely job of being a curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, but the movie explains this away by saying that she is the youngest and least experienced curator at the museum.
Beth’s younger sister, Joan, is getting married in Rome, and while Beth is there, she overreacts to what she mistakenly thinks is a setback in a possible new relationship with the groom’s best man, Nick, played by Duhamel, and she takes five coins out of the Fountain of Love, saying, “Each one of you is a desperate wish for love that is never going to come true.”
Beth takes the coins back to New York with her, and then we learn about the legend that if you remove a coin from the Fountain of Love, the person who threw if in will fall in love with you.
Surprise! Surprise! All of the coin tossers were men, and they all just happen to be in New York, except for one, which is explained later.
So, now Beth finds herself being chased–stalked, actually–by a group of idiot suitors, including a manic painter, a self-absorbed model, an insecure street magician, and a sausage magnate played by Danny DeVito.
This movie is so bad that one of the idiot suitors has a secret that was kept during the publicity for the movie, but if that secret had been revealed and exploited during the publicity, it would have made the movie funnier and more interesting.
WHEN IN ROME is so lame that I can’t say enough bad about it.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Up In The Air” One Perfect Movie
Dec 23rd
One Perfect Movie
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
UP IN THE AIR is a delightful film about a very undelightful subject: firing people from their jobs.
Written and directed by Jason Reitman, who previously made the 2006 THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and the 2007 JUNO, this film has already won some awards and is sure to win many more.
George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a “termination engineer” based out of Omaha, Nebraska, who flies all over the country to fire people whose own bosses don’t want to do it themselves.
In a voice-over narration, Bingham says, “Last year I spent 322 days on the road, which means that I had to spend 43 miserable days at home.”
Yes, Bingham loves to travel, which he has developed into a science of efficiency, and he doesn’t spend a nickel if he can help it, unless it adds to his frequent-flyer miles. He wants to hit 10 million miles and become one of only seven people to have reached that prestigious mark.
However, Bingham encounters an obstacle to his plans the next time he goes home and sees his boss, played by Jason Bateman, at the company that employs him.
His boss has hired Natalie Keener, a young efficiency expert fresh out of college, and she has come up with a way that the company doesn’t have to have
23 people on the road at least 250 days a year.
Yes, fire people long-distance by using videoconferencing to give them the bad news.
Of course, Bingham is against this way of working, and their boss tells him to take Natalie out on the road with him to show her the ropes of flying and of firing people face-to-face.
In the meantime, Bingham has met another frequent flyer on the road working for another company, and they try to arrange their schedules so that they can meet in the same city occasionally and share a hotel room together, if you catch my drift.
As another subplot, Bingham’s sister is getting married, and he has been given the task of taking a large cutout photo of the couple with him on his travels and photographing the cutout in front of various landmarks.
UP IN THE AIR is smart, it is funny, it is thoughtful, Clooney is terrific, and it is one perfect movie up in the air or on the ground.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”