SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW 2O1O:
  PART III

john cribbs, paul cooney, eric pfriender & christopher funderburg

<< click here for Summer Movie Preview 2010 Part I >>

<< click here for Summer Movie Preview 2010 Part II>>

   AUGUST 6
   The Other Guys

Two mismatched New York City detectives (Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg) seize an opportunity to step up like the city's top cops whom they idolize -- only things don't quite go as planned. With Samuel L Jackson, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Michael Keaton, Eva Mendes, Anne Heche, Paris Hilton and Steve Coogan. Directed by Adam McKay.

EP: Step Brothers was pretty funny. Here we lose Reilly, but we gain Wahlberg, Sam Jackson, and Michael Keaton (!), plus now it's about cops. It's gonna be awesome. Remember Wahlberg in I Heart Huckabees? Hilarious. I find it's best not to get your hopes up too high for the comedies, but still... I'm in.

PC: Can't miss! Mark E Mark freed from the shackles of the Funky Bunch and teaming up with Will the Thrill Ferrell and Eva Hot Twat "I did full nude in Training Day so why don't more directors show off my hot tawny body more?" Mendes...together with Mike Keaton...and the Rock??

Honk my hooter and rub my rabbit's foot I'm just about jizzing right now. Paris Hilton is a stain but outside of an Alexis Love movie you can't have perfection can you?

CF: Man, this is a great idea and I really mean that. Mark Walhberg and Dwayne Johnson are both hugely undervalued comedic performers and, what's this, Michael Keaton turning up in something with a puncher's chance of being decent? Will Ferrell movies are funny more often than not, I don't care what you hoity-toity pricks have to say. Eva Mendes plays a hot chick. That's it - really, her whole role seems to revolve around the fact that she's blazing like the Candlelight's Chernobyl sauce.* That's good casting. Steve Coogan - ok, we're getting somewhere. Step Brothers was another great one from that remarkable 2008 summer vintage. The preview definitely has its moments and I can really see this working. Walhberg, The Rock, Ferrell, fuck man, I am sold.

* A Chernobyl metldown will occur without enough freedom fries.

The verdict: My hopes...are up!

JC: Step Brothers turned out to be the first McKay-Ferrell collaboration with quality beyond the "laughed my ass off then immediately forgot all about it" aspect of their previous efforts. Not surprisingly, Kevin Smith failed to get me excited for any kind of revival of the buddy-cop comedy, but based on the preview for this one I'll be at the front of the line. I think Dwayne Johnson should revert back to being billed as "The Rock." He and Sam Jackson are perfectly cast, although it brings up bad memories of the Get Smart movie having The Rock play another hot shot supercop everybody in the department idolizes. Is it too much to ask of this movie to be so good it expels any memory of that shitfest as well as any trace of other recent terrible police-themed comedies like Starsky and Hutch and Cop Out? I should reserve my expectations, which are that this movie will turn out to be the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen.

Tally: 4-0

   Step Up 3-D

The kids from the Maryland School of the Arts head to Paris for an international dance competition, but when Moose (Adam G. Sevani) misses the flight home, he is inducted into the city's underground dance scene, which is about to have its own contest. The case of a stolen routine finds Moose looking to bring some of his friends back to the City of Lights for the event.

CF: Crappy sequel in a crappy series in unnecessary 3-D? Done and done: I'm there. And the stolen routine plot worked out great for Bring It On, so we've got what's called a "Mountain Dew: Code Red" here: a deeply artificial, most likely unhealthly, pop cultural product that you can be sure delivers the goods - the goods being red, fruit punchy Mountain Dew and an unnecessary Bring It On-ripping 3-D dance battle sequel, respectively. I can't wait to find out how this teen friendly Hollywood pap portrays Paris' underground dance scene. I imagine it will resemble something halfway between the Cirque de Soliel and a Black Eyed Peas video. Two Hollywood executives fuse DNA samples to create a new organism: a Spilky-Taio Cruz hybrid they name "French Krunk."

The verdict: The Maryland School for the Arts? Sure. Keep telling yorself that, Maryland.

EP: I love watching trailers for movies that are going to be in 3-D, but watching the trailers in 2-D, so you can guess which items would be flying at your face if you were watching the 3-D version.  

I guess there's a whole genre of non-musical dance movies that I know nothing about. And I've gotta say, if I was really into dance movies, I would be more psyched for Step Up 3-D than anything else coming out this summer. It looks like it's going to hit every beat it's supposed to, the dancers appear to really be "serving" each other or whatever, and it just generally looks to be really well put-together. Of course, I don't care about dance movies at all. But if I did, I would totally see this.

PC: My own experiences in the cutthroat world of dance competitions make this film a little too painful to see. When my routines were stolen at the Helsinki championships of '08 I hung up my velvet slippers for good, and seeing Step Up 2 drove me so mad with rage I went to Africa and committed genocide. Since it was in Africa no one noticed! (That's political comedy!)

If I have to choose between dance movies and cheerleaders movies I'll take the Bring It On series, the Hayden Panettierre installment of which was actually very entertaining.

JC: So Pfriender, what parts of the movie are going to be 3-D?? And isn't your fiance a dancer?

I wish the third Bring It On had been in 3-D. I wish all films in the Bring It On canon had been in 3-D. For one thing, it would be much easier to determine whether the East Compton Clovers really deserved to win at nationals or if the Rancho Carne Toros did in fact "bring it" to the full extent of bringability. I'm guessing the latter would have ultimately be verified once and for all, as their clear superiority in 2-D has already been established in my own mind. They may have ripped off those cheers in the past, but what they brought to nationals was a truly beautiful fusion of jazz, Broadway, interpretive dance and even martial arts. They been touched by an angel, girl.

Not sure what it says about my pop cultural awareness that I can name all five Bring It On films by subtitle but have absolutely no idea what "Step Up" is. But if the kids in this movie are In It To Win It and Fight to the Finish, giving it All or Nothing...Again...then I have no reserverations about seeing it whatsoever.

Tally: 2-2

   Mao's Last Dancer

The true story of ballet dancer Li Cunxin, from his humble origins and training in Beijing to his American defection and later move to Australia. Directed by Bruce Beresford.

PC: Oh shit you almost had me at hello, Beresford. I heard ballet, defection, America, Australia...I was in!

Then I found out that Mao's last dancer had a penis under his tights. What a twist! Is there anyway we can get a rewrite and make the lead a chick? Ballerina by day hooker by night type of thing? Cast a 22-year-old Tera Patrick? Can we make that happen?

EP: At least once a year, I'll be flipping through the channels and Rudy will be on. And I am powerless to resist it. Even though I know I'm going to cry at the end, I cannot look away. The point being, I already have one movie "based on an inspirational true story." And this movie is not going to top Rudy. All full up on inspiration here, thanks. Please move along.

JC: I passed up the chance to see this one in Toronto, given Beresford's unreliable track record of two masterpieces, two enjoyable period films, and about half a dozen deplorable contemporary movies. Also those Barry MacKenzie smutty yobbo-comedies that Aussies seem to love so much and hold in the same esteem as Americans do Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd despite the fact that they're really just crude precursors to Porky's created by Dame Edna. I guess this is technically a period film, but it still doesn't seem like it's going to be the next Black Robe or Breaker Morant. Plus it's about dancing, and after seeing Step Up 3-D earlier in the day I'll most likely be all danced out.

Beresford also made King David with Richard Gere. What the hell man.

CF: Here's another one I've already seen. Beresford has done some stuff that truly rules, like Breaker Morant and Black Robe, so I don't want to be dismissive or anything, but it's just not that great. It has Red Corner/Brokedown Palace/Chinese Box syndrome where it just can't decide exactly how political it wants to be, or rather it keeps hedging on the side of "good ol' fashioned entertainment" in a way that's actually much more alienating to audience than if it were just a straight up Godardian, strident, incoherent, aggressively political mess. The thing is, nobody who is in any danger of seeing this movie will be scared away by a political point of view and you're never going to make a coherent, satisfying "good ol' fashioned entertainment" from a story this inherently political. You can try to focus on the humanist elements (which is what Beresford does), but it's just going to be milquetoast. Which the film is.

The verdict: Not Beresford's finest moment.

Tally: 0-3

   August 13
   Eat Pray Love

Happily married Elizabeth Gilbert (Julia Roberts) takes a right turn in her life by enduring a painful divorce and proceeding to take a round-the-world journey of self-enlightenment and fulfillment.

PC: Go...the fuck...away.

EP: This movie looks like it has successfully proven that if you have no responsibilities whatsoever, and infinite time and resources, you can take a year-long trip around the world in order to feel a little bit better about yourself. I'm going to start saving for my own journey of self-discovery with the ten dollars I might have paid to see this movie. I suggest you do the same.

JC: Ah yes - Eat Prey, Love. The rousing, romantic tale of a mountain man who goes to a nearby mining town and wins himself a bride in a game of faro (having staked all his lemur furs on a cat-hop that trounced the other punters.) The spoiled bride, used to the high society life in Carson City, is initially appalled to leave the luxaries of civilization for the wilds of Nevada but soon learns to appreciate her new bearded, flea-ridden husband. Together they forge the frozen tundra, build a cabin using the carcass of a bison, and hunt elk armed only with sharpened sticks and indefatigable spirit. And they eat their prey. Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn's best since Overboard.

Wait - what? Rich divorcee's trek around the globe seeking "self-enlightenment and fulfillment?" From that Oprah book my mom's book club was reading? Where do I sign up...to murder everyone involved?

CF: Oh God, here's some crap-ass garbage I will fully cop to despising. The obnoxious book this film is based on pretty much encapsulates everything I loathe most: self-centered, wealthy jackasses who take international tours to heal themselves from minor domestic dramas and somehow learn to once again eat...pray...and love. Mark it down: anyone pitching enlightment is actually pitching mendacity and vanity. You see, I had to travel all the way to India and have a humble, destitute yogi teach me how to really eat food, not just taste it and from there I reconnected with the inherent spiritual power in all simple acts from eating to sleeping to simply sitting and breathing, the act of eating or breathing or sitting became a prayer, an ode to the joy of existence and from finding the joy of existence I was able to open my scarred heart, heal my psychic and spiritual wounds and love. I hope someone tears open the stomaches of Elizabeth Gilbert's children and fills those rended organs with burning rocks. Because that's what Hindu fundamentalists have been doing for years in the ethnic conflicts in Kashmir. Spirituality, religion, enlightment: mendacity and vanity.

The verdict: Grotesque, infuriating trash.

Tally: 0-4 (shockingly this film has failed to reach its clear target audience)

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