Movie Review I Love You Man

I Love You, Man (2009) 

Directed by John Hamburg 

Written by John Hamburg 

Starring Jason Segal, Paul Rudd, Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, Sarah Burns

Release Date March 20th, 2009

Published March 20th, 2009

Have you ever seen two straight guys try to hug each other? It's more awkward than bad racial humor. There's that whole bend at the waste, the handshake pulling each other in and the light fist pound on the back and then the quick snap back as if holding this position too long would automatically turn the man gay. The new comedy I Love You Man captures the exquisite awkwardness of modern male bonding in ways even the man-hug cannot.

Paul Rudd stars in I Love You Man as Peter Klaven, a desperately normal, boringly nice guy who is about to get married. We join the story on the night Peter asks his girlfriend Zooey to marry and she says yes. As she is calling every human being she has ever met, Peter has no one to call.

As a painfully funny uncomfortable dinner the following night with Peter's parents (Jane Curtin and J.K Simmons) and Peter's brother Robby (Andy Samberg) makes clear, Peter has never really had any close male friends. He has never had a problem bonding with women but never guys.

In need of a best man, and in need of showing Zooey he has a life of his own, Peter sets out to meet a new best friend. Help from his mom and brother lead to a few more horribly awkward moments, including a dinner with a guy named Doug (Thomas Lennon) that goes horribly wrong -Peter ends up with Doug's tongue in his mouth- Peter finally meets a dude he can be slightly comfortable with.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Hotel Transylvania 3 Summer Vacation

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) 

Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky

Written by Michael McCullers, Genndy Tartakovsky

Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Andy Samberg, David Spade, Selena Gomez

Release Date July 13th, 2018

Published July 14th, 2018

Hotel Transylvania Summer Vacation is the third and least offensive of this trilogy of Adam Sandler starring animated comedies. I wasn’t a fan of the first two Hotel Transylvania movies which felt, to me, too scatological, like a sanitized version of what Sandler does in his live action work. This time, however, with the franchise leaving the titular hotel there is something of a different feel to everything and for the first time, I laughed out loud more than once watching a Hotel Transylvania movie. 

Hotel Transylvania Summer Vacation finds our hero Drac (Sandler) lonely. Sure, he has a loving family and great friends but he wants a companion and at the same time feels guilty for wanting one for the first time since the death of his wife. Drac’s daughter Mavis meanwhile, mistakes his loneliness for stress and comes up with a solution, a dream cruise to the Bermuda Triangle. The whole family is going including Frank (Kevin James), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), Murray the Mummy (Keegan Michael Key) and Wayne the Wolf and his wife Wanda and ALL of their kids. 

While Drac appreciates his daughter’s effort a cruise for a hotel owner feels rather redundant but things pick up when he Drac meets the Captain of the Cruise ship, Ericka (Kathryn Hahn). Drac is immediately smitten and I must say, the scenes with Drac overcome with feelings on meeting Ericka is very cute and it made me smile. The follow up scene in which an over-confident Drac struts around the ship to Bruno Mars’ “24 Karat Magic” is delightful with a funny if not all that original payoff. 

So, we have a love story on our hands and that means we need obstacles and this movie has a pretty good one. Ericka has a secret, the cruise is a sham and she has set it up so she can get revenge on Drac. You see, Ericka is Ericka Van Helsing, of the vampire-killing Van Helsings. She’s trained her whole life to kill Drac. Her great-grandfather Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) has stayed alive long past a normal lifespan, just to see his granddaughter vanquish Drac as he had failed to. 

That’s a pretty clever conflict, I gotta admit, I really liked that. The first film played a similar conflict with Andy Samberg’s human falling for Selena Gomez’ vampire but that was somehow far less fun than this. This film seems to delight a little more in the conflict as Drac is the one who is unaware of the danger he’s in. I really enjoyed the romantic sequence of Drac repeatedly saving Ericka while she’s attempting to recover a weapon she intends to kill him with. She begins to fall for him and yet she’s torn. It’s just clever enough to be amusing. 

My favorite gag in Hotel Transylvania could not be more simple. It’s a flashback to Van Helsing attempting to capture Drac and his friends on a train. We see Van Helsing enter, we know the monsters are hidden at the front of the car. We see Van Helsing pull out a box of matches, the tension builds because we know what’s coming, we know from the other movies how Frank reacts to fire. When Van Helsing lights the match, Frank freaks out and the scene and the movie are off and running. There’s nothing special here, but the simplicity made me laugh. 

Hotel Transylvania 3 Summer Vacation is nothing special, it’s certainly not a Pixar quality work. This isn’t art but for a shallow kiddie flick, it’s pretty good. It made me laugh at these monster characters for the first time in the entire franchise so that’s something. Having low expectations certainly helped matters. But there is something more genuine and winning about this outing in the Hotel Transylvania franchise. Something slightly more clever and less lowest common denominator. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed it enough to say this one is worth seeing. 

Movie Review Hot Rod

Hot Rod (2007)

Directed by Akiva Schaffer

Written by Pam Brady

Starring Andy Samberg, Ian McShane, Isla Fisher

Release Date August 3rd, 2007

Published August 3rd, 2007

Andy Samberg was the MVP of Saturday Night Live recently thanks to his terrifically funny digital short films Lazy Sunday and Dick In A Box. Samberg has brought SNL the kind of cultural cache that the show hasn't had in over a decade which makes his move to the big screen a well anticipated event. It also unfortunately stokes my disappointment in Samberg's feature film debut.

Hot Rod, the story of a teenage stuntman, is a lame attempt to expand on Samberg's talent for physical humor with none of the wit that made Lazy Sunday a YouTube classic.

Rod (Samberg) dreams of one day becoming a world famous stuntman. For now he is content putting on stunt shows for the younger kids in the neighborhood. Though, as we meet him, his stunts consist mostly of his ugly crashes, Rod never loses hope that one day he will hit the big jump that will make him a legend and earn him the respect of his step-father (Ian Mcshane).

Rod's relationship with his step-dad is strained. The two do battle in hand to hand combat on a regular basis, putting a real hurt on one another; with real weapons and fists, in the family basement while Mom (Sissy Spacek) remains clueless. Despite the acrimony, when his step-dad grows ill and needs an operation to save his life, Rod steps up with a plan to use his stunt skills to raise the money to save his life, if only so he can finally kick the old guy's ass.

Naturally, there is a love interest for Rod. Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers) plays Denise, Rod's neighbor who remains oblivious to Rod's obvious crush on her. As a plot this typically dictates, Denise has a jerk boyfriend (Will Arnett) who will no doubt lose his girl to the sweet, earnest Rod.

Hot Rod was directed by Akiva Schaffer who is one third of the Lonely Island Comedy team with Samberg and Hot Rod co-star Jorma Taccone. The trio has worked together since they were teenagers and when Samberg got his SNL gig, based on one of their popular internet videos, he brought Schaffer and Taccone along with him as writers.

In their work; Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone have shown a real knack for modern culture and ironic wit. Why that did not translate in Hot Rod likely has a lot to do with trying to meld their talents with what is a rather mundane formulaic concept. Reduced to trying to squeeze their brand of irony in between all of the goofball slapstick, Samberg and company are left with snarky music cues and vague homages to 80's cultural icons, though thankfully no Hasselhoff.

Hot Rod is yet another of those really disappointing Hollywood comedies where the best stuff is the trailer. Searching my memory for one funny scene that I hadn't already seen in the film's ad campaign; I'm at a loss. The ramp collapsed? Funny in the trailer; less funny in the movie. The exploding stunt and subsequent exchange with a malcontent viewer? Funny in the trailer, forgettable in the context of the movie.

And on and on, anything funny in the trailer is all that was mildly amusing in the film itself. What is left of Hot Rod are allegedly humorous bits of music placement. If you think the simple fact that someone listens to the long lost hair band Europe is funny, then you will get a chuckle out of Hot Rod. If you think a character singing a karaoke version of George Michael's One More Try to his stuffed animals is a laugh riot? Then Hot Rod is your movie.

Whoops, sorry, I may have given away this movie's two jokes that aren't in the trailer.

Hot Rod is a real disappointment. Andy Samberg is a talented kid who can and likely will do better. Being that Hot Rod was a script originally intended for Will Ferrell, Samberg would be well instructed to find and develop something of his own. Or, at the very least, something more suited to his quirky talents. Hot Rod is, I hope, beneath the talent of Mr. Samberg and not the definition of his talents on the big screen.