Movie Review My Boss's Daughter

My Boss's Daughter (2003) 

Directed by David Zucker

Written by David Dorfman 

Starring Ashton Kutcher, Tara Reid, Terrence Stamp, Andy Richter, Molly Shannon 

Release Date August 22nd, 2003 

Published August 24th, 2003 

A lot has been written recently about Ashton Kutcher, mostly about his romance with Demi Moore. For me though what was most interesting is that despite his successful film career, he recently signed on for two more seasons of TV's That 70's Show. Whether it's because he loves the show and his cast mates or it's merely career insurance against films like My Boss's Daughter is up for question. It's nice to see that his temporary tabloid celebrity hasn’t gone to his head. It has however gone to the heads of the Hollywood executives who leech off such celebrities to help empty their shelves of trash such as My Boss's Daughter, a film that has collected two years of dust for a reason.

In My Boss's Daughter, Kutcher is a hapless book editor who dreams of a promotion and a chance to date the boss's daughter Lisa (Tara Reid). The boss Mr. Taylor (Terrence Stamp) is a severe taskmaster who fires people for sport including his secretary Audrey (Molly Shannon) for making bad coffee. When Tom bumps into Lisa in the hallway after a rather brutal encounter with her father, she asks him to come over to her place. Unfortunately Tom mistakes the invitation as a date, actually Lisa has a boyfriend and Tom has just volunteered to house sit for his boss while she goes out.

When poor Tom arrives for what he thinks is his date he finds his boss and quickly realizes his mistake. Instead of getting close to Lisa his night will be taken up with the boss's prize Owl. But that's not all, once the Boss is gone his no good son Red (Andy Richter) shows up. He is followed by the former secretary who came to get her job back, and then it's a drug dealer named T.J who has some business with Red.

Naturally, all of these people wreak havoc while Tom tries desperately to maintain the house and the bird. Thing's go from bad to worse when Lisa comes home and Tom has to hide the various destructive elements that have converged on the house.

For a short time in the middle of My Boss's Daughter director David Zucker actually strings together a series of very funny gags. Both Andy Richter and Molly Shannon have some very funny moments and Kutcher manages to play well off of them. What the film never manages however is a consistent storyline. The plot is entirely incoherent and most of the humor is never in any sort of context, that some gags manage to work on their own is a tribute to the director who has always had a way with a good gag.

Sadly, the talented director of the gag movies Baseketball, Naked Gun and Airplane chooses to play too much of My Boss's Daughter straight. The film could have functioned on the same level as Naked Gun et al had the director simply tossed out the conventional romantic plot, put in a few more sight gags and one liners and allowed his talented cast to fly off the handle the way we know they can. 

Kutcher, Richter, Shannon and even Terrence Stamp, who's roles usually tend toward the more serious of British drama's, show a great chemistry and comic timing that with some massaging by the director could have been an effective parody. But it never materializes and what is left with is a number of funny gags, some horribly misguided gags and an ending that is an absolute trainwreck that threatens to destroy what little goodwill the film had earned.

For the talented cast I can put aside the trainwreck but the missed opportunity of My Boss's Daughter is quite sad.

Movie Review: The Ring 2

The Ring 2 (2005) 

Directed by Hideo Nakata

Written by Ehren Kruger 

Starring Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, David Dorfman, Elizabeth Perkins, Gary Cole and Sissy Spacek 

Release Date March 18th 2005 

Published March 17th, 2005 

When The Ring was released in 2002 and became a nationwide sensation with 129 million in box office sales and there was no doubt that there would be a sequel.  Hell, the Japanese version of the film spawned multiple sequels so there was even material from which to borrow for a new movie if necessary.  The real question was whether the story they told in the sequel would matter to viewers, not that it mattered much to marketers who had the poster mocked and approved on The Ring's second weekend atop the box office. Unfortunately there is no more story worth telling, or if there is the producers of Ring Two failed to locate it.

A quick recap of the original concept: The Ring was founded on the idea of a crazy looking videotape that, when viewed, left the viewer with seven days to live. A girl trapped in a well used the supernatural powers of the videotape to escape and claim anyone who watched the tape. Naomi Watts starred in The Ring as a journalist named Rachel who saw the tape while searching out a story about the urban legend surrounding it, a legend that may have claimed the life of her young niece.

Rachel is back in Ring Two with her preternaturally creepy son Aiden (David Dorfman). The two have escaped the tape's supernatural curse by running off to a small town somewhere in Oregon where Rachel has taken a job as a reporter for a small town paper run by Max (Simon Baker). How location could prevent a supernatural being from finding victims is a logical question that the film fails to address, among many other failures in logic and works of luck and chance that would be forgivable were they not so numerous.

Unfortunately for Rachel and Aiden, the tape has been traveling with a new legend attached to it. Teens are passing it around under the pretense that if you can get someone else to watch after you the curse is transferred from you to them. This theory fails a teenager who tries to pass it off on an unsuspecting girl. This is in the opening ten minutes and for some reason is the last time in the film we will hear about the killer video.

From there the film changes the supernatural elements, losing the videotape and randomly deciding that Samara, the killer chick in the video, can attack by possessing Aiden, Exorcist style. This leads Rachel back to that well in the basement of Samara's house and to Samara's real mother, an institutionalized woman played by Sissy Spacek. None of this leads to any satisfying conclusion though to the film's credit there is no overt set up for another sequel.

Ring 2 is shockingly bad. Truly shocking considering the talent of director Hideo Tanaka whose original Ringu is terrifically stylish and suspenseful. Ring director Gore Verbinski skated by in the original by being visually inventive and taking advantage of the films unique premise. Ring 2 abandons the original premise and even much of the strong visual aspects, replacing them with what amounts to a series of rip-offs of other horror movies.

Ring 2 is the perfect example of what I have called 'sequelitis.' It's a film that exists solely as a concept, a poster, a series of demographic marketing numbers and never anything resembling a real film.