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

Movie Review The Grinch

The Grinch (2018) 

Directed by Scott Mosier, Yarrow Cheney

Written by Michael LeSieur, Tommy Swerdlow 

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury 

Release Date November 9th, 2018

Published November 9th, 2018

I went into The Grinch assuming I would see the standard rehash of a beloved classic combined with the modern pop culture references that 'clever' filmmakers believe to be an innovation. That’s what modern Hollywood tends to do so why should I expect anything more? Horton Hears a Who for example is merely a projectile vomited version of the Seuss story dressed up with references to anime and the standard amount of gross out humor that the kids enjoy.

What reason would I have to expect more from The Grinch? The film comes from Illumination, the company behind The Secret Life of Pets, Despicable Me and Minions so that certainly wasn’t going to aid my expectations, they’re basically a marketing machine that happens to make movies. There is Scott Mosier as co-director, that caught my eye.

Mosier has been the right hand of writer-director-podcast magnate Kevin Smith for years. At the very least, I could count on him not to countenance any falseness or saccharine sentimentality Indeed, the makers of The Grinch do avoid schmaltz and unearned sentimentality but the surprising thing is how often, what is still a product intended to sell tickets and toys, comes to genuine, unforced emotion.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the voice of The Grinch, the dyspeptic, cave-dwelling, Christmas-hating, loner from the imagination of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr Seuss. This version of The Grinch matches The Grinch we’ve always known, at least early on. He’s grumpy and rude and judgmental and then, of course, that famous song, reimagined by Tyler The Creator, comes along to pile metaphor, atop metaphor, to remind us what a bad guy The Grinch is.

But listen to that song for a moment. First of all, it’s all kinds of strange with Tyler The Creator’s odd approach to composition and his only vague interest in the original lyrics, he has a very particular fascination with the line ‘You’re a bad Banana, with a greasy black peel’ for whatever reason. But, that’s not the part I’m talking about. There is a line that Tyler invented for this version that has a pointed quality that hints at something about The Grinch character in this movie.

When Tyler The Creator says ‘Halloween comes around, we ain’t knockin’ at your door’ he says the line with a disbelieving quality that asks ‘what are you so mad about? We’re happy to leave you alone.’ This hits at the main thesis of this new version of The Grinch, loneliness, isolation and social anxiety. The reason The Grinch is so desperately unhappy is because he doesn’t really want to be alone.

This plays into a very modern theme that the filmmakers lay under the traditional Grinch story. While we’ve come for the Christmas stealing and the lesson learning, the makers of The Grinch have evolved the story to examine the inner, emotional life of The Grinch in an unexpectedly thoughtful fashion. The film gives weight to the idea that The Grinch doesn’t hate Christmas, he hates the alienation that the family holiday inspires within him.

It’s a simplistic notion, sure, but one the filmmakers treat with the right amount of seriousness and deliver in the midst of a solid number of jokey jokes to keep from getting too weighty for a kids flick. The Grinch has just the right amount of believable angst and silliness that I found myself satisfied on all sides by this charming new take on this iconic story.

Whereas the original Dr Seuss take on The Grinch was as a grouchy, grumpy figure of malevolence inspired by the perceived hypocrisy of the Who’s to try and teach them a lesson, only to have the lesson turned on him, this version of The Grinch gives generous space to the emotional side of The Grinch character. In this version, The Grinch is allowed time to reveal his nature to the audience rather than the live action movie version of the story busily, noisily and clumsily attempting to explain The Grinch while Jim Carrey ranted and vamped.

This version, thankfully, is less chaotic and has a genuine thoughtful quality. That’s not to say that the movie plumbs the depths of The Grinch, mining for insight. Rather, the movie is about the emotional journey of a character overcoming years of traumatic memories and isolation to step out into the world in hopes of acceptance. That’s a strong journey for a character and not one you expect of a character as seemingly uncomplicated as The Grinch.

For that, and the lovely animation, I must say, I very much enjoyed this modern, neurotic take on The Grinch. It’s silly and sweet and it looks great. The crisp character design has the quality of bringing together the classic lines of Seuss and a modern quality of today’s most advanced CGI, a marriage that has, until now, struggled to connect.

Movie Review: Cop Out

Cop Out (2010) 

Directed by Kevin Smith

Written by Kevin Smith

Starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Rashida Jones, Michelle Trachtenberg

Release Date February 26th, 2010 

Published February 25th, 2010 

Let's get one thing straight, I am in fact a Kevin Smith apologist. I have loved all of Kevin's movies, yes even Jersey Girl, loved it. Thus, I remove any thought of objectivity from this review of Cop Out. I am a Kevin Smith fan and I liked Cop Out. While other critics seem to delight in trashing this harmless, filthy mouthed throwback to 80's buddy cop movies, I sat back and laughed uproariously.

Cop Out stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as detectives Jimmy Monroe and Paul Hodges. They seem like total opposites; Jimmy is laid back yet menacing while Paul is wild and outlandish. Yet, they have been partners for years with a notable reputation, good cops who tend to find trouble.

The latest trouble involves getting an informant killed and blowing a major undercover drug sting. This gets them suspended for a month. Meanwhile, Jimmy is trying to find the cash to pay for his daughter's (Michelle Trachtenberg) wedding and Paul suspects that his wife (Rashida Jones). These subplots offer funny sidelights for Jason Lee and Sean William Scott.

The meat of the plot unfolds when Jimmy gets robbed of a valuable baseball card and he and Jimmy set out to retrieve it. Naturally, the card lands in the hands of the drug dealer who they were after in the first place and none of this is really all that interesting or important. The plot of Cop Out is secondary to Smith, Willis and Morgan hamming it up in homage to the great buddy cop movies of the 80's.

Kevin Smith is the perfect director for Cop Out. The film is both a send up of and a loving tribute to goofball buddy cop movies. Smith being a virtual pop culture almanac delivers on every beat of the buddy cop movies we love right down to a synth pop score that only Harold Faltermeyer could really appreciate.

Kevin Smith, Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan dive headlong into the parody fun not with obvious, Naked Gun style gags but by doing exactly what an 80's buddy cop movie did but with Kevin Smith style language, filled with plenty of four letter words and references that will someday make a great drinking game.

Is Cop Out a great movie? No. The plot is slapdash the subplot payoffs are meaningless and don't even start on the continuity errors. None of that however, really matters because Cop Out is what it sets out to be, a goofball tribute to the buddy cop movies that dominated the 1980's. Forget the Filmmaker Magazine critiques; this is fun stuff for an audience seeking a mindless toss back to the movies they loved in the 80's.

Movie Review Our Idiot Brother

Our Idiot Brother (2011) 

Directed by Jesse Peretz

Written by Evgenia Peretz, David Schisgall

Starring Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, Kathryn Hahn, T.J Miller, Steve Coogan, Adam Scott, Rashida Jones

Release Date August 26th, 2011 

Published August 26th, 2011

Paul Rudd is so appealing in "Our Idiot Brother" that you barely notice how thin the story is or how poorly drawn the supporting players are. The star of "Role Models" and "I Love You Man;" Paul Rudd has become known for his fidgety, acerbic, tightly wound comic characters. Now with "Our Idiot Brother" he has expanded his brand to include, shaggy, good natured stoner.

Ned (Paul Rudd) is just a great guy; unassuming, trusting and ready to help when needed. Thus, when a cop, in full uniform, approaches him and asks for some weed, Ned obliges only after hearing how tough things have been for the cop lately. It's a wonderful scene and Rudd's affability sells it.

When Ned gets out of prison, early release as he was everybody's favorite inmate, he finds that his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn) has kicked him off of their organic farm and moved on with a new guy, Billy (T.J Miller). Worse, she's keeping Ned's beloved dog Willie Nelson.

Homeless, Ned moves back home to New York, briefly living with his mother (Shirley Knight) before crowding into the lives of his uptight sisters. First up is Liz (Emily Mortimer). Liz is married to a jerky documentary filmmaker, Dylan (Steve Coogan), and has two kids; the boy, River (Matthew Mindler), is quickly Ned's best friend.

By the formula, since Ned has two other sisters, he will screw up Liz's life and be fobbed off on the next sister; in this case Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) who makes the mistake of having Ned help her out when she has an important celebrity interview to conduct. He also gets in the middle of her friendship with Jeremy (Adam Scott).

Finally, there is Natalie who seems to be defined by her lesbianism; she lives with her longtime lover Cindy (Rashida Jones). However, when a cute boy artist (Hugh Dancy) shows her some attention, even offering to help out Ned, things in Natalie's life get very complicated and of course, Ned is there to make an even more interesting mess.

"Our Idiot Brother" is highly formulaic and has a highly predictable ending but the journey to get to that ending and the modest detours from formula make it worth your time. This is among Paul Rudd's best performances, a loose, sweet and terrifically funny performance that evokes a younger version of Jeff Bridges's legendary The Dude.

The rest of the cast is not as well defined as Ned and are really only in place to give Ned something to do. It's as if writer Evgenia Peretz and her director brother Jesse Peretz came up with Ned first and then built a movie around him. That sounds bad but Ned is such a terrific character, and so remarkably well played by Paul Rudd, that "Our Idiot Brother" actually kind of works.

"Our Idiot Brother" doesn't work in the typical way that great movies work. However, on its own terms, "Our Idiot Brother" has such a great vibe and is so well centered on Rudd's performance that it works in its own very unique and often very funny way. It's a bit of a strange recommendation, you have to have a soft spot for stoners and Paul Rudd, but I do recommend "Our Idiot Brother."