Movie Review The Hangover

The Hangover (2009) 

Directed by Todd Phillips

Written by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore 

Starring Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha 

Release Date June 5th, 2009 

Published June 5th, 2009 

The glitz and glamour of Las Vegas has long been a tempting target for the movies. But, rarely has the ever so carefully un-wholesome Vegas mantra "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas" been better explored than in the brilliant new comedy The Hangover. Directed by Old School's Todd Phillips, The Hangover is male arrested development and Vegas debauchery at its finest.

Four pals travel to Sin city with plans to drink and gamble and be back home with a day to spare before one of them, Doug (Justin Bartha) gets married. Those plans go out the window fast as a night of PG-13 debauchery takes an X-rated turn and the groom ends up missing.

The story picks up the day after the debauchery when Doug's pals Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Andy (Zach Galifianakis) awaken in their high roller suite to find a purloined tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet and one missing groom. They remember nothing of the night before and have to piece the night together from available evidence.

A medical bracelet tells them they took a trip to the hospital. A valet claim card delivers the police cruiser they evidently stole and a photo tells them that Stu married to a complete stranger. The trip to the hospital, the cop shop and the chapel lead to more bizarre revelations as we follow on a debaucherously amateur detective story.

The story is inventive in the way it continues to spin the boys' behavior out into new and ever more outrageous action but what really sets The Hangover apart are the three actors at its center. Bradley Cooper plays the handsome ladies man as a wannabe bachelor bitter about having given up his freedom for marriage. He is the traditional lead in a comedy of this sort but Cooper gives the role an edge by blending into the ensemble and truly being one of the boys.

The Office co-star Helms is the nebbish nerd with a harridan girlfriend (Rachel Harris) whose so henpecked he has to say he's in wine country instead of Vegas and has some real tap dancing to do when the trip is extended by another day. Helms gets the privilege of playing opposite the radiant Heather Graham as the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold who may be the key to him leaving his old life behind.

And then there is Zach Galifianakis. The enigmatic comic, known for making the great Steven Wright look cheery in comparison when on the stand up stage, is the breakout star of summer 2009.

Roger Ebert fairly compares Galifianakis to John Belushi in Animal House. It's that iconic. Zach's Andy is a wealth of comic non-sequiturs and manages to make a character generally played as a creep into a sweetheart of a man-child whose naïve observations and physical carriage are parts of the funniest performance of the summer.

The Hangover is arguably the funniest movie of 2009. Destined to break out the pack thanks to its absurd amount of laughs and slightly tweaked take on material that seems more familiar than it really is. It's essentially a road picture filled with human caricatures, recognizable types who should work through a mechanical plot to a rote end. Not the case here where the mechanics are twisted and turned in such surprising and hilarious ways.

This is one time where you will welcome a Hangover.

Movie Review The Change Up

The Change Up (2011) 

Directed by David Dobkin 

Written by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore

Starring Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde

Release Date August 5th, 2011

Published August 5th, 2011 

Body switching comedies were all the rage in the 1980's. Back then George Burns became Charlie Schlatter, Judge Reinhold became Fred Savage and Dudley Moore became Kirk Cameron. Why anyone would think they could improve out on that genre gold is beyond me and yet, we have The Change Up in which Ryan Reynolds become Jason Bateman and vice versa.

Dave (Bateman) is a family man who's grown tired of his routine of diaper changes and no sex with his beautiful wife Jamie (Leslie Mann). Mitch (Reynolds) is an overgrown child who sleeps with any woman who looks at him and spends his days getting high when he isn't acting in softcore porn movies.

When the two life long friends get together for a beer and a game they end up confessing how they envy each other's lives. Unfortunately, they happen to be urinating in a magic fountain when they make their mutual confessions and the next morning they wake up with their bodies switched.

Now, Dave has to pray Mitch can go do his job at his law firm well enough to secure his promotion to partner while not neglecting his life at home with Jamie and their three kids including twin babies. Mitch, meanwhile, has nothing whatsoever at stake for Dave to screw up save for his regular Tuesday night sex-fest which Dave refuses to honor for reasons that you must experience for yourself.

The Change Up was directed by David Dobkin the director of The Wedding Crashers, a film that brought a little bit of heart to a very R-rated premise. Dobkin attempts to bring the same amount of heart and low brow humor to The Change Up but it simply doesn't work; Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds lack the magical chemistry of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.

The problem is the character of Mitch who is such an unredeemable dirtbag he makes it impossible to care about his story arc. We are invited to empathize with him but we are never given a good reason to actually offer that empathy. It's hard to feel sorry for a guy whose biggest problem is a bad relationship with his father; played by Alan Arkin, a bad relationship that is clearly his own fault.

The R-Rated gags of The Change Up are kind of funny here and there; especially funny is Reynolds who finds himself in the worst possible situations with women. After the body switch poor Dave has to avoid cheating on his wife with one of Mitch's women and has to fight off sex with Olivia Wilde, which is a Herculean task.

I'm not going to tell you that The Change Up isn't funny; there are a number of big laughs spread throughout the film. The problem is a story that requires you to sympathize with a character, Mitch, who is not sympathetic and who, when played by Bateman, is an idiot and a jerk without being a funny idiot jerk.

Movie Review Rebound

Rebound (2005)

Directed by Steve Carr

Written by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore

Starring Martin Lawrence

Release Date July 1st, 2005 

Published July 2nd, 2005 

Director Steve Carr has a resume only a mother could love. From the dregs of Eddie Murphy's career, Dr. Doolittle 2 and Daddy Day Care, to the Chris Tucker free, as well as laugh free, Next Friday. For his latest flick, Rebound, Carr finally found a family movie Eddie Murphy could turn down. Call on the B team, Murphy's apparent new understudy Martin Lawrence. Desperate for a hit, Lawrence has turned to the genre to which Eddie sold his soul, the mildly offensive utterly forgettable family film.

Worse yet Rebound is a formula sports film with the requisite team of misfits who overcame odds to be champions. Ugh!

In Rebound Martin Lawrence plays coach Roy McCormick, a hotshot in either college or the pro's, the scripting is so poor we are not sure where Coach Roy is from. What we do know is that his ego is out of control. Coach Roy misses games for magazine photo shoots and his out of control temper, think Bobby Knight edited for a PG rating, have gotten him thrown out of the league.

There was an incident with a bird but the less said about that the better.

Lucky for Roy his agent; Tim Fink (Breckin Meyer), get it FINK (that joke would have killed on Happy Days), has found him a loophole. If Coach Roy can find another job and show himself to be a model citizen he can get back in the league. Enter the Smelters; a ragtag bunch of middle school ballers who are so bad they have not scored a point in a game, forget winning one.

The kids are somehow able to fax an offer directly to Roy's agent and he immediately accepts the job. The kids happen to attend Roy's old school where he first fell in love with the game. Golly; maybe Roy can find his love of basketball again and learn a valuable lesson about teamwork. And wouldn't you know it, one of the baby ballers happens to have a sexy single mom (Wendy Raquel Robinson) who has been assigned to keep an eye on Roy by the school's lackadaisical principle (Megan Mullally, far too talented for this).

If this sounds almost exactly like Mighty Ducks or 2001's long forgotten Hardball with Keanu Reeves or even the original Bad News Bears well; I gather it's supposed to. There is apparently someone in Hollywood in charge of recycling this plot every couple years when a down on his luck star needs a paycheck fast or when a young hack Director needs a product to pad his resume.

Director Steve Carr has the visual imagination of a blind squirrel. I take that back, a blind squirrel might get lucky and find something interesting to film once in a while, I hear they occasionally find a nut. Carr does have a handle on this genre's newest innovation, bathroom humor. In his Dr.Dolittle 2 it was animal noises, Daddy Care Care poo poo jokes and in Rebound we have a child who vomits under pressure.

Children apparently enjoy these jokes but a long term study of the effects of this type of humor on children finds our kids getting dumber and dumber every year. Something must be done damn it!

I am certain that Martin Lawrence was once funny. I remember laughing at something he did. It's just been a long while since Martin has done anything entertaining. His last few films are so abysmal that just listing them raises the bile in my throat. What's The Worst That Could Happen, Black Knight and National Security are cinematic flotsam that mark one of the worst career trainwrecks in Hollywood history.

That Rebound somehow manages to be even worse than what has come before in Lawrence's career is a stunning result. However, indeed it is worse and blindingly so. There is just nothing of any redeeming value in Rebound right down to the poor child actors. Not one of these supposed cute kids makes an impression beyond a vague sympathy for the fact that each will carry this pock mark on their resume the rest of their careers.

Formula filmmaking at its most insidious, Rebound makes me sad to be a film fan. If this is how Hollywood repays the loyal filmgoer it is no wonder that ticket sales are lower than expected. Forget cell phones, ticket prices, or people who talk during movies, the reason fewer people are going to the movies is garbage like Rebound that takes up space in so many multiplexes.

Movie Review Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) 

Directed by Mark Waters 

Written by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore 

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Breckin Meyer, Lacey Chabert, Robert Forster, Emma Stone 

Release Date May 1st, 2009 

Published April 30th, 2009 

In this day and age of mass media marketing it is almost impossible for even the most objective of critics to not form some opinion of a movie before having seen it. Featurettes, commercials, and film trailers and posters are splattered over every inch of the internet and TV. Movie Stars appear on TV talk shows with clips and follow that with a podcast and an audio trailer.

Thus, I was exposed to the terrifically awful trailer for the Matthew McConaughey movie Ghosts of Girlfriends past more than 6 months ago and the stream of promotion has been unfailingly ever present  ever since. The subsequent clips, commercials and trailers have been as bad or worse than that first trailer and I must be honest and admit that I was bracing for a disaster when I finally saw the movie.

These many promotions for the film offer a seriously dopey series of rom-com clichés pitched to the plot of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and a super generic pop soundtrack. Matthew McConaughey's recent track record of bad movie after bad movie does the film's reputation no favors either. So, imagine my surprise when first I chuckled and then laughed out loud and was eventually kind of taken in by this admittedly cheesy but undeniably compelling romantic comedy. Don't get me wrong, this is not a really good movie but it succeeds for not being nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Connor Mead (McConaughey) is a world famous photographer whose string of sexual encounters would cause Wilt Chamberlain to advise a nap. Having lost his parents when he was just 7 years old, Connor and his younger brother Paul (Breckin Meyer) were raised by their playboy uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas). It was Uncle Wayne who taught Connor to treat women as he does and it will be Uncle Wayne who will teach him the error of his ways.

Conor is attending Paul's wedding to Sandra (Lacey Chabert) where he encounters the one girl who really ever got to him, Jenny (Jennifer Garner). The encounter sends Connor on a bit of a binge and soon he is seeing ghosts. First, it's the ghost of his late Uncle who lays out the plot: Connor will be visited by three other ghosts, each representing the women who Connor's womanizing ways have victimized.

Say, doesn't that three ghosts thing sound familiar? Of course it does, it's Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Instead of the miserly money grubbing Scrooge we have the sex addicted misogynist Connor. In place of his late partner Marley and his rattling chains we have Connor's mentor Uncle Wayne with his glass of whiskey with ice clinking in the glass. The copied plot offers the opportunity for the film to be lazy and at times it is, especially when establishing a timeline for Connor's life. However, thanks to the committed and forthright performance of McConaughey, a lot of the film's troubles go by the wayside.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a little coy about exploring what a bastard Connor truly is, the best and lamest example has him breaking up with three girls at once over a conference call while his next conquest watches from his bed. The scene is played for awkward laughs rather than an ominous sign of Connor's troubled soul and the conflict fails to develop. Much of the first act struggles this way but once Emma Stone arrives as the first of three ghosts and Connor is forced to see the wreckage of his life things take a surprisingly compelling turn. Also helping things along is the chemistry between McConaughey and Garner as the one woman who ever to called Connor on his garbage.

Romantic comedy convention will require Connor to be reformed and for he and Jenny to fall in love. What director Mark Waters does well is keep the typical roadblocks thrown in front of them believable enough to distract from the inevitability. Then it becomes the job of the actors to make us want to see them together and McConaughey and Garner pull that off splendidly. Garner's Jenny is just the kind of girl to make a bad dog go good and McConaughey's believable turn from scumbag to reformed good guy is shockingly plausible.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a highly flawed film but, by the standard of your average romantic comedy, it's not that bad. Low expectations based on the awful marketing campaign have certainly helped me to this relatively positive conclusion, but nevertheless, I can't pretend I didn't enjoy Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.