Movie Review I Know Who Killed Me

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

Directed by Chris Sivertson

Written by Jeff Hammond

Starring Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Brian Geraghty

Release Date July 27th, 2007

Published July 26th, 2007

It was the great John Waters, in a cameo on an episode of The Simpsons, that gave me my definition of camp. "It's Camp, the ludicrously tragic, the tragically ludicrous". It is that line that resonated deep within my mind as I watched the new Lindsey Lohan pseudo-thriller I Know Who Killed Me. There are few things in Hollywood at the moment more tragic than Ms. Lohan. And, there are few movies more ludicrous than I Know Who Killed Me, a wacky torture porn wannabe, too squeamish to commit to full on exploitation and too balls out goofy to be merely bad.

Aubrey Fleming  (Lindsay Lohan) has these really vivid dreams that she turns into stories for her creative writing class. They tell the story of a girl named Dakota whose life of crack houses and strip clubs provides a rich background for Aubrey's burgeoning storytelling talent. Aubrey's writing is taking her to Yale in the fall, or it would have; if not for one fateful night after a football game.

Aubrey was supposed to meet friends for a late night movie. When she didn't show, her friends got scared. They called the police; who called Aubrey's parents, Daniel (Neal McDonough) and Susan (Julia Ormond), who also did not know where she was. Weeks go by until a body is found along the highway, a leg and hand severed, but still alive.

The girl looks exactly like Aubrey but when she comes to, she claims to be Dakota. As the cops press her for information on who cut off her hand and leg, Dakota maintains that she is not Aubrey and spins a fantastic tale of how her hand and leg simply shriveled up and fell off. This as she sleeps with Aubrey's boyfriend (Brian Geraghty) and searches for the killer in her own unique ways.

That is the spoiler free version of the plot of I Know Who Killed Me and as often happens with movies this bizarrely bad, my description is far more concise than anything in the movie. It took me two showings of I Know Who Killed Me just to come up with that description. Watching the film for the first time, with a critic friend of mine, I could not stop laughing long enough to try and put the pieces of this ludicrous trash epic together.

Directed by Chris Sivertson, I Know Who Killed Me has delusions of grandeur as an art film, a torture porn ala Hostel with a dash of M. Night Shyamalan and just a hint of Brian De Palma at his most over the top. None of it ever approaches coherence but it's never boring. Imagine all of that crammed into one picture and then blended with a group of performances so off key you almost hear dogs barking and you get just a sense of how truly, brilliantly awful I Know Who Killed Me is.

It is so rare in modern Hollywood to find true camp or kitsch. Modern films are so self aware, so self consciously willing to wink at audiences that camp becomes manufactured or forced. Rarely do you get the earnest achievement of true awfulness. A group of actors and filmmakers who have truly deluded themselves into believing that what they are doing is working.

More often you get movies like Snakes On A Plane where the kitsch became the marketing hook, thus subverting the camp into simple bad filmmaking. Either that or you get a movie like Redline or Because I Said So, movies that are just so horrendous that you can't even take joy in the badness. There is no commitment on the part of the actors who are too bored or dull-witted to care whether the movie they are in is any good.

In I Know Who Killed Me however, you can see the grand delusions of all involved. You can see from the care taken to craft out their visuals and the attempts to create a color motif (blues and reds dominate the screen in a self conscious battle for control) that director Chris Sivertson and his team were convinced they really had something here.

Not unlike the work of the great Ed Wood who believed earnestly in his own talent, the creators of I Know Who Killed Me evince utter cluelessness as to how brilliantly awful this trash epic truly is. It is that joy of creation, that misguided judgment, that makes I Know Who Killed Me a truly wonderful bit of camp. That, and of course, the schadenfreude of watching star Lindsey Lohan hit bottom on the big screen as she hits bottom in real life.

You can see in Ms. Lohan's performance a level of commitment that says she truly believed the things her characters were saying. More important though, from a camp perspective, you can see how desperately out of her depth she is trying to give life to the goofiness she is trying to play as serious drama and mystery. And worse yet, you can see how her real life drug problem may have contributed to how truly awful her performance is.

On the one hand, I don't want to take pleasure in Ms. Lohan's problems. On the other hand, she is young, rich, privileged and not dead, so I don't feel too bad. Plus, her real life tabloid problems give trashy subtext to an already trashy movie and increase the camp pleasure of I Know Who Killed Me to a degree where I could actually recommend it in an ironic way.

Poor Ms. Lohan, she's not a bad actress, just one who doesn't make good decisions. Watching I Know Who Killed Me; one cannot escape the idea that the poor girl is being taken advantage of. Watch the stripping scenes, Dakota is a 'dancer', and you cannot help but be more embarrassed for Ms. Lohan as opposed to being titillated by her gyrations. She simply looks lost and sad on the stage and it's unclear whether those emotions are intentional or just a sad realization of how low her career has sunk.

I cannot recommend I Know Who Killed Me, from a typical movie standard. However, I can tell you that if you are looking for an ironic laugh, you might wait for this DVD to come out, gather some friends and have fun at this film and Ms. Lohan's expense. It sounds a little mean, but it's undeniably funny.

Movie Review I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) 

Directed by Dennis Dugan 

Written by Barry Fanaro, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor 

Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Dan Akroyd

Release Date July 20th, 2007

Published July 20th, 2007

For every little bit of progress Adam Sandler makes as an actor; he seems to take one step back. His performance earlier this year in the 9/11 drama Reign Over Me was a tremendous step forward for Sandler as an actor, if a bit of a step down from his usual box office stature. Like his very impressive turn in P.T Anderson's Punch Drunk Love which Sandler followed with the juvenile animated effort 8 Crazy Nights and the dull, unfunny rage of Anger Management, Sandler chooses to follow Reign Over Me with the childish attempt at P.C laughs in stereotypical clothes, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Larry Valentine has a big problem. As a firefighter who rushes into the blaze to save lives, his life is often on the line. His work is very dangerous and with two kids at home to take care of, Larry wants to make sure they get his pension should something happen to him. Unfortunately, a paperwork snafu, in the wake of his wife's untimely death, has left Larry in a real bind. Should he be killed in action, his kids won't get his pension unless he gets married.

Unfortunately for Larry, there is only one person he would trust enough to make sure his kids were taken care of. his lifelong pal, Chuck Levine. This is where Larry crafts a real hairbrained scheme. Seeing a story in the paper about how the city of New York has legalized domestic partnerships for gay couples, Larry gets the idea to marry his pal Chuck.

Chuck is not exactly the ideal choice for this scam. He has a rather legendary reputation as a ladies man. In fact, when we first meet Chuck a pair of sexy twin sisters are fighting over him after he slept with both of them. Later, when Larry goes to tell Chuck his plan, he interrupts him while he is romancing several women at the same time.

Nevertheless, Chuck owes Larry his life after a fire call went bad, so he agrees and the two head for Canada to make it legal. Things get complicated when the city challenges the authenticity of their relationship and Larry hires a sexy lawyer named Alex (Jessica Biel) who immediately strikes a chord with Chuck and puts the whole scheme on thin ice.

This being a typical, brainless Adam Sandler effort you expect and get just about every stereotype known to man thrown in as comic asides. However, surprisingly enough, the biggest problem with I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is not insensitivity, the film actually offers a pro gay agenda. Rather, the problem is much simpler than that. It's just not a very well made movie.

Directed by Adam Sandler's pet director Dennis Dugan (Big Daddy, Happy Gilmore), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry never establishes a solid tone or any kind of charm. The film is crude and resorts more often to dull slapstick than to anything organically plot driven. The plot should be the focus, it's a big broad topic with many opportunities for satire. That, sadly, is well beyond the intellectual scope of Dugan and Sandler.

While there will be many who will be offended by the many stereotypes at use in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, you will be surprised how fairminded and pro gay the film really is. Though the support is shallow because of the gutless direction of Dennis Dugan and the strip mined script by Sandler and Barry Fanaro, the film's heart is in the right place.

What really stinks is that you can see the potential for something a little more thoughtful, deeper and more satisfying. Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne, the team behind Election, About Schmidt and Sideways, delivered a version of this script that, those who have read it, say is sharper and more pointed in its humor and perspective. That version was flamed in favor of a more Sandler friendly version with all of the slapstick and self serving ego indulgences that are Sandler's hallmarks.

My biggest fear was that I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry would be a series of stereotypical jokes with a liberal use of the word f****t. Watching it, that is what we get. However, a heavy dose of positivity manages to balance things out in a very surprising way. That positive feeling however, is not enough to make the film funnier than it is or more believable than it is.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry suffers the ego of its star Adam Sandler who compromises much of what might have worked in the film in favor of fellating his own ego. What a shame, there was a good deal of potential here.

Movie Review Roll Bounce

Roll Bounce (2005) 

Directed by Malcolm D. Lee 

Written by Norman Vance Jr. 

Starring Bow Wow, Chi McBride, Mike Epps, Meagan Good, Nick Cannon

Release Date September 23rd, 2005

Published September 23rd, 2005

In preparing my review of the new roller-disco flick Roll Bounce I came across an article in the New York Post about roller skating movies of the past and it mentioned a true forgotten classic, Skatetown U.S.A. This 70's gem starred Scott Baio, Patrick Swayze, Ron Palillo (Horshack from "Welcome Back Kotter") and former Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormick. The film is about rival roller disco gangs competing in a skating tournament set to disco rhythms. I thought I only dreamed of this movie.

Maybe someday someone will look back on Roll Bounce and be as nostalgic, or sarcastic take your pick, as I am for Skatetown U.S.A but without the perspective of time, Roll Bounce is a relatively relatively unmemorable 70's throwback that needed more of a sense of humor about its subject as opposed to trying to ring actual tension out of a movie about roller skating.

Rapper Bow Wow stars in Roll Bounce as Xavier or X to his crew of rolling skating friends including Junior (Brandon T. Jackson), Boo (Marcus T. Paulk), Naps (Rick Gonzalez) and Mixed Mike (Khleo Thomas). Together the boys spend every summer at the roller rink where they perform choreographed routines for fun. The fun stops, however, when the local rink is closed down and the boys are forced to go to the upscale rink on the other side of town where skating is a competition not a pastime.

The boys are harassed by the locals as they attempt their routines and get shown up pretty fierce in their first visit. However, you just know that when the time comes, as in the 500 hundred dollar cash prize skating competition, the guys will be more than ready.

Parallel to the skating story is the story of X's home life where he and his sister and his father (Chi McBride) are coping with the loss of their mother. Not only that but dad has also just lost his high paying gig as an airplane designer and has not told his son. The family drama is a tad bit cheesy in a movie as gregarious and loose as Roll Bounce and the father son tension only serves to weigh the film down when it should roll with the skating.

Roller skating is a goofy subject for a movie and the last thing any movie should try and do is take it seriously. Yet that is what director Malcolm D. Lee and writer Norman Vance Jr. try to do. They try to make you care about the outcome of this superfluous, overblown and rather ridiculous competition. Don't get me wrong, the action on skates is impressive but it's also quite goofy.

Juxtapose the roller disco of Roll Bounce with the disco of Saturday Night Fever and they may look similar in their weightlessness. However, where Fever earned its melodramatic side by delivering a complex and fascinating lead character, Roll Bounce never establishes X as either fascinating or complex. X is a nice, kind of goofy kid who's a great dancer on skates. The detail of X attempting to cope with his mother's death seems tacked on to give him a dramatic weight and works only to take us away from the more genial and fun story of the roller disco.

Malcolm Lee is a terrific director as he showed in the friendly comedy The Best Man and the awesomely funny 70's send up Undercover Brother. One is left to wonder where that sense of humor is in Roll Bounce. There are occasional funny moments but the film goes for very long stretches without laughs. Lee and writer Norman Vance too often get bogged down in trying to create a family drama and trying to make you care about roller skating that they forget that their real subjects are fun and nostalgia.

Both Lee and Vance could use a refresher in how to write female characters. None of the women in Roll Bounce are anything more than minor characters. Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Goode and "The Bernie Mac Show"'s Kellita Smith each play a different variation of a love interest for the main characters and they are defined by being the love interest and nothing more. None of the women take part in the skating and are left in another typically female role as a cheerleader.

When Roll Bounce is in its retro groove with its killer soundtrack of seventies classics, Bee Gees, Chic, Kool and The Gang and such, it's an enjoyable little throwback. However, when Malcolm Lee attempts to shoehorn in the family drama the movie becomes bogged down and the good time vibe comes to a complete halt.

Roll Bounce does manage to find entertaining moments that showcase these young actors' talent for having a good time. The skating is pure kitsch and when the actors are allowed to take part in that kitsch spirit the film comes alive. That spirit is captured by Nick Cannon's cameo as a seventies style ladies man and Wesley Johnson as the skating rink superstar called Sweetness who enters the rink with his own 70's style theme music and two female valets on his arms like some roller skating pimp.

The retro good time vibe is there in spirit in Roll Bounce but it is too often undermined by forced melodramatics. Still if you were a fan of great disco, roller skating, or high camp you may find something to really enjoy in this inoffensive retro retread.

Me? I'm going on Ebay to find a copy of Skatetown, USA.

Movie Review Role Models

Role Models (2008)

Directed by David Wain

Written by David Wain, Ken Marino, Paul Rudd

Starring Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott, Christopher Mintz Plasse, Elizabeth Banks

Release Date November 7th, 2008 

Published November 6th, 2008 

Paul Rudd had threatened to become a big star a couple of times. His work in Clueless received a great deal of positive buzz and his turn in Neil Labute's caustic drama The Shape of Things had a number of major critics talking about his dramatic chops. Rudd went a different direction. After a very funny role as Phoebe's boyfriend Mike on Friends, Rudd found his new home in comedy playing Brian Fontana in the wildly funny Anchorman.

Since then Rudd has been part of the Judd Apatow comedy repertory troupe, taking on supporting roles Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. And now Rudd moves into the lead of the new comedy Role Models. It's not quite the fulfillment of his leading man potential but it's a good start.

Danny (Rudd) hates everyone. He's been miserable much of his life but finding he has spent ten years at the same company, hocking horrible energy drinks to high schoolers, his misery becomes a full on meltdown of anger and desperation. He gets little help from his pal Wheeler (Seann William Scott) who only adds to Danny's stress with his constant smiling and good natured oafishness.

When Danny gets it in his head that marrying his girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks) he is stunned back into his angry haze when she says no. Ticked off, depressed and high on energy drink, Danny gets kicked out of a high school assembly for praising drugs and insulting his own product. Then the company truck is being towed away so Danny jumps in and tries to run the car off the back of the tow truck.

He ends up shoving a police officer, recklessly endangering said cops life and property damage to the school when he drives his bull themed truck up onto the back of the school horse sculpture. Beth, a lawyer, manages to get the boys community service which is assigned to Sturdy Wings, a big brother style program where each will have to connect with a troubled kid.

Christopher Mintz Plasse, Superbad's charming McLovin, is Augie Fowler and Bobb'e J. Thompson is foul mouthed 10 year old Ronnie. If you think the two slacker doofuses are going to be energized and reborn through their connection to these two kids, well, you're right. Role Models is, if anything, a formula comedy. However, formula doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.

Writer-director David Wain, best known for absurdist fare like Wet Hot American Summer and the little seen spoof The Ten, makes the formula feel fresher than you expect. Seizing on Augie's love of an elaborate role playing game, one where teens and adults dress up and play in the park with rubber swords and medieval costumes, Wain finds a twist on the formula that spurns your expectations of where you think Role Models are headed.

Keep an eye out for a nod to the Kiss Army that will have fans and non-fans rolling on the floor laughing.

Nearly stealing the whole show is a supporting performance by the sublime Jane Lynch. Playing the owner operator of this big brother program, Sturdy Wings, Lynch digs into her character's bizarre background to find big laughs. Constantly reminding whoever is listening the horrible things she did when she was a drinker and a druggie, Lynch's character takes no BS.

Her rants and Rudd and Scott's stunned, off balance reactions to them earn laughs that come in strings of unending giggles. It's fair to say that director Wain overindulges the comic wealth of Lynch's performance but it doesn't matter when it's so consistently funny.

As for Paul Rudd, his raging angry id is quite funny, especially his many pet peeves, but it's the restraint shown by Rudd and director Wain in not reveling in his anger that keeps Danny from turning into a downer. Yes, he's angry but that anger isn't his defining characteristic as it may have been in the hands of a less talented actor and director.

Role Models is a formula comedy that doesn't settle for the formula but improves on it. The final third of the film takes place during this medieval role playing game and you will be surprised by how natural and comfortable the ending in this setting is. Rudd, Scott, Plasse and Thompson work terrifically well together with Plasse delivering the heart of the film in his earnest passionate embrace of his geekiness.

Well observed with just enough big laughs to make you forget about the few issues in the plot, Role Models is worth checking out in theaters.

Movie Review Rocketman

Rocketman (2019) 

Directed by Dexter Fletcher 

Written by Lee Hall 

Starring Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Richard Madden

Release Date May 31st, 2019

Published May 30th, 2019 

Rocketman is one of my favorite experiences at the movies in some time. This dream of the life of Elton John won me over from the first moment and held me in rapt attention throughout the two hour plus runtime. I am a fan of Elton John’s music but I would not call myself a super fan, I wasn’t predisposed to love Rocketman in the ways some Elton fans undoubtedly were and yet, this review will likely come off as that of an Elton fanboy because I adored every moment of Rocketman. 

The first important thing to know about Rocketman is that it is not a straightforward, entirely linear biopic. On top of being a musical, Rocketman plays like Elton John recalling a dream of his own life. Elton acted as Executive Producer of Rocketman and I like to imagine the script as Elton attempting to remember his life through a haze of drugs and resentment and decades of removal. Those musings are then given to Bernie Taupin who picked out choice collaborations to accompany Elton’s fond and not so fond remembrances. 

The film is slightly linear, it does work somewhat chronologically through the life of Elton John from when he was 5 years old through the mid-1980’s and his first days after overcoming a debilitating and almost deadly abuse of drugs. But don’t think you will be able to figure out exactly when the incidents of Elton’s life are actually taking place, as I said earlier, this is a dream we’re talking about and the movie is filled with dreamlike images and logic that extend beyond the necessity for chronology. 

Taron Egerton portrays Elton John from his late teenage years through his middle age and that approach makes complete sense within the dream structure of Rocketman. Egerton neither looks much or sounds much like Elton John but as the representative of a dream that Elton has of himself, he makes perfect sense. Of course Elton remembers himself as better looking and less talented than he actually is, a mixture of narcissism and self loathing is a rather common trait in all humans. 

Egerton proves himself in Rocketman to be a remarkable talent worthy of the hype that came from his starring roles, opposite Elton cameos, in the Kingsman franchise. I am buying in hard on the Taron Egerton movie star idea. Egerton oozes charisma and complexity in equal measure in Rocketman. He can sing well enough, he sells the songs with remarkable confidence and that proves to be more than enough in the structure of Rocketman. 

Jamie Bell portrays Elton’s longtime best friend and writer Bernie Taupin and you can be forgiven for not realizing the two are just friends. For years, many people have held the mistaken notion that Elton and Bernie were a couple, how else to explain such a perfect marriage of singer and songwriter. Rocketman does a wonderful job of capturing the complicated emotions that led to their partnership and friendship and the ways Bernie completes the story of Elton. Bell also can belt out a song as needed and it’s beautiful. 

Bell is rounding into an amazing character actor despite how his hunkiness is making being just a side man, a supporting player, harder and harder to buy into. Bell appears to be one starring role away from becoming a permanent leading man with perhaps his heavy accent the only thing keeping him away from massive stardom. None of those observations are particularly necessary, the point is that the child star of Billy Elliott has proven remarkably resilient and increasing talent. 

Rocketman is rich with wonderfully detailed supporting performances. I mentioned Jamie Bell and now we can turn the spotlight on Richard Madden. The now former Game of Thrones star portrays Elton John’s villainous former lover and manager John Reid. Less kind reviewers have called Madden the weakest part of the film as he is nearly a mustache twirling baddie, broad enough to be a silent film outlaw. 

What those reviewers are missing, again, is that this is Elton John’s outsized memory of Reid. Rocketman is a burlesque of John Reid the real life former everything in Elton’s life. Of course Elton recalls the worst of Reid as well as the best. No one remembers the average moments of their time with a former lover or co-worker. You remember the moments of passion, the extremes, the big love, the big loss, the great sex and the ugliest rows. 

Richard Madden is playing the man that Elton John has despised for decades since their partnership ended in ugly, tabloid fashion. Of course Madden plays the character with a broad sense of nastiness and savage wit, that’s how Elton would choose to remember him in his less charitable moments. The film also depicts the obvious passion the men shared as well in a fashion that is likely more broad than reality. That’s how a dream or a memory tends to go. 

Bryce Dallas Howard and Steven Mackintosh round out the cast as Elton’s parents and once again, many critics are missing the point. Howard portrays Elton’s mother as a blowsy broad from 50’s Middlesex and an aging, angry, homophobic harridan and while this is certainly not capturing the complexity of the real Mrs. Dwight, it captures Elton’s reasonably resentful idea of this woman who failed to be as supportive and loving as one would hope for in a mother. 

Elton’s father is also not particularly complex. Mackintosh, like Howard, is playing a broad burlesque of an absent, cold, English father. Both parents are Freudian approximations of Elton’s most basic psychological shortcomings and well they should be. Again, that’s how many people view their parents when those parents are absent, or they associate those parents with specific or non-specific trauma. 

Director Dexter Fletcher and his incredible cast bring these wonderfully broad ideas to brilliant life all the while jukeboxing Elton’s amazing catalog and using Bernie Taupin’s remarkable lyrics as a storytelling catalyst rather than a device. Bernie Taupin was a poet and while you can try to literalize some of his words, Rocketman is not interested in anything particularly literal. The music adds to the dream-like state of the entire movie and in that way it deepens and enriches the film. 

I completely adore Rocketman and I would not be surprised to find it at or near the top of my list of my favorite movies of 2019 when this year comes to an end.

Movie Review Rock Dog

Rock Dog (2017) 

Directed by Ash Brannon

Written by Ash Brannon, Kurt Voelker

Starring Luke Wilson, J.K Simmons, Eddie Izzard, Lewis Black, Kenan Thompson, Mae Whitman

Release Date February 24th, 2017

Published February 24th, 2017

To complain that “Rock Dog” is a low-quality bit of animated flotsam is something akin to complaining about the wind blowing, that’s simply its nature. “Rock Dog” is an animated cash-in from China that isn’t meant to be good but rather is intended as a product, and a cheap one at that. China may still be under the boot of Communism but the burgeoning capitalists working their way around the government have learned a thing or two from Hollywood charlatans who pump out products rather than art or even the modest bit of fluffy entertainment.

“Rock Dog” features the voice of Luke Wilson, a paragon of youthful enthusiasm at a mere 45 years old, as teenage mastiff singer Bodi. Bodi lives on Snow Mountain with his bruising mastiff daddy Khampa (J.K Simmons) who has seemingly planned Bodi’s life for him. Like his dad, Bodi is expected to become a guard dog, protecting the simple and sweet sheep of Snow Mountain from the dastardly and deadly wolves, led by Linnux (Lewis Black).

Bodi however, dreams of music and when a radio falls from the sky from a passing airplane Bodi finds his muse in a rock singer named Angus Scattergood (Eddie Izzard). With dreams of having Angus teach him about music, Bodi leaves his family behind to travel to the city and join a band. Unfortunately, the wolves see Bodi leaving and see it as a chance to attack the village. Can Bodi achieve his dreams and still find a way to protect Snow Mountain? Will you care?

Don’t let this incredibly funny voice cast fool you, “Rock Dog” has only three laughs. Mostly “Rock Dog” seems to exist. The story is rudimentary, as my description indicates, when it isn’t filling time with nonsense about wrestling a murderous bear or padding things further with voiceover from Sam Elliott as, ugh,….. Fleetwood Yak. Somewhere several screenwriters high fived over that pun.

No, Fleetwood Yak is not one of the three laughs in the movie, though it did rank among the uncountable groans. No, Eddie Izzard’s rock star cat was responsible for the laughs “Rock Dog” inspires. One comes when he is forced into a bit of old school Warner Brothers slapstick, the second when he feels guilty for stealing a song from Bodi and is shamed by his robot butler and the last wasn’t memorable enough for me to recount but I can at least admit the laugh was there.

Does a negative review of “Rock Dog” matter in any way? Of course, not. Most parents don’t care what they throw in front of their small child’s consciousness. That said, for the few parents who do care, for the parents who are vigilant and give thought and care to what their children consume, this review is for you. This review says don’t waste your child’s developing brain cells on this. It’s not that “Rock Dog” is offensive or even bad for the children who do see it. Rather, that “Rock Dog” isn’t worth the 89 minutes your child could be reading or imagining or exploring a worthy work of pop entertainment. This review is for anyone who actually read all the way to the end of a review of “Rock Dog.”

Movie Review Robin Hood (2018)

Robin Hood (2018) 

Directed by Otto Bathurst 

Written by Ben Chandler, David James Kelly

Starring Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, Eve Hewson, Jamie Dornan 

Release Date November 21st, 2018

Published November 20th, 2018

Robin Hood is among the most ill-conceived blockbuster action movies in history. The attempt by Hollywood to sex up and modernize the Robin Hood legend is sad and desperate instead of new and cool. Director Otto Bathurst, a veteran of numerous popular TV shows, botches Robin Hood so badly you're left to wonder if it was intended as serious or as parody. The film is riddled with so many genre cliches that parody feels like a genuine possibility. 

We begin just as the crusades are getting underway. Young noble, Lord Robin of Locksley (Taron Egerton) is madly in love with a peasant girl named Marion (Eve Hewson). Their love affair is interrupted when Robin is drafted into the Crusades by the evil Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn). He leaves and finds himself somewhere in the Middle East where the film becomes a straight up, modern war movie. 

This sequence is laughable with arrows that destroy walls more effectively than most bullets and fly at a rate that only cartoon arrows have ever flown before. Cartoon is an appropriate metaphor here because the arrows are a laughable example of bad CGI. Here, Robin Hood plays out a sequence that is a remarkable cliche from every modern, Iraq war era war movie. An arrow shooting machine gun has the crusaders pinned down and only Robin can get to him to shut down that arrow gun. 

This sequence made me laugh embarrassingly loud. The creators of Robin Hood believe they are bringing Robin Hood into a more modern context but the attempt fails miserably due to the remarkable series of incongruencies and anachronisms. On top of this, the idea that Robin was ‘drafted’ ruins the idea of Robin as a noble man disillusioned by what he thought was a just war. Instead, you just have Robin as a bratty dilettante who happens to be the only Englishman with a conscience. Here the movie tries to be a Vietnam movie and once again, I was embarrassed for myself laughing and for the actors selling this nonsense. 

During this sequence Robin meets John (Jamie Foxx), a middle eastern fighter who sees Robin as someone in a position of privilege that could be to his advantage. Stowing away on the ship taking an injured Robin back to England, John seeks out Robin and unfolds the plot. They will train and become thieves and steal the fortune of the Sheriff of Nottingham, disrupting the funds needed to continue the Crusades. 

In his time away, the Sheriff has condemned and burned Robin’s home and announced him as having been killed in the war. Because of this, Marion has left and moved on and is now in a relationship with WIll Scarlett (Jamie Dornan). Marion is also secretly conspiring with Friar Tuck to uncover a piece of information that will take down the Sheriff and his supporters among the corrupt Church of England. 

Could any of this nonsense have worked? Maybe, there are a lot of elements in play, plenty of complexities that could be explored. Sadly, the script for Robin Hood is so dopey that it botches everything from beginning to end. There is a conspiracy plot at the center of the movie involving the Church and the Sheriff and it’s all complete nonsense. There is a plot involving stealing documents that then play no role whatsoever in how the story plays out. 

The documents prove a plot that the sheriff is involved in but he’s already robbing and killing the people of Nottingham. Do they really need a conspiracy to want to stand against him? The unneeded nonsense piled into this story only serves to drag things out in remarkably ill-conceived. At one point a character played by the wonderful F. Murray Abraham arrives and appears solely so that he can help Ben Mendelsohn deliver one of the dumbest talking killer monologues in the history of talking killer monologues. 

Because the script is so incredibly dumb and the plot is so remarkably convoluted, the actors are rendered silly throughout. The cast carries out actions that are mostly nonsensical, as if the plot were being written and rewritten mid-scene and all they can do is try to minimize how confused they appear to be. Poor Eve Hewson is the most let down by the nonsense script as Marion appears capably inept, able to steal useless information and just as quickly deliver dialogue dismissing the importance of what she just risked her life to steal. 

I must mention the anachronistic costumes as well. Wow! Leather bars don’t have leather as lovely and durable as they had in the era of The Crusades, several hundred years before leather was even invented. The sheriff wears a gray leather duster that I am pretty sure you could buy at a store for well over a thousand dollars. I realize that the suspension of disbelief is required but the modern touches brought to this story are never justified. 

Set the film in an alternate universe, include magic or monsters, or make it a fairy tale universe, do something to establish a universe where the ludicrous anachronisms aren’t so silly looking. The filmmakers do nothing to make this a believable period in human history and yet it uses history, i.e the Crusades as a touchstone. I am being unnecessarily pedantic about something as dimwitted as Robin Hood but I am trying to contextualize my reaction to this movie which was repeated, embarrassed giggles. 

These giggles were not intended. The movie doesn’t want to be laughed at but I couldn't help myself. The laughable script, the awful CGI, the ludicrously faux cool costumes made me repeatedly burst into giggles I found hard to stifle. I was laughing at the movie and not with it and it was not fun. I didn’t go to this movie to laugh, I wanted it to be the adventure that the marketing promised but no, it’s just all so terrible, so hysterically terrible.