Zoolander 2 - DVD Review

ZOOLANDER 2 (PG-13) Starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Penelope Cruz, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Kyle Mooney, Justin Theroux, Cyrus Arnold, Milla Jovovich, Benedict Cumberbatch, Nathan Lee Graham, Jon Daly, Sting, Billy Zane, Fred Armisen, Christine Taylor and Justin Beiber.
Written by Justin Theroux, Ben Stiller, Nick Stoller & John Hamburg.
Directed by Ben Stiller.

★½

Zoolander 2 is kinda like Dumb & Dumber To. It's a sequel that would have been better about ten years ago, but now the groans of their stupidity outweight the laughs.

In fact, the laughs that are found in here come from everyone else but Ben Stiller's central male-model idiot. There are dozens of cameos in here, to an overcompensating degree. The movie starts off by explaining how Zoolander's wife died, he lost parental rights to his son, and now he lives as a hermit crab in a remote cabin.

Derek Zoolander is called back into action by a new fashion show in Rome, but there also happens to be a series of beautiful musicians who are getting killed, and so Derek and Hansel are enlisted by a fashion interpol agent (Penelope Cruz) to help solve the mystery.

The movie picks up once Mugatu (Will Ferrell) shows up, but we're an hour into a 95-minute film at that point.

Hollywood may think we want sequels to movies over a decade old, but we really don't.

Side note: Product placement is increasingly obnoxious in Ben Stiller films. It damaged his otherwise fine Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and it's too obvious here.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - Movie Review

Starring Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn and Patton Oswalt. Directed by Ben Stiller.

★★★½

I saw part of the same-titled Danny Kaye movie on TV when I was a little kid, but I don't remember much about it. It was based on a two-page James Thurber short story. This movie has nothing to do with that original story.

Stiller plays Walter Mitty, a boring man who constantly zones out into fantastical daydreams. He works for Life magazine but he soon learns that their next printed issue will be their last. Stiller wants to have it both ways and for the most part, does, with very funny daydreams combined with thought-provoking drama about actually living life.

Its main weakness would be with the blatant, intrusive product placement. The use of Papa John's as a plot device bordered on grotesque.

This is an elegant panoramic tribute to his locations. Greenland and Iceland look like places I'd want to visit. Nice to see Stiller take full advantage of the big screen.

Weekend Box Office Dec 27-29, 2013

For all the new Christmas Day offerings out there, it was the leftovers that sold the most tickets. The Hobbit: Part Smaug is behind the first one but still proving to be a profitable venture.  Frozen is now Disney's second-highest non-Pixar animated movie to date, behind only The Lion King.

Of the newbies, The Wolf of Wall Street is faring best. Hard to say how word of mouth will be. We had about six people walk out of our screening. It's insane to me how much money Universal dumped into 47 Ronin. The last time Keanu Reeves was in a movie that grossed over $100 million was 2003 (the Matrix sequels and Something's Gotta Give), and they dumped $200 million into 47 Ronin?

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty had a disappointing beginning for Ben Stiller, and Grudge Match is just a bomb to be quickly forgotten.  Justin Bieber's Believe showed that there's not much interest left in his concert movies.

The Watch - DVD Review

Starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Richard Adaoye, Rosemary DeWitt, Will Forte, Mel Rodriguez, Nicholas Braun and Billy Crudup.
Directed by Akiva Schaffer.

★½

It was unfortunate for this movie that the George Zimmerman case became national news before its release.  The studio changed the movie's name from Neighborhood Watch to The Watch, and they played up the aliens subplot, which I think they wanted to be more secretive about leading up to the release.

Stiller & Vaughn, that comedy duo from Dodgeball, are left to their own comic devices where a lot of their lines come off as improvised, but they're never actually funny.  Stiller's the OCD guy who starts up 20 different community groups to compensate for not having any actual friends.  Vaughn is the local jock-idiot who likes the excuse "Neighborhood Watch" gives to get out of the house.  Hill, at least, has a little more of a character, but he's the vigilante-cop-wannabe, an intense guy that you do not want holding a gun or joining the force.  Can't help but think of Zimmerman with him.

The motivations of the aliens didn't make sense, and not just the ones they blast like video-game monsters.  That wouldn't matter as much if the film had laughs to hide its flaws.  Its flaws stand naked.

Dark Knight Rises #1 again, The Watch bombs

For the weekend of July 27-29.

1.  The Dark Knight Rises - $64.08 million ($289.09) - 2 wks (WB) -60.2%
 . . . 4404 screens / $14,540 per screen
2.  Ice Age: Continental Drift - $13.3 ($114.85) - 3 wks (Fox) -34.9%
 . . . 3869 / $3438
3.  The Watch - $13 - 1 wk (Fox)
 . . . 3168 / $4104
4.  Step Up Revolution - $11.8 - 1 wk (Sum)
 . . . 2567 / $4597
5.  Ted - $7.35 ($193.62) - 5 wks (U) -26.6%
 . . . 3129 / $2350
6.  The Amazing Spider-Man - $6.8 ($242.05) - 4 wks (Sony) -37.5%
 . . . 3160 / $2152
7.  Brave - $4.24 ($217.26) - 6 wks (BV) -29.7%
 . . . 2551 / $1661
8.  Magic Mike - $2.58 ($107.59) - 5 wks (WB) -39.9%
 . . . 2075 / $4343
9.  Savages - $1.75 ($43.9) - 4 wks (U) -48.4%
 . . . 1414 / $1240
10. Moonrise Kingdom - $1.39 ($38.4) - 10 wks (Foc) -24.3%
 . . . 853 / $1626

A 60% drop in week 2 can be expected for a film that had such a big opening weekend, so The Dark Knight Rises is in good shape and could be the third movie this year to hit $400 million domestic gross, behind The Avengers and The Hunger Games.

Brave edged past Madagascar 3 to become the highest-grossing animated movie of the summer.  Ice Age 4 won't catch them domestically, but it has been a giant hit overseas.

The Watch is the disappointment of the summer.  It won't lose near as much money as Battleship, but the reunion of Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn (Dodgeball) plus the hot Jonah Hill (21 Jump Street) should have done better.  Some can blame the Trayvon Martin case or the Aurora shootings, but it didn't look any good, and critics agreed it was terrible.

Tower Heist - Movie Review

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Starring Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Michael Pena, Tea Leoni, Judd Hirsch and Gabourey Sidibe. Directed by Brett Ratner.

The heist movie can be a fun genre. Look at The Town, The Bank Job, Ocean's 11, Inside Man, or the brilliant opening sequence of The Dark Knight. There's the suspense of whether or not the plan will be executed as designed. Will they actually get away with it?

This movie makes itself relevant by centering on a Bernie Madoff-type mogul under house arrest in his penthouse suite. That he's played by Alan Alda is a stroke of genius. He's a kind old man who connects with everyone else. Of course he's successful. Why should we suspect he's achieved this through ill-gotten means?

Unfortunately for the hotel staff at which he resides, all of their pensions were lost in his Ponzi scheme. They were initally put there by Josh (Ben Stiller), the manager of the hotel. But he gets a tip that millions in cash may be hidden in the suite somewhere. Josh and some of the staff, with their knowledge of the hotel's security system, determine that can sneak in there and find it themselves.

But none of them are criminals, and that's a nice take on the genre. These are ordinary people driven to desperate measures. They need help. Josh enlists his old pre-school friend Slide (Eddie Murphy), now a career thief, to help train them on the art of stealing.

Murphy is the highlight of the movie and gives his funniest performance in about a decade. It's a return to form for him, and I hope he sticks with it. (I'm hoping A Thousand Words is his mute Liar Liar, but we'll see.)

There are some nice twists along the way, and most of the actors get their moments. Gabourey Sidibe's Jamaican accent is ill-advised, but I liked Matthew Broderick as a suicidal former Merrill Lynch employee now squatting in the building.

Brett Ratner's reviled industry-wide for his lack of skill, and I think part of that is because of his success. He's not bad, he's just workmanlike. His directing here is stronger in the comedic scenes than the action. The third-act finale might have been better had it been smaller. (Does it really need to happen during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?)

I will say somewhere along the way, some key story elements must have been edited out. There's one event that happened where we're informed it was part of the plan, and I had to think about it. "Wait a minute. How did they do it?" Like there was a plot device someone put a pin in so they could get to the section of the story and they never revisited it.

Contrivances aside, it's a decent comedy which made me chuckle a few times. Glad I saw it.