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.

Jared Hess to direct third Shanghai Noon movie

- Jared Hess (Masterminds, Napoleon Dynamite) will direct Shanghai Dawn, the third film in the Shanghai series that stars Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. The first two were 2000's Shanghai Noon and 2003's Shanghai Knights.

- Rebecca Ferguson (Mission Impossible 5) has joined The Greatest Showman on Earth, a musical about P.T. Barnum. It stars Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle WIlliams, and Zendaya.

- Gary Oldman is set to play Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, all about the Prime Minster when things weren't going so well for Great Britain during WWII. Lily James (Cinderella), Ben Mendelsohn, John Hurt and Kristen Scott Thomas co-star.

Random Movie Stuff - 4/25/12

- Some updates regarding Disney & Pixar. James Bobin will be back to direct a sequel to The Muppets. Pixar has three new titles on its slate. The Good Dinosaur is set to be released May 30, 2014, and it features a modern story set in a world where the cataclysmic asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs never actually hit the Earth. Inside the Mind is set for June 19, 2015, and it takes place inside the human mind. Dia De Los Muertos doesn't have a release date but it will center on the Mexican holiday. Pixar's Brave opens in June.

- Jessica Chastain (The Help, The Debt) is in talks to join Iron Man 3. She'd play a sexy scientist whose brain rivals Tony Stark's. She'd be joining Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce.

- Ben Kingsley will also star in the indie film Cut Bank. It's about two men trying to escape a town frozen in time. Armie Hammer (Mirror Mirror), John Malkovich, Michael Sheen and Teresa Palmer co-star.

- Gina Carano (Haywire) is in talks to join Fast & Furious 6, starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson. She'd play a member of Johnson's team, seeking to take the car thieves down.

- Owen Wilson will star in the thriller The Coup, about a family visiting southeast Asia who get caught in the middle of a violent military coup of the government.

- Mel Gibson will be joining the cast of Machete Kills. The sequel will star Danny Trejo and be directed by Robert Rodriguez.

How Do You Know - DVD Review

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Starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, Jack Nicholson, Kathryn Hahn, Mark Linn-Baker, Tony Shalhoub and Lenny Venito.
Directed by James L. Brooks.

This is one of those rich-people-with-trifling-issues rom-coms more associated with Nancy Meyers than James L. Brooks. It's about people struggling to connect, but able cast and witty dialogue aside, it felt like it's written by someone who hasn't had actual human connection for a long time.

Reese Witherspoon plays a professional softball player who's about to learn she's been cut from her team. Owen Wilson plays a professional baseball player who makes $14 million a year who falls quickly for Reese, but he's trying to figure out how to be in a real relationship. Paul Rudd is a CEO who's about to learn his business is being investigated for securities fraud and that he might personally go to jail for it, even though he isn't sure what he did. Jack Nicholson plays his father, who also happens to be chairman at the same company.

Reese bounces back and forth between Owen and Paul, all the while each character seems to be waiting for the other to stop talking so they can talk about themselves and wonder aloud how to connect to people without ever doing so. Nothing about this movie ever feels real. I found Owen's huge well-furnished apartment more interesting. I could picture ten union workers furnishing it, putting everything in place, checking the lighting, measuring everything. The work they put in deserves to be in a better movie.

Hall Pass - Movie Review

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Starring Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, Richard Jenkins, Stephen Merchant, Nicky Whelan, Joy Behar, JB Smoove, Tyler Hoechlin and Alexandra Daddario.
Directed by the Farrelly Brothers.

The Farrellys may have made the funniest raunch-comedy of the 1990's, but nothing they've attempted since has been able to recapture that magic. This one is another swing and a miss.

In some ways, I didn't dislike it as much as I thought I would, because I see a lot of promise in some of their set-ups and scenarios. The main problem is that most of the comic energy doesn't really arrive until the last half-hour.

Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis are two buddies who've hit forty and are married, but they still gawk at attractive women like they're a pair of frat buddies. Their wives (Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate) are annoyed by their immature behavior, and the table is therefore laid in an unappealing manner. The wives are two-dimensional shrews, and the guys are clueless dweebs.

After a self-help author-friend convinces the wives to give their husbands a one-week "hall pass" - a week off from marriage where they can sleep around with no consequences - the boys go into horny anticipatory overdrive. The joke here though is that the guys have been out of the game so long, they don't really know how to proceed.

Pete Jones, winner of the first Project Greenlight season, helped with the story, and that's probably where a lot of the sweetness comes in. For me though, the movie didn't really start working until an hour in, when Owen Wilson gives a comeback monologue against a snarky coffee-house employee. The movie has consequences for their actions and I liked how some of the plot threads tied together at the end, but it can't save a first hour of laugh-free dullness.