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 LEGO Movie - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Liam Neeson, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.
Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller.

★★★★

Everything is awesome about this movie on so many levels. The message, the humor, the subtext, the characters, the creativity... All of it works.

Chris Pratt, who plays the guileless Andy on NBC's Parks & Recreation, brings that same dim-bulb wonderment to the voice of Emmet, a construction worker in Legoland. Emmet is chirpy, positive, and part of a team, a team that Reads The Instructions and builds buildings. The movie has this shrewd animation style that looks like it's a combo of stop-motion and CGI (I'm guessing it's more CGI than stop-motion).

This Lego universe is run by President Business (Will Ferrell), head of the government and most coroporations. Behind closed doors, he's Lord Business! (Think Chancellor Palpatine and Darth Sidious). Lord Business is determined to control everything, and he has a doomsday device called the Kragle which will allow him to usurp freedom forever. Ah, but there's this prophecy that someone called the Special will come forth with a Piece of Resistance and stop Lord Business.

Emmet accidentally stumbles upon the Piece of Resistance, and he becomes the unwitting fulfiller of prophecy. An underground resistance movement hails him as the Special, even though he's not smart or unique in any discernible way.

This movie isn't left- or right-wing, it's probably the most centrist pro-liberty movie ever made. It celebrates community not conformity, knowing when to break out and when to be safe, respect for yourself and others, and above all, it's good to let your imagination run wild.

Part of the freedom of this movie is how much it's able to borrow from others to create something new.  Characters from Star Wars and Harry Potter pop up, and one of the main supporting characters is Batman. The evil micro-managers that serve Lord Business look and behave an awful lot like the squid-robots from The Matrix. (Micro-managers! Ha! Surprised there weren't two henchmen named Sarbanes and Oxley).

It truly is a "whole family" movie. Plenty of laughs for kids and adults. Surely the front-runner for Best Animated Film of 2014, the other candidates sight unseen.

Anchorman 2 - Movie Review

Starring Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Kristen Wiig, Meagan Good, Dylan Baker, James Marsden, Greg Kinnear, Judah Nelson, Fred Willard and Chris Parnell.
Directed by Adam McKay.

★★1/4

Nine years. Nine years since the legend has graced the big screen.  So when the stars align and he finally re-emerges, we get a cuddly reunion that I just wish had been funnier.

Call it the Austin Powers effect. I though the second movie was the weakest because it felt like it was retreading jokes from the first one.  This one too offers a retread. Some of it is funny, make no mistake, but this also suffers from our ability to see the punchlines coming from farther away, and shouting the punchline does not make it funnier.

We begin with Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone happily married, parents to a cute little moppet, and co-anchoring the weekend edition on a national news network (WBC).  When the main anchor of the network decides to retire, he names Veronica his successor, and he fires Ron, "the worst anchorman I've ever seen."  Ron's fragile pride is wounded, and he tells Veronica that if she loved him, she'd refuse the promotion. So naturally we cut to a few months later where a newly single Ron Burgundy has hit rock-bottom.

But then comes along the opportunity to be a part of GNN, the first 24-hour news network.

The movie has fun with the trope of "getting the band back together."  Steve Carell is a bigger star now so Brick has more to do this time around. But Brick was so dumb in the first one that he's impossible to invest in this time around. Comedy is best when there's a grain of truth to it, but Brick is incomprehensibly stupid. He's dumber than an adult Ralph Wiggum.

There's some inspired humor with the way it skewers cable news. There are also some gags that go on too long and just aren't funny, like Ron's awkward racism trying to relate to black people.

The third act gets so ridiculous that it almost saves it. (Did I mention it has a lot of good surprise cameos?)

Maybe if there'd been more people in my theater, there would have been more laughs, and I would have enjoyed it more.  As is, it's fine, you know. What can I say. It's alright. You could do worse. (Shrugs). I was disappointed.

The Campaign - DVD Review

Starring Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott, Katherine LaNasa, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd and Brian Cox.
Directed by Jay Roach.

★★

Sure, there's a couple laughs. It's impossible for Will Ferrell to make a movie without some.  It takes the exaggerated nastiness typical in election campaigns and has fun with it.  But its main target is so thinly disguised, it loses its edge.

Will Ferrell plays Cam Brady, a North Carolina congressman in a safe, safe district.  But after getting caught having an affair, his puppermaster donors decide they want someone else in his place.  They handpick Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis) to challenge him.

Hijinks ensue.

This movie is a giant commercial against Citizens United and the Koch brothers.  In the movie, they're the Motch brothers, two rich guys in smoke-filled rooms who plot how to control government.  A smarter satire might have made them a little more subtle, made them more reminiscent of Randolph & Mortimer Duke from Trading Places.  Here they're a parody of an MSNBC caricature of capitalistic evil.  And if you're going to do that, please be smart about it.

Random Movie Stuff - 12/26/11

- Here's the first photo from Magic Mike, a male-stripper comedy from director Steven Soderbergh.  It stars Matthew McConaughey, Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer (Beastly), Matthew Bomer (USA's White Collar), and Joe Manganiello (HBO's True Blood).  It's loosely based on Tatum's experiences as a stripper before his acting career took off.  The movie's scheduled to open June 29.  Soderbergh also has Haywire opening next month.

- Dan Aykroyd has joined the cast of Dog Fight, a political satire starring Will Ferrell and Zack Galifianakis as two warring candidates.  It also stars Jason Sudeikis, John Lithgow, WIll Forte and Brian Cox.

- Alan Taylor, whose directorial efforts mainly comprise of HBO fare like Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, will be the new director for Thor 2.  Kenneth Branagh directed the original.

- Seth Rogen will star in The B Team, about a master spy who is kidnapped, so his support team must go in to save him.

- What do Tom Hulce (Amadeus), Jon Polito (Miller's Crossing), Derek Jacobi (Anonymous), Wesley Eure (TV's Land of the Lost), Guillermo Diaz (TV's Weeds), Sean Maher (Serenity), Roger Rees (TV's Cheers), Denis O'Hare (TV's True Blood), Jonathan Slavin (TV's Better Off Ted), and Luke Evans (Clash of the Titans) have in common?

- The Top Ten Movies according to Christy Lemire, of Ebert Presents At the Movies:

1.  Martha Marcy May Marlene
2.  50/50
3.  The Myth of the American Sleepover
4.  The Tree of Life
5.  Bellflower
6.  Melancholia
7.  Take Shelter
8.  Hell & Back Again
9.  Beginners
10. Bridesmaids

Everything Must Go - DVD Review

ll 1/2

Starring Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Laura Dern, Michael Pena, Christopher CJ Wallace, Stephen Root and Glenn Howerton. Directed by Dan Rush.

Will Ferrell is impressive in his first beginning-to-end straight role. I know he had Stranger Than Fiction and Melinda & Melinda but those were still basically comedies. Here, he's an alcoholic having the worst day of his life. He gets fired from his job and returns home to find he's locked out of his house with all his stuff on the front lawn.

The movie says it's based on a Raymond Carver story. The actual story is only four pages long. Thus this has the familiar trappings of many a low-budget independent film. The character is established, the movie takes its own sweet time of not much happening, and then we end on a final note that could hopeful or tragic. I won't say which direction this one chose to go, but neither would have surprised me, and that's not a bad thing. Ferrell seems willing and able to go as dark as the filmmakers dare.

I didn't mind taking the journey with Ferrell, even if it's a journey from A to B instead of A to Z.