HORRIBLE BOSSES - AMAZING CGI

Sure, everyone is excited to see Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Brainiac as the bosses...but I can't wait to see Jason Bateman play THREE DIFFERENT roles as the harried employees! From a quick look at the poster, he will be playing "classic Bateman", "bearded Bateman", and "super stressed Bateman". It must have cost a pretty penny to use the extensive CGI necessary to put all three Batemans together in a full length movie, but I guarantee the revenue will come back in the form of laughs! It's weird that they didn't make the characters look a little more different from one another, but hey, if there's one actor who can pull it off, it's "The Bate-Master"!

SUMMER MOVIEZ: JULY

Ask your theater about the "extra D" now offered!

Whoops, I forgot to keep writing about Summer Movies! Sorry to leave you on the tips of your behinds as to what I will say about the Smurf movie!

COWBOYS AND ALIENS:
Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford battle extra terrestrials. Fanboys are hyped. Talk about an two actors known for their iconic characters! Who've thought we'd see Morning Glory's "Mike Pomeroy" and Road to Perdition's "Connor Rooney" sharing the screen together?

THE SMURFS
Does anyone think it's creepy that Smurfs advertising campaigns uses the word "Smurf" like the word "f**k"? ("Where the Smurf are we?" "Go Smurf yourself") Adults may think that it's harmless, but they'll change their tunes when kids start talking about their "Smurfbuddies".

WINNIE THE POOH
What, the poster doesn't say "Go Pooh Yourself"? What ad exec was laying down on the job?

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE
Hey, I just found a better title for Eat Pray Love!

TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
It's called Dark Side of the Moon because if you start the Pink Floyd album at the same time as the movie, and then turn the movie off, it's a lot more enjoyable!

ZOOKEEPER
Kevin James looks into the abyss, the abyss looks back. Kevin farts.

LARRY CROWNE
America's everywoman, Julia Roberts, has a romance with America's everyman, Tom Hanks. They drive Ford Explorers, eat at Red Lobster, and decide that buying a Wii would help them exercise AND have fun!!!

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
Starring Justin Timberlake. If the "Friend" is Lance Bass, I will totally see it.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
And hopefully the Last Superhero Origin story I will ever have to see.

"THOR" PUN ARTICLE TITLE!

An example of the CGI rendering in THOR.

I saw Thor! In 3-D! It made no difference seeing it in 3-D, except for when I started getting a headache from looking through glasses! I also heard it in 3-D, as the the person sitting next to me was eating a bag of what I can only assume was a bag of cellophane wrapped cellophane!
I actually wasn't super hot on seeing Thor, but then I found out Kenneth "Bam-Bam" Branagh was directing it, and I decided to see what the old Shakespeare fetishist would bring to the table.

By the hammer of the guy this movie is about, let's get into the plot!

Thor begins on the home planet of the gods, Asgard. (Branagh's first week of rehearsals with the cast was just an intensive workshop of not to pronounce it "Ass-guard") Asgard looks like you combined every Rush, Kansas, and Yes album cover into one huge gated community, and then you made everyone live in a pipe organ.
Anthony Hopkins plays Odin, the head god, who is super-powerful, but not quite powerful enough to replace his missing eye. He has two sons, named Thor and Loki. They look just like their names sound! Thor is as big as two barns (or eighteen of me), blond, and struts around in full George W mode, grinning and thumbs-up-ing and spoiling for war. Loki looks like he's going to a Alan Cumming lookalike contest and enjoys pouting.

In his big introduction scene, Thor is going to be made "King God" (or something), and Thor is plenty excited! His grin almost comes off his face, he is grinning so hard! However, on his commencement day, the kingdom is attacked by the Asgardians worst enemy: The Frost Giants. If I was writing this screenplay, I might have searched for a more legit-sounding name for a villainous race than the "Frost Giants". Yes, it sounds like a brand of anti-freeze, but it also just sounds like a racist term that the gods came up with. Surely the Frost Giants don't call themselves that! ("Nothing is made in Asgard anymore, you got them Frost Giants down south makin' everything, 'cause they work cheap, stealin' jobs from you and me." - Thor, being a total racist) The Frost Giants look like cold Freddy Kruegers, and were almost wiped out by Odin when he was a young god. Now they are back for revenge, in the form of stealing back their powerful glowing box from the palace. (I realize this is a vague way to describe what the box is. The movie is just about as good as me at explaining what the box is.)

This makes Thor mad! Roarrrrr! Thor smash! Thor takes his BFF soldiers over the "rainbow bridge" (trippppyyyyyyyy!!!) into Frost Giant country to battle the giants. This sparks a war, and Odin Lector is VERY disappointed in Thor, casting his son to Earth, where he meets the prettiest scientist in the universe: Natalie Portman. Portman is in every movie this year, right? Is there a contest between her and James Franco? Portman is a astronomer or physicist or something. If you thought the Frost Giants box was vague, wait until you hear about Natalie's scientific research. It seems to consist mostly of her pointing at brightly colored photos. More funding, please! Whatever she's doing gets put on the backburner when she discovers the heavenly body of Thor (har!) and together they have to figure out how to put the colliding worlds of the gods and humans back to rights.

This movie is made of a lot of loud, ridiculous plot points, but they're no more ridiculous or outlandish than any comic book (or Norse legend). I also hope Chris Hemsworth gets a lot more leading action movie roles (I bet I will get my wish, this movie is making a ton of money!). Is anyone else mystified at the Shia LaBeoufs and Jake Gyllenhaals of the world, getting cast as slammin' action stars? They got soft city hands, says I!

Of course, this is all just a pre-cursor to next years Avengers movie, where all the Marvel movie heroes team up to battle evil. All proceeds from the movies go towards the ultimate goal: Creating an indestructible clone of Stan Lee, where the walrus-mustached old salt can lead us into an new era of endless hero origin stories! Hooray for Hollywood!

SUMMER MOVIEZ: JUNE

And so we soldier on,
We, who have borne the months of solstice's kiss,
Into the happy gates
Of more studio-mandated Summer releases
-John Donne

Super 8:
Starring Elle Fanning. If we as a nation work together with the Fanning family, we can have the "female Baldwin" empire we deserve.

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer:
If you go to see this movie, just do me a favor and say the whole title to the person selling tickets. It will be worth the price just to have that moment with yourself and them.

Bad Teacher:
Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake used to date but now they do not date anymore and now they are in a movie together! That is so weird do you think they fight off camera between takes like me and my ex-gf would? LOL

Cars 2:
Remember how people got all bent out of shape, saying that WALL-E was a giant eco-green-party-liberal-brainwash parable for children? Well, here is your second "NASCAR-what-with-movie-star-voices" movie to wash that taste out of your mouth!

Green Lantern:
Guy finds super-suit, etc. Does anyone else feel like this already came out months ago?

Mr. Poppers Penguins:
Jim Carry plays Mr. Popper, and Andy Serkis plays all 15 penguins, probably.

X-Men: First Class:
AKA: Jim Henson's Mutant Babies.

SUMMER MOVIEZ: MAY

SummerMovies.jpg

Is everyone excited for Summer movies? Of course you are! We get to move out of the Spring season of dumb, throwaway movies that studios didn't expect to make a lot of money into the season of dumb, throwaway movies that studios expect to make a LOT of money!

I just missed out on writing about Scfouream, but here's what's coming for the month of May:

The Hangover 2:
Mel Gibson was supposed to be in this, but then everyone heard his misogynistic, racist phone calls, and he was fired. They can't sell tickets for their misogynistic, racist movie while he just gives it away!

The Beaver:
Mel Gibson teams up with Danny Glover to solve another crazy police case.

Thor:
I wish it was about these guys:

Hobo With a Shotgun:
Could be called: "You Seeing Thor Instead"

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides:
Every new Pirates movie made is a missed opportunity to make my Spaceship Earth movie.

Kung Fu Panda 2:
My McDonalds toys from the first Kung Fu Panda will soon have playmates!

Jumping the Broom:
Pastor T.D. Jakes is producing this movie about two colliding African American families getting married. When Joel Osteen makes a movie, he can call it Doing The Chicken Dance.

Priest:
Touched me in the bad way.

Bridesmaids:
Finally, a poop and fart comedy by-men-for-women!

Midnight In Paris:
In this new Woody Allen comedy, I am going way out on a limb, and saying Owen Wilson plays a neurotic, exasperated man who wears plaid shirts and khakis.

Something Borrowed:
An awful, pretty girl with blond hair is going to get married to the guy that the wonderful, brunette girl likes. What will happen? (A: at least one "dancing around the living room to a Motown song" scene)

TWEET WILLY

The other day, Jim Tews (@jimtews) and I (@thezdurr) sat down to do the Lord's work: live-Tweet the early 90's children's hit movie: Free Willy. It spawned four (FOUR!) sequels. I had never seen it, but let's see what all the hoopla was about.

thezdurr: So far, a LOT of majestic whale footage. If I was in the theater, you’d hear “Der’s a whale! Dere’s anodder whale!”

thezdurr: Sea World must’ve pissed itself when this came out.

jimtews: True story: I quit the Alton Park peewee football team to go see this in the theater. In other words this movie changed my life.

thezdurr: These whalers are almost yelling “yarrrr!”, but I guess the director said hold back.

jimtews: Holy Shit, worst graphic titles I’ve ever seen. Some community college editor must’ve gotten their big break on this film

jimtews: The homeless tween problem in San Diego was a real epidemic.

thezdurr: Everytime I see a child actor, I marvel at their “too much hair”.

thezdurr: The homeless children have stolen a cake, gone to skate park, and spray painted some stuff. Better documented in the TMNT movie.

jimtews: I bet Jesse’s mom was hot. Hot mom’s always have charming street urchin kids.

thezdurr: The house this kid ran away from looks like Martha Stewart’s herb compound.

thezdurr: This is what being a foster is like? Free Nikes, a bedroom by the harbor? Why didn’t my parents make ME wards of the state?

jimtews: Michael Madsen should play “Stepdad” or “Foster Dad” in every movie ever.

thezdurr: Kid spray painted the word “piss” on the wall? Move over, Banksy!

jimtews: Oh, I get it. Willy and Jesse are both outcasts. Charming bad boys who only understand each other.

jimtews: Fill-in dads always think “playing catch” will form a father-son bond where there is none. Keep trying Michael Madsen.

jimtews: This kid is as bad at fake playing the harmonica as those girls in the Robert Palmer video were at fake playing the guitar.

thezdurr: This kid plays harmonica when he gets the blues. Man, what kid in the 90’s didn’t do that? It was like pogs!

jimtews: FACT: Killer whales hate the taste of smarmy, badass kids.

thezdurr: This movie dared to trade “magical negro” with “wise Native American”. Game changer!

jimtews: The characters just introduced are clearly bad guys. As indicated by their receding hair line and slicked back hair.

thezdurr: “Willy doesn’t like anybody”. Show, don’t tell! Let’s see him eat a baby or something!

jimtews: This would be a great movie to take a nap to. I can’t believe I gave up my football career to see this in the theater.

thezdurr: The young aqua park girl has the haircut of a Mary Lou Retten, and the line delivery of a automated telephone service.

thezdurr: This aqua park has three employees, including a nine year old! No wonder this whale is abused!

jimtews: Willy’s “talking” sound is creeping me the fuck out. He sounds like a crying Chewbacca.

jimtews: Why do you look so worried, Michael Madsen? Oh, never mind, that’s your face.

thezdurr: “Whales love to have their tongues rubbed” Yeah, play right into the whales plans.

thezdurr: “Whales love to have their tongues rubbed”. I have a lot in common with whales!

jimtews: Guess it’s not all Nikes, sweet BMX bikes and B.U.M. Equipment sweatshirts. Even foster parents fight.

thezdurr: Did they put peanut butter in Michael Madsen’s mouth to get him to do these lines? The man looks pained.

jimtews: Whale training: it’s so easy, even an unwanted child can do it.

thezdurr: Have you ever seen a Sea World act, and said “why haven’t they made a movie that’s just THIS?” No? Oh.

jimtews: Is this Sea World Philadelphia? The crowd is booing a child.

thezdurr: Its proven: nothing is funnier than adults booing a child.

thezdurr: Are we at act 2 now? It feels like act 53.

jimtews: Wonder if the whale had a tough time getting cast “You’d make a great Willy we just want a chemistry read before final casting.”

thezdurr: Hopeful ending: Willy is an elaborate housing for a sentient being, which chooses the kid as the New Earth’s “Adam”.

thezdurr: Hopeful ending: everyone just says: "let's call animal protective services", like a bunch of HUMAN BEINGS.

jimtews: I find it hard to believe a watering can full of sea mist could keep a whale alive for this long.

jimtews: Come on, Willy! Get a dorsal boner!

thezdurr: Ok, are we going to see a whale jump over this urchin or what?

thezdurr: Great, it happened. The poster happened.

thezdurr: Here’s the only other thing I knew about Free Willy - the most gospel-y thing MJ ever did.

jimtews: And wrap it up nicely with a Michael Jackson song. A box office gold-plated turd. http://youtu.be/_x3PQ5QhMJs

thezdurr: Between seeing this today and Madea yesterday, I’m burnt out on whale movies.

INTO THE UNKNOWN: WELCOME TO THE TERRYDOME

Enjoy the funniest, most self-aware part of this movie: the poster.

A friend of mine recently told me about how she had never seen a Harry Potter movie (or read the books), but wound up seeing the latest installment while visiting home this Thanksgiving. We discussed how confusing, boring, and ridiculous a movie series can seem when you see them out of the context from the rest. Hearing the audience react with gasps and laughter at a characters slightest movement sounds over-the-top to the unconverted.

This is how I walked into Tyler Perry Presents: Madea's Big Happy Family, a total noob. Wanting to know what Ty-P's cottage industry was all about. I walked away, still unconverted. But let me back up, and tell you everything I knew about Tyler Perry before I walked into MBHF:

-Tyler Perry is a one-man entertainment branding kingpin for largely ignored black conservative moviegoers. I read a profile piece in the New Yorker on Perry (like a true god-fearing white person), who made Perry out to be a workaholic media-producing machine, like one of those "Write Your Movie In A Week" seminars programmed into a robot. He wakes up, goes to the gym, pounds out fifteen script pages, attends a meeting about his TV shows, shoots his current movie from 1 o'clock to 8 o'clock, gets dinner, and goes to bed, plugged into his dream stenographer, typing out his unconscious to be reviewed for possible script fodder.

-The TV show House of Payne has characters from the Medea universe in the episodes, and they will refer to Medea, although she does not actually appear on the show, like some weird canonical Marvel comic spin-off .

-Medea is played by Perry in drag, and pronounces certain words like Ludacris. ("Thank yer")

It was with this basically clean slate that I walked into the theater. I was hoping to either 1) Be charmed by the cast and story, and go away being happy that people where into something positive, or 2) have it be wildly awful, which is a fun thing to write a review of! What I got instead was joltingly constructed, yet boring tug of war between turgid drama and broad comedy. It was like watching someone changing channels between a filmed Mary Worth comic and a community theater putting on an episode of Good Times.

Here is how I imagine the skeletal run-down of Tyler Perry's script:

CASTING NOTES:

Any male under 45: Noble, well spoken, varying degrees of domination under shrewish women, varying degrees of goatees.

Any female 18-45: Shrill, bossy, shrewish, great hair.

Any female 45-65: Angelic.

Any female under 18: Ho.

Any cast member over 45 dressed up to be 85: Cartoon character.

Madea: T.D. Jakes in drag, re-enacting his favorite scenes from Falling Down.

(PRODUCTION NOTE: DO NOT USE MORE THAN TWO CAMERAS TO COVER EACH SCENE. CAMERAS COST MONEY, AND TRICKY, ARTSY EFFECTS LIKE "PANNING" OR "MOVEMENT" TAKE AWAY VALUABLE "MEET THE BROWNS" STORY SESSION TIME)

EXT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL HOUSE.

INT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL LIVING ROOM or DINING ROOM

A woman is yelling at a man. The woman is unaware of how terrible and hollow her life has become, a problem that would go away if the man would just tell her to sit down, shut up, and raise their children right. Scene should end when the man says something like: "At least one of us does." Then the man walks out. The woman rolls her eyes OR a tear rolls down her face, and is hastily wiped away.

EXT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL HOUSE.

INT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL LIVING ROOM or DINING ROOM

40-something actors made up with fright wigs and stage make-up bug their eyes out, fall down and berate each other in a comical manner. Repeat the same jokes two or three times in a row, so if people were laughing too hard they can properly hear the line.

(REPEAT PATTERN FOR ONE HOUR TWENTY MINUTES)

The living saint of a mother dies of cancer. (Note from ZD: This is NOT a spoiler. We are told from literally the first second of film that she is going to die of cancer. It is the gun introduced in the first act that will die of cancer in the third act. The mom spends most of the film trying to tell her family that she has cancer at a family dinner, but they always interrupt her by fighting with each other. You would think that maybe she could just yell over THEM: "Hey, idiots, I have CANCER", and that would certainly shut them up, and end a lot of in-fighting. Or maybe she could just call them, individually, on the phone. She really feels this is the perfect way to tell her family about her terminal illness, I guess! When this woman gets an idea in her head, she's like a dog with an old sock, just won't let go!)

EXT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL HOUSE.

INT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL DINING ROOM, FOLLOWED BY A LIVING ROOM

Medea calls everyone into the dining room, like the end of a murder mystery. But instead of solving a mystery, she solves everyone's problems! If they are a woman, she tells them to shut up. If they're a man, she tells them to "be the man". If they are a child, she beats them with her fists.

(PRODUCTION NOTE: THE SECOND AFTER MEDEA SOLVES EVERYONE'S LIFE, TURN THE CAMERAS OFF. CAMERAS COST MONEY!)

Roll the blooper reel, where Perry looks super bored with it all.

Thank Yer!