Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 2/5

I try and write these reviews without spoiling anything in the movie, but I can make no guarantees about this review.

One of the working titles for this movie was “Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods.”  This title, after seeing the movie makes more sense than the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  The title choice, I believe, is the first in a whole series of poor choices that went into this movie.

I went into this movie excited about the prospect of a new Indiana Jones movie.  For my generation, who just missed being able to see in theaters the Rocky movies, the Star Wars movies, Indiana Jones, Rambo, Beverly Hills Cop, Alien, Predator, etc, the past few years have been very kind to us in releasing sequels so we can try and approximate the original experience, with the end result being hit or miss (with Lucas, more often miss).

I avoided reviews and synopses of this movie and I even ignored the real legend of the crystal skulls so that I wouldn’t be biased.

The movie had a very clever opening, turning the paramount logo into a gopher hill, but once the gopher popped out, my hopes immediately sank.  Maybe I’m in the minority, but anthropomorphic animals in live-action movies piss me off.  By this, I mean, animals who react to people with human expressions and emotions for comic effect.  After this there was a twenty minute opening that took place in New Mexico, a convoy of army trucks are approaching an army base, and upon arriving stage an ambush and take over the base, in search of something.  The men open the trunk of a car and pull out a British gentleman and Indiana Jones.  He tells us they are Russian and my hopes rose again.  And, in fact, despite the hokey, nostalgic, fake lighting in the prologue of the movie (people don’t get halo edged that often, you were making it look like we were looking at old photos of them, I found it annoying), and despite the fact that they were looking for and found an alien corpse at Area 51 (though it was nice that Indiana was one of the ones called in on the alien autopsy), I thought this beginning part was very much in the vein of the original movies.  He was still tough as nails.  He still had his hat, his whip, and his theme song and used them all well.  When caught in a nuclear blast, he had the traditional Indy luck and ingenuity to get him out of it alive and it served to develop this character to the poor few who have never seen the originals.

Then Shia LaBeouf showed up.  I don’t understand his appeal.  I don’t think that he has any range or emotion, and I don’t know why he seems to be getting all these roles.  Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes and Rocky Balboa has more range and charisma and he acts like a more soft-spoken Keanu Reeves.  In Transformers, LaBeouf had less emotion both in his face and voice than the computer generated creatures.  He already was handicapped in Disturbia because he had to bask in the shadow of Jimmy Stewart and Rear Window, however Bart Simpson covered the role better than LaBeouf.

Once LaBeouf came onscreen it all went down hill.  This is not solely because of LaBeouf, but mostly because, in trying to update Indy, George Lucas (who is going to get all of the blame in my book, whether he deserves it or not) made some poor choices.  Lucas kept trying to set LaBeouf up as a young Indiana Jones in what seemed to be a desperate bid for a new hero for future movies.  This led to completely ridiculous sequences such as a motorcycle ride through a library (which doesn’t sound ridiculous, but in how it was pulled off, it was) and a fight with townies.  The fight was particularly poor because leading up to the fight was all of the exposition.  All of the exposition.  It all happened in a crowded diner where the extras took more of the audience’s focus than the main characters who were expositing.  In an effort to solidify LaBeouf’s greaser persona, he is consistently in this scene messing with the other patrons, stealing their beers and such, which causes consternation.  While the audience is trying hard to discover what the hell the adventure is going to be and who the hell is Ox.

They go to South America.  In another desperate attempt to create some kind of character for LaBeouf, in an effort to make up for the lack of acting, LaBeouf brings his motorcycle, like a millstone around an adventurer’s neck.  Who goes trekking through the forests with a motorcycle?

I tried to go see the movie a second time and ten minutes in I realized that I was going to be unable to sit through it again and I actually can’t sit through any more of this review, so I am going to go on and show the glaring points.

This movie, much like Tempok of Doom lacked a sense of urgency.  Yes, they had to return the skull, but why?  Who cared?  There wasn’t even a city on the line.  Yes, Ox’s sanity was probably linked to it, but really, who cares?  There wasn’t enough of a connection between Ox and Indy to justify the risking of a life, and though LaBeouf probably had enough motivation there, it was hidden behind some kind of bush (of flat acting) and didn’t manifest.

Though Harrison Ford was able to bring on the heat in the role, as we all knew he would, anytime there was danger and LaBeouf was there, Indy suddenly decided that now was the time to turn it into a lesson.  He would start lecturing on things rather than doing them.  The worst example was when he and Marion are sinking in, for all intents and purposes, quicksand, and Marion says as much.  Indy goes on to correct her and tell her it isn’t really quicksand and enumerates the differences, rather than doing something about it.  This, of course, sets LaBeouf (who, if you haven’t noticed, I refuse to refer to by character name because that would give him the credit of creating a character, which he did not do) up to save them both by finding a rope or a vine or something while Indy continues… to… talk.  LaBeouf finds a snake.  Of. Course.  Because otherwise, how would we tip our hat to Indy’s fear of snakes.

The movie found itself filled with computer graphics.  I applaud Lucas for advancing the role of computers in movie making and for being able to create such lifelike creatures and scenes.  However, to quote Uncle Ben (not the rice guy), “With great power comes great responsibility.”  There is no need to have gophers commiserate with Indy.  There’s no need to create a swarm of ants, really.  And there is absolutely no need to have LaBeouf swing through a jungle, Tarzan-like from one jeep to another.  It would be one thing if he grabbed a single vine and made a single swing.  Maybe even two.  If this were an original movie, Indy would swing one vine and then reach for the second and miss it, but then save himself (much like his move in the opening of the movie).  For some reason, he seemed to swing about three and a half miles on different vines.  Calling monkeys to help him in his fight with the Commies.  And then had a swordfight while straddling jeeps, which, by itself is not a huge problem, but when you have him get hit in the crotch twelve times by low shrubbery, I find myself irritated.  Surely there is some more interesting choice that could have been made there.

And then there is the whole push of the story, which I have not really gotten into yet.  The skulls, which seem to be highly magnetic, but not just with normal magnetism, but super-magnetism, attracting everything including gold, are alien skulls.  And apparently there’s some kind of switch that turns off the magnetism because they are only magnetic when it is convenient.  And those aliens helped craft the pyramids.  And the dead aliens who are in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (again, City of the Gods would be better) want their skull back.  When they get it, the dead aliens are able to move and communicate.  And blow up people’s heads.  As if that weren’t enough, Ox becomes suddenly coherent to tell us that they are not actually extra-terrestrials but rather intra-dimensional beings.  What.  The.  Hell?  George Lucas has decided to make all of his movies more masturbatory.  He decided he was pandering too much to audiences and now he wanted to sculpt the audiences tastes more to his own liking.  I refuse.

And.  Let me say, Mr. Lucas, supposing I follow your story about them being intra-dimensional beings who somehow are able to live beyond death, WHY DO THEY NEED A SPACESHIP?!

This movie was just too much.  There was no point to adventure, no urgency, no acting from LaBeouf, and no credit given to the audience.  I found the whole premise of aliens a cop-out.  Fine, crystal skulls are a real legend, but why do you have to pander to the conspiracy theorists who say that the pyramids are made by aliens?  AVP did that fine.  I would have preferred to see a search for a relic along the lines of the original movies.  Noah’s Ark?  Perhaps a bit nerfy.  But it doesn’t even need to be a Judeo-Christian based search.  A quest for Mjölnir could have been interesting, or the torch of Prometheus or Agni.  The spear of Vishnu.  The Ankh of Anubis.  Why take the easy road when the interesting roads are still out there?

I’m not going to continue with this.  I’m moving on to the few good points that earned it the second star.  Harrison Ford, when he wasn’t being pushed aside for LaBeouf, was still a very good Indy, even at his age.  The opening sequence, as I have stated, had the feel of the original movies to a ‘T.’  And the dialogue was very good at points.  Also I really liked the choice of having the communists as the bad guys, it built on the Nazis in Last Crusade while still creating some interesting plot points.  And I think Cate Blanchett as the villain did very well.

Overall:  2/5 did not like it.  That’s being generous because I have a soft spot in my heart for the character.  I’m sure that this review degenerated to a rant.  I will go back and see if I can make it a little more coherent later on.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 4/5

Who doesn’t like the first three Indiana Jones movies?  Communists, maybe?  The “new” George Lucas, obviously.  Other than that, no one.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the second movie produced in the franchise, but the first chronologically, occurring a few years before Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Personally, this is the first Indy movie that I ever watched, it being taped off of TV and the hand-written title looking more like “tempok of doom” (so, of course, I still call it tempok of doom privately).  It scared the bejeezus out of me.  My brother used to be able to make me run screaming from a room by putting his hand on my chest and chanting, “A moom shi bah.”  

This was the first time I watched the movie since I stopped being afraid of the dark (a couple of months ago?).  It is widely thought to be the weakest of the original three, much like Empire Strikes Back in the Star Wars series.  But I think it’s given too little credit.  Short Round is quite possibly the best sidekick in any movie of the type, and the moment where Indiana is trying to get Willie to save him from the spiked ceiling makes me laugh every time (“We are going to die >:(”  )  

The acting and the relationships are very good in this, and the action is of the “edge-of-your-seat” variety, perhaps better than Last Crusade, however I find the story very weak.  We know he needs to save the stone, but the urgency kind of goes out the window when they get to the temple.

I will probably flesh this review out after reviewing the other two in the trilogy.

Overall:  4/5 I really liked it.  It is an enjoyable movie, not my favorite, but a solid watch, and a necessary chapter to the Indiana Jones saga and character.

Hard Candy, 5/5

Hard Candy is a very difficult movie to watch.  I have been very interested in watching it ever since I saw Juno.  I really disliked Juno, in large part because I didn’t see any acting ability in Ellen Page, so everyone told me to watch Hard Candy.

This movie opens on a computer screen where we see Hayley chatting online with Lensmaster319.  Hayley has some provocative screenname and is quite obviously teasing Lensmaster319 with more sexual innuendo than you can shake a stick at.  They agree to meet at a coffee shop where it becomes obvious that Jeff is much, much older than the 14 year-old.  He buys her a shirt and coffee.  They talk.  She puts on the shirt, showing herself off in her bra first.  She invites herself over to his house and the movie gets more uncomfortable.

From the very beginning of the movie I was squirming in my seat, waiting for the bad to start.  It was quite obvious that she was putting herself in a situation that she should not be in.  It became worse when they met.  The movie created in me a very intense disgust, but at the same time fostered an anticipation and an eagerness to find out what happens.  I was feeling sorry for Hayley before anything actually happened.  

Now, I went into the movie having read the TiVo summary which pretty much talked about how a girl gets revenge on a pedophile.  I found this misleading, and when the revenge started I was taken completely by surprise, having prepared myself for an uncomfortable rape scene.  Luckily there was none, but much of the rest of the movie made me feel as if I were watching a constant rape scene.

I have never liked a movie so much while thoroughly disliking (all/both) of the main characters.  The movie was brilliantly written, creating a psychological profile of both characters that was completely believable, yet still compelling.  

This is a hard movie to review without revealing the twists and turns.  However, it was a fantastic movie, beautiful in its simplicity, while still maintaining a complex story and characters.  An interesting note is the fantastic lighting and camera work.  The color choices in the scenes, particularly as the tension rises were mind-blowing and enhanced the scenes without being overly dramatic.  The camera angles took the hard, artistic approach, rather than the easy shots that a two person movie might lend itself to.  The artistic team really took advantage of the simplicity of the cast and set to flex their design muscles, while still holding the “Red Riding Hood” parallels in reserve until they could be used to their full potential.  

As to the Ellen Page question, she performed very well in this movie, which she would have to given that it is a two-person show.  However, I am not convinced of her acting ability.  Patrick Wilson was a stronger actor, and Hayley just seemed to me like a more cynical Juno, and I am waiting to see a little bit more range before her name will draw me to theaters like Viggo Mortenson (less Lord of the Rings, more History of Violence and Eastern Promises).

This is a fantastic movie and I can’t say enough good things about it, however I should mention that it is a hard movie to watch.  This movie makes Sin City or Reservoir Dogs look like light fare, while still having less blood than the animated G.I. Joe movie from the 80’s.  I did feel that it went on a little long, but I’m not sure that’s a mark against it, because it maintained the tension through what I would call the “slow” part.

Overall:  5/5 I loved it, but be aware that you are getting into a strange, uncomfortable viewing experience.  I would not take someone on a date to this movie.

It’s a Bird… 5/5

It’s a Bird… is a graphic novel.  That sentence, I’m sure, has set a number of people running to write this onto their “do not read” list.  It is a graphic novel, however calling it a graphic novel is not doing it justice.  It is about Superman, again, this does not do it justice.

This is a semi-autobiographical novel, where the main character, a comic book writer, has been offered the job to write Superman, the comic book crown jewel.  He, however, does not want to write Superman. He can’t connect with Superman.  He has bad associations with Superman.  The first time he read Superman was when his grandmother was dying in the hospital from Huntington’s disease.

This  book is a thought-provoking look at his mental workings as he tries to reconcile the invulnerability of Superman with the vulnerability of man.  As he gets the offer to write Superman his world spins out of control, he falls into a depression that severely strains all of his relationships, and as he progresses down his mental path, he writes scraps trying to find an anchor.   He looks at it from all kinds of angles, discussing the costume, the secret identity, the Fortress of Solitude, all the way to Nietzche.

I went into this expecting a Superman comic, or something resembling it, however I was pleasantly surprised.  I never really liked Superman, myself, so I really identified with his reconciliations.  It was very well written and fascinating.  And, to top it all off, the artwork was brilliant.  Every scrap of a story had a different feel while still maintaining an artistic through-line.  

Seagle has worked on a number of Grendel comics and Sandman Mystery Theater, as well as Green Lantern, X-Men, and others (including co-creating the Cartoon Network series Ben-10).  Kristiansen has done work for House of Secrets and other Superman comics.  I enjoyed both the writing and the artwork so much I am eager to continue reading other titles by them

Overall:  5/5 a fascinating read that I would recommend to anyone and everyone.

16 Blocks 4/5

This is a very simple movie with a very simple plot.  Bruce Willis plays Detective Jack Mosley who has just finished working an all night shift and is ready to curl up in bed with a bottle of Jack Daniels.  Unfortunately, before he can get out of the precinct office, he is asked to take a witness to a court date.  The witness needs to get to court before 10 am.  This means that Mosley has an hour and a half to take Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) 16 Blocks.

Mosley stops at a liquor store on the way, because he is a functioning alcoholic, and while he is in there, someone tries to shoot his witness.  Mosley foils the attempt by shooting the would-be assassin and then he and Bunker go on the run.  

They are met in a bar by a number of other cops, including Mosley’s ex-partner and it becomes clear that the cops want to kill Bunker because he is going to testify against their corruption.

This was a very enjoyable movie, Bruce Willis plays the cop who is pushed too far very well, but he finds some details to distinguish Mosley from John McClane or the Last Boy Scout or any of the other roles that he has done like this one.  The action was tight and David Morse as the villain was pure evil.  Mos Def was a very good cowed witness with a spark of rebellion and the ending was, surprisingly, heart-warming.

I don’t think, however that this movie will stand up to multiple viewings.  There is a certain simplicity that works very well for it, but it is not one that I would buy and watch over and over.

Overall: 4/5 I really liked it.

A Note on the House season finale

Again, I am a huge fan of House M.D. and they can’t do anything better than, as my friend says, “a fucked-up memory episode.”  It was a good story line, however I had a few problems.

The new team-members.  Flesh them out, let’s get to know them like we got to know Chase, Cameron, and Foreman.

The old team-members.  I think we can start phasing them out.  Either that or make them stronger.  Make a decision, though.

The whole “information dump about new team-members” is not an effective way to make us care about them.

You have spent four seasons having House criticize Wilson for loving dependent women and then messing it up.  You finally give us an interesting girlfriend for him and then you kill her.  Fine, I will live with that slight (after all you are entertaining me for free, who am I to criticize?), but it really is a cop-out and his reaction and dependency on her were over-the-top.  You have succeeded in showing us that he is a good foil to House.  You did that in the first season and have just been continuing.  There is no reason to make him become unbelievably attached to this girl in a very short time.  We are not going to now say, “Oh, look, Wilson is a human and can have real relationships.”  And we are certainly not going to be manipulated into real emotion if the emotion on screen is a cheap writers’ sham.

That said, I enjoyed this season much more than I expected and I liked the finale for the most part.  I’m interested to see what will happen next season.

Ratatouille 3/5

I think that I heard too much hype about this movie.  Or perhaps I heard too much hype about Cars and just lumped them together.  Or maybe I just thought it must be great because Apple would use clips from this movie to show off all of the video capabilities for the iPhone and Apple TV.

In any case, I thought this was a cute movie, but it was not something that I would watch over and over.

Remy, voiced by Patton Oswalt (distinguished alumnus of my Alma Mater), is a French rat who has a tremendous sense of smell and taste.  This makes him a whiz chef who loves to experiment with combining different tastes.  When he gets separated from his colony and finds himself in Paris, he takes the chance, led by the ghost of his favorite chef, to investigate a restaurant kitchen.  He starts adding a pinch of this and a toss of that to a soup and it gets blamed on the new garbage boy, Linguini, voiced by Lou Romano.  The critic outside loves it and so Linguini is expected to duplicate it.

Because Remy wants to continue his culinary adventures and Linguini can’t cook a lick without guidance, they form a symbiotic relationship.  There is the obligatory love interest (there is really only one woman in the movie), and there is a developed pressure from a swarthy villain with a thin moustache…this is, after all, a Disney movie.

It was a cute movie, however I felt no connection with the characters nor an urgency in their plight.  I watched it completely detached.  Some of this, I am sure, is because it was computer animated and I have never really connected with Pixar movies as much as others do.  I liked Toy Story pretty well, but it doesn’t stack up to Aladdin.  It doesn’t even stack up to Beauty and the Beast.  Oswalt does a fantastic job as a voice actor and gives a certain credibility to the rat, but the rest of the movie was pretty cookie cutter.  Cute but cookie cutter.

Overall:  3/5, I liked it.

The Pink Panther, 2/5

In the past little while there has been a glut of remakes and restarts of old franchises.  And every single time they pick up one that I liked, I get really excited, despite the fact that they (Hollywood, or “the man”) have messed up every single time before.  Luckily, I don’t seem to exhibit learned helplessness.

If you don’t know the original Pink Panther movies, you have squandered your childhood (probably with time outside, playing stickball or wallball or some other game that involved a ball and neighborhood hooligans).  The Pink Panther movies were about the bumbling French Inspector Clouseau and his solving a crime despite immense bumbling.  They were fantastic, very funny, involving both wordplay and slapstick.  Much more accessible to a young viewer than Peter Sellers’s other comedy “Dr. Strangelove.”

And when considering how to remake the brilliance of Sellers, who better than Steve Martin?  He has a score of good movies behind him that depended on both physical and intellectual comedy, and he’s due for a comeback, after all, he’s not Bill Murray or Chevy Chase.

And he was good in this movie.  He was more than capable of filling Sellers’s shoes, pulling off the Inspector’s character with a certain grace and dignity that was absolutely ill-fitting (as it should have been).  Unfortunately, the rest of the cast and script did not have Martin’s professionalism.

The story was weak, while the original movies did not have the most complex mysteries, they still had some mystery.  This really was just a giant episode of Scooby Doo, only without the dog.

And despite the best efforts of Steve Martin, the movie wasn’t that funny, and I think I know why.  In the original movies, people reacted to Clouseau.  They would not know what to do with him.  His chief would get really, really angry.  I like Kevin Kline’s work, but he simply did not have the anger in him, he was always just lukewarm.  Jean Reno is another actor who I really like, but he was ambivalent to Clouseau, despite the fact that Clouseau would be saying off-the-wall things.  It was as if the director had said “Ok, Steve, I need you to be the comedy in this movie, and everyone else, all of you, you should be the straight men, this means, of course, that you should think that everything he is saying is completely normal.”  What a waste of talent.

 

Overall:  2/5, did not like it.  Go watch the originals.

Zodiac 2/5

“Priapism” is the name given to a non-sexual erection that lasts four hours or more.  I want to expand the definition to include two and a half hour long movies about unsolved crimes.

This is a movie about the Zodiac Killer that terrorized California in the 1970’s.  It opens strongly with a couple of teenagers being murdered and then it continues strong for about a half an hour as things are investigated and the details of the case are revealed.  Coded letters are written and Robert Downey Jr. talks in that affected way of his.  Plus Jake Gyllenhaal is glimpsed once or twice.

Around the 45 minute mark, everything suddenly seems to be stuck in molasses.  The story slows to a crawl, despite a series of montages that show time is passing very quickly.  There are no more murders but the police are working on investigating suspects.  You find out later in the movie that somehow they interviewed 2,500 suspects, despite the fact that we only saw two.

Around an hour and forty five, Gyllenhaal starts actually talking and the movie picks up for a bit as he starts to do his own investigation which allowed for a bit of dry humor, none of which I can remember now, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to ruin the high points of the movie for you.  Then there’s another forty-five minutes of Gyllenhaal looking concerned and unshaven and talking to people that all say “We already told this to the police.”  Somehow he pieces together a number of things that the police did not see, presumably because they didn’t cooperate and share evidence enough.  Lip-service is given to his domestic trouble.  Then the guy that we didn’t think did it ends up having done it.

All sizzle and no steak.  It really is a shame because there is a solid cast.  Downey, despite being his stock character, makes an effort, Gyllenhaal brings at least 53.7% of the dazzle that had him hailed as a wunderkind at some point in his career, and the rest of the cast has emotion in their readings (except the wife, where we really expect some emotion as her husband cares more about a serial killer than her.  She should have expected after the first date).

The movie was not all bad.  Detective Toschi, played by Mark Ruffalo was very good and displayed more range in his character than either the movie or the character deserved.  Also, John Carroll Lynch played a very good Arthur Leigh Allen, providing a really interesting mix of helpfulness and reticence.  It blew my mind to think this was the same actor who played Drew Carey’s transvestite brother in the Drew Carey Show.

It pains me to say this after sitting through over two and a half hours of this movie, but I think they needed some more time so that at the end they didn’t need to tie up so many loose ends with dialogue exposition.  I think I would have preferred to see this as a four or five part mini-series on HBO (so they have the clout to retain the same cast).

Overall:  Despite some good performances, this movie lacked almost everything.  2/5, Did not like.

Shoot ‘Em Up 1/5

Going into a movie called Shoot ‘Em Up, one finds oneself hoping it won’t be as bad as you think, and also strangely compelled by the fact that Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti have signed on to it.

It is as bad as you think.

Clive Owen plays a cookie-cutter, lone-wolf hero who sees a pregnant woman being chased by some guys with guns.  He kills the guys, delivers the baby and then finds himself being chased by more guys with guns.  He eats some carrots.  Shoots some guys.  Kills some guys with carrots.  Goes to see a hooker.  Shoots more guys.  Slides while shooting.  Jumps while shooting.  Says some bad puns.

Meanwhile, Paul Giamatti, plays a slightly less cookie-cutter villain who constantly has to be on the phone with his wife and show off his intellect.  He shoots at Clive Owen.  Tortures the hooker.  Shoots at Clive Owen.  Tells some bad jokes.  Shoots at Clive Owen.  Magically knows where Clive Owen has run off to hide.  Tortures his henchmen.  Shoots at Clive Owen.  Tells more bad jokes.

And that’s the movie.

There were some fun gun fights.  There were some interesting deaths.  But there was not a single good line in the movie.  And there were a lot of terrible lines.  This movie was worse than Hitman and as bad, if not worse, than AVP-R.  The only redeeming quality this movie had was the end credits, and I’m not being facetious, the end credits had a really good and artsy animation sequence, much like the opening to Casino Royale.  I would have loved to have seen it at the beginning and then I could have turned off the movie.

There were, I suppose some artsy shots that I liked, but overall this movie suffered from a nerdy writer/director who decided to put his wet dream on film.  One of the special features shows the director’s animated storyboards for the action sequences, which he used to convince the studio that he should direct.  They are just as bad as the movie.

A number of reviewers have said that this movie is good because it is so over the top as to be funny.  It wasn’t funny, it was stupid.  

“We need to give our hero something to set him apart…how about an affinity for carrots?”  

“Oooh! and then we can throw in all these Bugs Bunny lines!”  

“Well, this wouldn’t be a movie if he didn’t say ‘What’s up, doc’!”  

“Right, and then every other joke line that we put in can be an easy joke, too, we won’t even need to stretch our brains!”  

“Well, if he’s hanging out with a hooker, they have to have sex…” 

“…While he shoots bad guys…” 

“…And then at the end, he can say ‘WHAT A WAY TO BLOW YOUR LOAD!!!!’”  

“Didn’t we already make a joke about blowing loads?”

“Yeah, but who will remember?”

“Wasn’t it only like half an hour earlier in the movie?”

“I think it is a funny enough phrase to get at least two jokes.  I mean, it refers to both guns and penises!  Men’ll think it’s hilarious.  At least straight men, will.  You are a straight man, aren’t you?”

“Perfect, cut and print!”  

“I’m not sure we print any more what with using computers and digital stuff.”  

“Whatever, I need to go read some more articles in Maxim.  If I want to make any other movies, I need to have my finger on the pulse of the male world.”

 

I don’t think I need to say anything else on this stinker.

Overall:  Not funny, not interesting, not anything.  A disappointment for any Clive Owen or Paul Giamatti fans.  1 out of 5 stars.  I hated it.