MOVIE: Bridesmaids (2011)

Okay, everyone.  Prepare to hate me.  I am prepared to be hated.

After going to see Tower Heist last weekend and being pretty disappointed, I decided it was time to rent Bridesmaids, which I’d been saving for the right occasion after hearing rave after rave after RAVE about how hilarious it was.  How brilliantly written.  How refreshingly FEMALE.  How perfect in every way!

My reaction?  Are you all on crack?  Hey, that stuff ain’t good!  And neither is this movie!

Bridesmaids is about a desperately single woman, Annie (Kristen Wiig), whose best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged and asks her to be her maid of honor.  Lillian quickly introduces Annie to her fellow attendants, all of whom feature quirky, boring, stereotypical  personalities:  one is sickeningly perfect, one is fat and lacking in manners (must the fat character always be the character that burps and farts and has food on her face? God, I get tired of that), one is ditsy, one is an Old Married desperate to party sans spouse and kids, etc.

And then there’s Annie, the standard lost/seeking 30-something female who can’t keep a boyfriend or a job and doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life.  Okay, realistic.  But still: yawn.

As the wedding planning progresses, a battle begins between Annie and Lillian’s other close friend, the perfect, wealthy Helen (Rose Byrne, the physical manifestation of the flavor of tofu).  Broke Annie wants to keep things true to Lillian’s humble roots; Posh Lillian wants to throw a wedding that costs thousands and is insanely poofy in every way imaginable.  Cue lots of angry glares, cat fights, and sabotage.  End with heart of gold.  Beeyuck.

The highlight of the film’s comedic elements?  The scene in which the girls all get food poisoning and start puking, farting, and pooping all over a bridal showroom.  Really?  This is the hilarious scene everybody was raving about?  The POOP scene?    Ebert seemed pleased to see a chick flick crossed with a typical raunch comedy (“It definitively proves that women are the equal of men in vulgarity, sexual frankness, lust, vulnerability, overdrinking and insecurity,” he wrote in his review), but I say, of course we are.  Duh.  Generally, though, we try to exhibit a bit more class.  I do not think this is a bad thing.

I laughed out loud exactly once during this film, and that was during the airplane scene, in which, credit where credit is due, Wiig proves herself to be a master of physical comedy.  The rest of the time, though, while I was entertained enough to keep watching, I barely even cracked a smile.  I don’t understand why this film got so many raves;  there’s nothing here I haven’t seen ten thousand times before.  Even the love story — Annie falls head-over-heels with a cop; he’s the one character I truly liked, by the way  (in no small part because of his (Irish?) accent) — was predictable and dull.

Tell me, ladies — what gives?  What was it you liked so much about this movie?  The female version of The Hangover, I kept reading.  But the thing I loved the most about The Hangover was that its comedy was grown-up stuff.  I mean, silly too, but in a unique, more adult kind of way.  It was a raunch comedy refreshingly lacking in raunch; there wasn’t a single poop joke in that whole film.  This film, on the other hand, made the poop scene its apex.  And when the POOP scene is your APEX, it’s pretty much guaranteed your movie is going to fail to move me.  Pun intended.

SO DISAPPOINTED!  Is it just me?

IT IS?  Well, hell.  I never said I had good taste.

[Netflix it | Buy it]

Genre:  Comedy
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd, Melissa McCarthy, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Jon Hamm

MOVIE: Tower Heist (2011)

This movie, about a bunch of swanky apartment building employees who decide to rob the penthouse owner who ripped off their pensions is . . . zzzzzzz . . . *jolt* What?  Wait, sorry, nodded off there.  What was I saying?  Oh yeah, so, Tower Heist, the latest comedy starring Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, and Matth. . . zzzzzzz . . . *jolt*  Shoot.  Where . . . what . . . ?  Oh.  Right.  It was nice to see Eddie Murphy can still contort his face into all those wonderful expressions — no botox on that guy — and I’ve missed him and am glad he’s back and possibly has still got it.  But the rest of this movie was just . . . zzzzzzzz . . . *jolt*  The . . . No . . . I . . .  *yawn*

Never mind.

[Don't Prequeue at Netflix]

Genre:  Comedy (Ha ha!  That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.), Crap
Cast:  Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Michael Peña, Tea Leoni, Gabourey Sidibe, Alan Alda

Boyfriends in the News Update!

Ba-BAM.  I totally called this:  Bradley Cooper named 2011′s Sexiest Man Alive.

Well, okay, so I didn’t LITERALLY call it.  I didn’t flat-out say, “Look out, 2011!”  But deep down, you guys knew I knew, right?  We all knew, right?  Since Alias, we have known, right?  Since THIS, we have known.

Right.

Also, did you guys hear Richard Armitage is going to be playing Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit?  Because he is.  HE IS!  Wait, what’s that you said?  “Who’s Thorin Oakenshield?”

Pfft, he’s son of Thráin, son of Thrór!  Duh.  God.

AND, lastly, ex-Boyfriend of the Week Jason Segel (schmooperoo!) opens this weekend in the new Muppets movie, The Muppets.  Please, Jason Segel AND Dr. Bunsen Honeydew?  In the same movie?  You may want to put 911 on speed dial.  Because of the SWOONAGE.  (Also, is it just me John Hodgman and Bunsen Honeydew totally “separated at birth”?)

All these updates are just to say:  I haven’t forgotten about the Boyfriends, I swear.  Just been a busy year.  Hoping to have a new write-up posted soon, and maybe one more before January (plus my recap of favorite books and films from 2011).  And then we’ll see how things go in 2012.

MOVIE: Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed the original  Paranormal Activity, and surprised even MORE when I also enjoyed Paranormal Activity 2.  But though I knew I’d have to see PA3 (compulsive completer, just ask ER), I’ve been putting it off for so long because I knew there was just nooooo way it could possibly not suck.

And, of course, I was right.  Well, I was wrong and I was right.  Lemmie ‘splain.  (“No, there is no time.  Lemmie sum up.”)

This installment focuses on Katie and Kristi when they were little girls and first encountered the entity that haunted them in PA and PA2.  While not being nearly as clever as the first two films, there are still some fairly successful “BOO!” moments in this one, and I confess when it was over I was a little sorry I’d chosen to see it on a dark and stormy night all by myself.   That little frisson of “eep!” is something I’m always seeking from horror movies and rarely finding, so this outcome is not worth nothing.  Then again, I’m kind of a sucker for ghost stories, and they’re generally a good choice when I’m feeling the urge for a spookin’ out.  Your mileage on the eep-factor, therefore, may vary.

Paranormal Activity 3 is set in 1988, when Katie and Kristi are about 8 and 6 years old, respectively, and have just moved into a new house with their mom, Julie, and their mom’s boyfriend, Dennis.  Dennis is a videographer, mostly making things like wedding videos.  He works with his buddy out of the garage, and though Julie’s mom doesn’t like him much, he clearly adores both Julie and her two girls, making it hard for us, the audience, not to take a shine to him pretty quickly (even though we know not to get too attached because he’ll surely be dead soon).

A few weeks after getting settled into their new house, Dennis and Julie begin hearing strange noises at night they can’t explain.  The house seems too new to be so creaky, and so, more for kicks than because he truly believes they’re haunted, Dennis decides to set some video cameras up around the house and see what he can capture on tape (including a camera he rigs up on an old fan so that it will oscillate from the living room to the kitchen — plus ten points for the MacGyver reference, by the way).

Meanwhile, Kristi has started talking to and about an imaginary friend she calls Toby.  At first, this seems completely harmless.  But when Dennis asks her a few questions about Toby, he’s surprised and somewhat unsettled when Kristi informs him that she’s not supposed to talk about him and that if she does, she’ll get in big, BIG trouble.

From there, things go from mere threats to actual harm, escalating more and more with each passing night.  All of this is just fine and dandy and handled satisfyingly enough, but there were a few major problems I just can’t let go of.

First is that there’s a scene that features Kristi standing in her parents’ doorway for hours in the middle of the night, which is a spooky gimmick stolen right out of the original film.  Hey, you’re only at 4 hours and 30 minutes total for the entire series, and you’re already having to recycle?  Not a good sign, kids.  (Also, if you find yourself needing to resort to a “Bloody Mary” scene in order to conjure up some shivers, you ought to throw in the towel instead.  I mean honestly.)

The second problem, and the one that really ruined this film for me, is the ending. This installment was the logical finale to the series (we had Katie as an adult, Kristi as an adult, and now we have the origin story, so we’re done, right?  RIGHT?!), yet we don’t really end up with any new information on who or what is behind the entire haunting (which, incidentally, was a demon thing in PA2, not a ghost thing as it seems to be here).  There’s some kind of rigmarole about a witches’ coven that used to brainwash girls of child-bearing age into having children and then wipe their memories, and so, the suggestion, backed up by the final few minutes of the film, is that these witches are responsible for all the nefarious goings-on.  But then, why is the spirit interacting with Kristi an older man (she says) named Toby?  And why would these women be haunting this family?  The events don’t even all take place in the same house, so it’s not that someone just moved the headstones and not the bodies (so to speak).  And there’s no suggestion that any of the witches were related to the family either.

I think the filmmakers either wanted to leave it mysterious, thinking that was a clever way to end things (The Sopranos), OR they wanted to leave room for yet another sequel.  But this movie is markedly lower in quality than the previous two and a fourth is likely to be virtually unwatchable, judging from the way these things usually go.  So, ugh.  If that’s really the plan, then the plan is just plain stupid.

I was surprised to find out today that PA3 was directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, who made the documentary (or mockumentory, depending on who you ask) Catfish last year, a fascinating story about a guy who befriends and falls for a woman online who turns out to have totally duped him.  Catfish is a heartbreaking, fascinating film, and if it’s fiction, then it’s all the more amazing for having been so realistic and relatable.  This movie?  About as far from all those adjectives you could get.

Worth a rental if you’ve seen the other two, but I’m pretty sure that, despite the fact I did enjoy portions of this flick, this is where I get out.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and they won’t make a fourth?  Thus sparing me the temptation to go see it too just because I have such an impossible time letting loose ends lie?  Oh please, please help me, filmmakers.  Save me!  Stop now!  While you’re still (mostly) ahead!

Oh, who are we kidding.  Watch this space for the inevitable review of Paranormal Activity 4 some time next year.

[Prequeue at Netflix | View trailer]

Genre:  Horror
Cast:   Katie Featherston, Christopher Nicholas Smith, Sprague Grayden, Lauren Bittner, Mark Fredrichs, Brian Boland

MOVIE: African Cats (2011)

I wanted to see this documentary while it was still in theaters — after seeing a trailer for it on the big screen, I could tell it was going to be visually stunning.  BUT.  I missed it.  Darn.  Luckily, it’s out on DVD now.  Unluckily, I still don’t have an HD TV, which means I spent the entire film distractedly wishing I did.  Such TVs were built for films like this one, because “visually stunning” ain’t the half of it — this film is absolutely, utterly, completely, awesomely gorgeous.

The “story” focuses on two lion prides and a mother cheetah, all struggling to survive on the African plains with their respective cubs.  The two lion families are constantly warring over territory, while the cheetah mostly tries to stay out of their way and keep her cubs alive (no mean feat when you have to go hunting solo every day, leaving your five newborns to fend for themselves).  The movie features lots of incredible scenery, loads of exciting games of chicken (lion v. crocodile, baby cheetah v. adult lion (SPOILER!  Cuteness wins!), baby cheetah v. upside-down turtle, etc.), and ADORABLE, SILLY KITTENS GALORE.

The narration, by Samuel L. Jackson, is a little on the juvenile side — this is a Disney doc clearly intended for young audiences (and before you ask, parents, there are some hunter/prey scenes, but aside from a little blood-flecked fur-faces post-snack, no gore whatsoever).  Jackson’s slow meter and frequent anthropomorphization got a little bit on my nerves at times, but the animals themselves were so glorious and fascinating, I mostly just tuned him out when he got a little heavy with the cheese.

Definitely a great film for families to watch; I think kids as young as six would probably really dig this movie.  It’s also got a sweet mother-daughter focus, though, again, a lot of that vibe felt very “animals are people too!” to me and I suspect a lot of the behavior Jackson was attributing to the mother-daughter bond was really more instinct than emotion.  But who cares, really?  I kept thinking how great it would be to watch this on Mother’s Day with your kids, so clearly even I got sucked into that element of the story.  I know  MY mom would’ve fought off a crocodile for me, that’s for sure!

Make sure you stay through the credits as they do a super-cute and funny cast and crew listing for all of the animals (though, alas, no blooper reel featuring Jackson, stressed after a long day of recording, exclaiming, “I’ve had it with these mother-frakkin’ lions on this mother-frakkin’ plain!”  How great would that have been?).

Highly recommended, and definitely a film I’ll be renting again just as soon as I upgrade my television set!

[Netflix it | Buy it at Amazon]

Genre: Documentary
Narrated by: Samuel L. Jackson

BOOK: The School of Night by Louis Bayard (2011)

In the late 16th century, a group of England’s greatest minds were rumored to have gotten together and formed a secret club, the School of Night (which I’ve also heard called “The School of Atheism,” by the way).  They’d get together periodically in out-of-the-way locations and spend hours debating each other about God, science, politics, and alchemy — all things that, in public discourse, carried with them the threat of imprisonment.  Or worse.

Three of those minds were poet Walter Raleigh (spelled “Ralegh” in this book, for reasons explained by the main character), Christopher Marlowe, and lesser-known/appreciated astronomer and physicist Thomas Harriot (who discovered both gravity and Halley’s Comet long before they were “officially” found).

That’s the back story of this novel.  The plot, though, is half set in that time, focusing on Harriot’s love affair with his housekeeper-cum-lab-assistant, and half in the modern-day, where an expert on Ralegh begins a dangerous quest to find first a missing document, and then a mysterious buried treasure.

The modern-day story begins at a funeral, where Elizabethan scholar, aforementioned Ralegh expert, and disgraced professor Henry Cavendish is mourning the sudden suicide of an old college chum, the larger-than-life Alonzo Wax, well-known rare book/document collector and overall rogue.  After the service, Henry is approached by an elderly rival collector named Bernard Styles, who claims to have loaned Wax a valuable document and wants Henry, as Wax’s executor, to find and return it.

At first, Henry isn’t interested.  But when Styles offers to pay him a small fortune and then informs him the document is a letter written by Walter Ralegh that may confirm the existence of the School of Night, Henry can’t resist.  A similar document he’d discovered himself years ago was later found to be a fake, costing him his prestigious career.  And now — a potentially real letter from Ralegh?  He has to know.  So, despite his wariness of the semi-sinister-seeming Styles, Henry accepts the gig and promises to be in touch.

It doesn’t take Henry long to find the letter, and its discovery, along with the ones that follow, quickly turn the whole scenario on its ear.  When he meets the mysterious Clarissa Dale, a young woman who both knew Wax and claims to be having visions of Harriot that may or may not be relevant to the letter’s contents, he finds himself instantly attracted to her and offers to let her help (never a wise move, sir, thinking with your naughty bits).  Examining the document together, though, they do more than confirm its origin — they also find on it a coded map that purports to lead to a buried treasure.  Knowing Harriot had spent much of his life experimenting with alchemy, their immediate assumption is that the treasure will consist of heaps of gold.

But someone else is after the treasure too: Bernard Styles.  And when the bodies start piling up, it becomes clear he’s no old geezer with a love for dusty old poetry.  Soon Henry and Clarissa are in the race of their lives — a race FOR their lives.  Who will get to the treasure first?

Meanwhile, in alternate chapters, we’re also being told the story of Harriot’s alchemy experiments and growing relationship with a woman named Margaret, who begins as his housekeeper and ends as the love of his life.  Somehow, obviously, the letter from Ralegh will relate to both Harriot and Margaret — but how?

I’m a huge fan of Louis Bayard’s previous novels, all of which take a person from history or classic fiction and weave a new tale around them (Mr. Timothy is about Tiny Tim, The Pale Blue Eye about a young Sherlock Holmes, and The Black Tower about the dauphin (the ten year-old son of King Louis XVI).  So, naturally, I was incredibly excited to find he’d published a new book, and one that, this time, would combine a historical yarn with a storyline set in the present day, and be about codes and treasure maps and puzzles to boot!

But while these things all sound great in theory, and while I found the book engaging for the first 2/3rds or so, I was really disappointed (not to mention confused) by the ending.  The two stories never come together all that clearly, as it turns out, and unfortunately, the modern-day treasure hunt ended up not being terrible creative or exciting.  Plus, this stuff with Clarissa and her “visions”?  Where did that come from, Bayard?  And what, precisely, was the point of it?  I am lost.

Definitely wary of recommending this one, but I couldn’t find a single other negative review of it anywhere else on the web, so maybe I’m just plain wrong.  It happens.  I confess I got frustrated and somewhat bored by the end and it’s entirely possible I ended up skimming through something that would’ve better explained the overlay of the two tales, something that my have cost me the novel as a whole.  But compared to the incredible creativity, fascinating historical information, and intelligent writing of others I’ve read, this is definitely Bayard’s weakest work to date.  Here’s hoping it’s not the start of a trend.

Stick to the past, sir.  I don’t think the present is your strength. (And man, how I wish this novel had just been about the School of Night itself — now THAT would’ve been riveting!)

[FICTION]

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BOOK: In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson (2011)

The latest non-fiction book by Erik Larson, whose previous two works both blew me away (The Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck), this book has what sounds like a riveting premise but what, in my opinion (whatever that’s worth) ends up not having quite enough substance to make for a riveting book.

Set in 1933, it’s about President Roosevelt’s last choice for U.S. Ambassador to Germany, a professor from Chicago named William Dodd.  Dodd’s only real qualifications for the job were his familiarity with Germany, having gone to school outside Berlin for a short time, and fluency in the language — he had no practical experience with politics, and his primary era of historical interest was America’s Deep South, pre- and post-Civil War.  But he had the one qualification Roosevelt desperately needed:  willingness.  After months of having his job offer turned down by men far more qualified, Roosevelt had pretty much given up on ever filling it before Dodd’s name was tossed his way, and he made the post sound pretty sweet.  The Dodds would have the adventure of a lifetime, make more money than they were making in Chicago (no small draw in 1933′s Depression), AND the gig would give the professor more time to work on his four-part book series about the South.  After only short deliberation, Dodd agreed, took the job and moved his wife, son, and 22 year-old daughter Martha to Berlin.

Though Dodd has the job of relevance to the tale, it’s more Martha’s story that gets the focus here, as she begins a series of affairs with various Germans, including one high-ranking member of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels, and seems initially blind to the horrors going on in the country around her.

But the longer the Dodds stay in Berlin, the less they can continue to ignore the violent and growing persecution of the Jews.  As their year abroad unfolds, the entire family begins to move from excitement to disbelief straight through to horror, as Martha finally witnesses first-hand the brutal nature of Hitler’s plan.

Inserted into the tale are all the people whose names we know so well — Hitler, with whom Martha is even set up on a date (it doesn’t work out), Hermann Göring, and the sinisterly charming Joseph Goebbels.  Plus: back in the U.S., poet Carl Sandberg, smitten with Martha and writing her constantly (I loved the excerpts from his letters reprinted here), as well as various American political figures of the time, all equally ignorant or in denial about the dramatic change in Germany’s path.

But though there are elements of the book that are definitely intriguing, overall I didn’t feel it had much purpose to it.  There isn’t anything dramatically new revealed — it focuses mostly on the U.S.’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge Hitler’s evil until it was too late to do anything to stop him (the Dodd family serving as a metaphor in that regard for the entire American political machine).  Even after Dodd begins to complain to Roosevelt about the stories he’s hearing all around him, including torture of American Jews in Berlin, Roosevelt and his people continue to plug their ears and sing “la la la, I can’t hear you, la la la!” (I paraphrase) for far too long.   This isn’t new information, though.  At least, I hope it isn’t.

And while I’d never heard of the Dodds before and was interested to learn their story, that story didn’t really amount to much in the end.  Larson instead seemed much more interested in recounting Martha’s various sexual improprieties with a mix of fascination and disdain, and a lot of the passages about her felt like Larson shaking his finger and tsking, while continuing to feed us more juicy gossip about her, as though believing sex is what might make this otherwise somewhat weak tale sell.  (Was he wrong?  Well, *I* read it. . . )

Worse, though, was the feeling I got that Larson had initially wanted to write a book about the early 1930s in Germany and then came up with the Dodd family as the framework, instead of the other way around.  Realizing too late there wasn’t enough substance to their experiences to make the story very engrossing, he then turned to the cheapest writer trick available:  the cliffhanger.  Far, FAR too many sections or chapters end with a variant of “Little did they know the event the happened NEXT would change their lives FOREVER!” Overuse of the cliffhanger gimmick is one of my biggest writing pet peeves, and for Larson, a man I know to be a tremendously talented writer, to rely on it so heavily was just, quite frankly, kind of a bummer.

I’m really interested in WWII history, and for that reason alone, I’m glad I read this book.  If you aren’t as much of a history buff, though, you’ll find little to pull you in here.  Which is a shame because, frankly, I wasn’t at all interested in the Chicago World’s Fair myself, and Devil in the White City was a book that, once started, I found impossible to set down.  Larson’s usual knack for revealing the exciting drama behind the drier history is completely missing here.  And man, I sure hope it turns up soon — like before he starts writing his next book.

Rats.  Is what I’m saying.  This should’ve been a much better book than it is.  And I hate it when that happens.

[NON-FICTION]

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