MOVIE: Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Words cannot even begin to express how much I thoroughly, incredibly, delightfully enjoyed this insanely bananas movie.

A few years ago, a reader here recommended the film In Bruges to me, a quirky little comedy about two hit men (one played by anti-Boyfriend Colin Farrell) hiding out in a small town in Belgium while the hoopla over their accidental shooting of [redacted for spoilers] dies down.

Written and directed by Martin McDonaugh, In Bruges is a strange, strangely brilliant movie, with sharp, witty dialogue and a surprising amount of authentic emotion.  It made my #2 spot in my Top Ten Favorite (Good) Movies of 2008 list, and I’ve watched it several times since and loved it all the more every time.

Seven Psychopaths, McDonaugh’s second feature-length picture, follows in similarly-shaped footsteps.  It’s also about a group of guy friends going through something truly weird together, and it’s got a similar kind of empathetic undercurrent to it (not as rich as in Bruges, but there nonetheless), even while it’s also loaded to the hilt with comic-style, exaggerated violence (warning! head explodes!).

The story is about Marty Faranan (Farrell again — and while I hate to say this, I’m really starting to like that guy), a wanna-be scriptwriter living in Los Angeles who has been working hard on his first screenplay for months, yet still only has a concept and a title.  Seven Psychopaths, he’s going to call it, and it’s going to be about. . . seven psychopaths.

Marty’s best friend, Billy (the ever-delightful Sam Rockwell), decides to help Marty out by putting an ad in the paper asking for psychopaths who have interesting stories to give him a call.  THANKS, BILLY!

Meanwhile, Billy and HIS friend Hans (Christopher Walken and his usual brand of semi-contained strangeness) have been working on a money-making scheme in which they kidnap dogs and then “pretend” to find them, collecting reward money.  All is going well until they kidnap the wrong dog — the dog of a notorious gangster, played by Woody Harrelson (cue lots of over-pronunciation of the “t” in “Shih Tzu”).

And just when you think this movie cannot get any more ridiculous or any more ridiculously well-cast, who should walk in the front door but Tom Waits?  Carrying a bunny rabbit, no less!   Honestly, if someone had told me this movie was going to involve Tom Waits and a bunny rabbit, I would’ve been first in line on ticket day.  That’s all it would’ve taken.  THAT IS ALL.

Seven Psychopaths is maybe a little too clever at times — it really likes to pile on the movie archetypes and the meta, with meta on top of meta on top of a picture within a picture.  But the characters are so fun, their relationships so zingy, and their banter so marvelous, the  overdoing-of-things at times just never seemed to get in the way for me.  This movie is flawed, without a doubt, but it’s also an absolute blast.  Highly recommended, and I can’t wait to see what McDonaugh does next!

[Netflix it | Buy it]

Genre:  Comedy, Action
Cast:  Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Pitt, Gabourey Sidibe,

2012 Mini-Review Wrap Up: The Twelve Best Exotic Marigold War Horse Chimpanzees!

I was all set to write my last catch-up review for 2012 (finally!) when I realized I actually had FOUR still pending.  Dude!  I want to tell you about The Hobbit and this great book I just read instead!  So, here’s a quick end to 2012 for you!

BOOK:  The Twelve by Justin Cronin.

This book is the sequel to Cronin’s vamp apocalypse novel The Passage, and it’s part two of a planned trilogy.  That I think I’ve officially given up on.  I enjoyed The Passage, but for a few minor complaints, and I reread it right before I read this one last December and enjoyed it the second time too.  But The Twelve is, put simply, a bloated disaster of epic proportions.  Not only does it flip around in time way too much (pick a timeline, already!), but it has waaaay too many wholly unnecessary subplots and characters.  It’s easily 200 pages too long — something a good editor should’ve done something about — and while I liked certain elements of it (like the whole Red Eye population of semi-civilized half-vamps), and I read the whole damn thing, I spent most of it frustrated and and increasingly short on patience.  When I was done, despite the exciting ramp-up there at the end, I felt pretty done.  No interest in part three whatsoever, unless Cronin hires a new editor and the reviews are spectacular.  I’m still glad I read it — there were things I wanted to know and now I know them.  But another gazillion messy pages just won’t be worth the time for the resolution.  I feel resolved enough as it is.  Genre: Horror.  [Buy it]

MOVIE: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012)

I watched this movie with my mother, who had never seen Dev Patel in anything and is now a believer!  That boy is so damn adorable!  (I made her watch Slumdog Millionaire as soon as we were done, naturally.)  The cast of this film is astounding — not just good ol’ Dev, but also Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, and Tom Wilkinson, and though it’s weighted down in parts with a touch too much cheese, the joy of getting to see all these people in the same movie more than makes up for the tummy ache.  Each character has a unique, authentic personality (with the exception, possibly, of Maggie Smith, who is always the same character in everything these days and who goes from astounding racist to lover of all things Indian awfully abruptly), and each takes a journey into their “outsourced retirement” that comes to a satisfying conclusion.  Wilkinson’s subplot was particularly touching, and I really, really want to be Judi Dench’s character when I grow up.  This is a delightful film, and a great one to watch with your Mom! Cast:  Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Tom Wilkinson, Celia Imrie, Dev Patel. [Netflix it | Buy it]

MOVIE: War Horse (2012)

I haven’t seen the play this film was based on, so it’s possible it wasn’t really Spielberg’s fault, but dudes, horses, as wonderful and intelligent as they are, are not, in fact, people in animal suits.  The anthropomorphizing in this movie really got in the way of my ability to enjoy it, and Spielberg’s penchant for overwhelmingly artificial sweetness just left both me and my Mom feeling kind of beyuck in general when we were done.  Gorgeous visuals, and both Mom and I are suckers for movies about horses — one of the passions we both shared as little girls.  But this one’s a dud, start to finish.  Cast: Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullan, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch.  [Netflix it | Buy it]

MOVIE: Chimpanzee (2012)

This Disney documentary follows the life of an adorable li’l baby chimp named Oscar.  As most animal documentaries do, it begins with the death of the protagonist’s mother, and has kind of a predictable arc that follows.  But the way in which Oscar overcomes his challenge — is truly fascinating and unexpected (in short, he’s taken in not by the other female chimps, who universally reject him despite his near-unbearable cuteness, but instead by the male leader of the group — an incredibly rare thing in the world of chimps and a totally unplanable stroke of luck for the filmmakers).  The scenery can’t be beat, and though I suppose you can accuse this movie of anthropomorphization as well, it feels different when its our closest animal relations, you know what I mean?  Go ahead and call that cute baby boy Oscar.  I’m game.  This would be a great film for kids — though since it involves the death of a mom, you might not want to go too young on this one.  Chimpanzees are so damn cool.  For reals.  Recommended!  [Netflix it | Buy it]

Up next, we enter the present at long last, and there is a return of the Boyfriends!  BELIEVE IT!

 

[Netflix it | Buy it]

Genre:  Comedy
Cast:  Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Tom Wilkinson, Celia Imrie, Dev Patel

MOVIES: We Bought a Zoo (2012) and Zookeeper (2012)

Still playing 2012 catch-up — here are two movies about zoos I saw last year, neither of which really needs a full-length review, so both of which I’m going to haikiew (haiku-review) for you instead.  I enjoyed both of these films, and I think they’d be excellent picks for parents looking for funny, good-natured movies to watch with their kids, but they aren’t, like, brilliant or anything.

We Bought a Zoo

Widower buys zoo
To save family from grief.
It’s cheesy but sweet.

Cast: Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Haden Church, Patrick Fugit, Colin Ford, Elle Fanning, Angus Macfadyen, Peter Riegert
[Netflix it | Buy it]

The Zookeeper

Talking animals
Counsel lovelorn zookeeper.
Also cheesy but sweet!

(Hmm, notice a theme?)

Cast: Kevin James (kinda have a dorky crush on Kevin James, by the way, which is why I rented this one) Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, Ken Jeong, Donnie Wahlberg, Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler, Sylvester Stallone, Cher, Judd Apatow
[Netflix it | Buy it]

MOVIE: Men in Black 3 (2012)

[Another 2012 review!  About 7 more still to come this week!  This is a very exclamatory update!]

So, MIB3, the plot:  a really gross alien dude comes back to Earth and decides to go back in time to try to kill Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), Agent J (Will Smith) goes back in time himself to stop the alien and save Agent K, and then there’s a really ridiculous scene involving the need to climb up to the top of Apollo 11 and stick a MacGuffin on it (because, yeah, that’ll be no problem, what with the lack of people paying attention to the MOON LAUNCH), followed by a touching moment involving the history of Agents J and K.  WHICH, was actually sort of ridiculous as well (“Hey, my dad’s dead over there in the sand, but you seem nice, so let’s go for a walk on the beach!”), but it was also kind of sweet so whatever, I’ll let it go.

And that thar up there is pretty much all there is to say about this film.  I really enjoyed both the first and the second Men in Black films, and this one was just kind of. . . doot dee doo yawnface.  I laughed maybe twice, chuckled about as many times, and tried not to doze off in the middle.  A bit disappointing.

That said, there’s a reason why critics kept raving about Josh Brolin’s Tommy Lee Jones impersonation (he plays the young Agent K) and that reason is that it is SPOT-ON PERFECTION.  Brolin makes this movie worth a rental, and I always enjoy both Will Smith and TLJ (obviously, since both are former BotWs), too.  The problem was, I kept picturing the meeting in which this film’s storyline was thought up, and I have a feeling that meeting went like this:

Writer:  Have you guys seen Josh Brolin?  Don’t you think he’d make a really great younger version of Tommy Lee Jones?

Director:  Yes!  He’d be fantastic!  But HOW?

Writer:  Let’s see, what has Tommy been in that made a shit-ton of money?

Producer:  Hmmm, well, Men in Black leaps right to mind.

Writer:  PERFECT! Only we’ll need a plot — it can’t just be a movie about Josh Brolin doing a really good  impersonation of Tommy Lee Jones, after all.

Director:  Why the hell not?  What’re you, new or something?

Writer: Ha ha, you’re right!  I don’t know what I was thinking.  [scribbles on napkins for about 20 minutes]  HERE!  DONE!

Producer:  It’s perfect!  Good job, kid!  Here’s a bazillion dollars!

So, you know.   Four bucks (rental fee) is a reasonable amount to pay for a 90-minute Josh Brolin impersonation of Tommy Lee Jones, I say.   And heck, it could’ve been worse, after all:  it could’ve been Prometheus!  (My review of that, by the way, is coming soon!)

[Netflix it | Buy it]

Genre:  Science Fiction, Comedy
Cast:  Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mike Colter

MOVIE: 21 Jump Street (2012)

Sorry I haven’t been around much, folks.  Lots of vacationy things going on, plus I just got a new kitten (Otis!), thus upping the number of uber-needy felines in the household to a whopping TWO.  This hasn’t left much room for seeing movies, let alone writing about them.  But while I’m behind on three flick reviews and three books (not to mention 6 Boyfriend write-ups, yeesh), I’m hoping to get caught up at least on the reviews over the next few days, so stick around.

While at my parents’ house last week setting up their new Roku box (a gadget that lets you stream Netflix movies and other online content to your TV set), I somehow accidentally managed to hit the wrong button twice in a row on their remote, which turned out to be the exact number of times you need to hit that button in order to order a Pay-Per-View movie.  WHOOPS!

Even worse? The movie I accidentally ordered was THIS ONE.  WHOOPS, AGAIN!

Being the cheapskates we are, not to mention the big suckers for dumb movies, my sister, mom, brother-in-law, and I decided we might as well watch the thing, now that we’d paid for it (or, more specifically, now that Mom had paid for it — sorry, Mom!). Surprisingly enough, though, this incredibly inane flick actually ended up having a few truly funny moments, not to mention a couple of delightful cameos we hadn’t been expecting and were dorkily excited to see.

I laughed out loud more than once, and even though the actual plot was tedious and unoriginal, not to mention an element of the film the writer clearly thought was secondary to the slapstick, it wasn’t unbearably stupid.  Just kind of ridiculously so.

This movie has one serious, serious problem, though (as well as, of course, about a thousand less-serious ones), and that is the incredibly unnecessary overuse of foul language.  You might assume this only bothered me because I was watching it with my mother — and that’s a fair guess, for sure — but even if I hadn’t been sitting next to the same woman who has only used one curse word in her entire life (though, granted, she’s used it often — the word is “shit” and usually comes out like this:  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” right as the dishwasher floods the entire kitchen), I would still have been annoyed by the bigoted gay sex jokes and the 10,291-times-too-many uses of the word “dick.”

Even worse, though, is the insult every audience member ought to feel every time a comedy writer assumes we’re so dumb the only thing that will make us laugh is stupid genital and poop humor (or, worse, gential-and-poop humor — gah, forget I mentioned that).  Granted, most members of Mensa probably didn’t run right out to see this flick, but as cheesy as the original 21 Jump Street TV series was, it was also extremely sincere — laughably so at times, granted, but sincere nonetheless.  To me, even a silly comedy-style remake held some promise in concept, if only because the problems of today’s youth would likely be so similar to the problems of yesterday’s, only with a whole new set of complications to explore (text message bullying, for example).

But they totally blew it here by loading the thing up with jokes more suited to 8 year-olds (except for the homophobia, which is more suited to NOBODY, for pity’s sake — what IS the deal with men being so damn squeamish about penises in their mouths, by the way? GET A GRIP, BOYS.).  There was plenty of room for a smarter plot, even with two morons as protagonists, and certainly room for more solid jokes — the cameos that came at the end, for example, featured a hilarious degree of comic-book violence that you knew the actors had requested themselves (“Sure, I’ll be in your movie, but only if I get to have my original character be SHOT TO PIECES in a melodramatic shoot-out AT LONG LAST, MY GOD.”).  But neither of these things were there, leaving me unsatisfied and hoping somebody pulls a The Amazing Spider-Man on this movie in about five years.  So much potential so wasted here.  I hate it when that happens.

Luckily, we watched The Artist the next night, which helped wash the crud from this film out of our ears (ah, blessed silence!).  Incidentally, that one stands up wonderfully even on the small screen (and since we’re talking about my mom’s ancient boob tube, I mean the REALLY small screen), and didn’t fail to sweep me off my feet just as completely the second time around as it had the first.

And so, to recap:

21 Jump Street – worth a rental if you were a schmoopy teenager making goo-goo eyes over Johnny Depp (or, for me, Peter DeLuise) when the original was on. 

The Artist:  worth a rental if you are currently alive on the planet Earth.

[Netflix it | Don't Buy It, Knucklehead]

Genre:  Comedy
Cast:  Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson, Dave Franco, Rob Riggle, DeRay Davis, Ice Cube, Dax Flame, Chris Parnell, Ellie Kemper

MOVIE: Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

Note: This review was written by my 6 year-old nephew, Luke, who watched the movie with me last weekend.

Text reads (sic where needed, he’s SIX for pity’s sake):

I wosh the movie Kung Fu Panda 2. It is fun. It is osum!

My comment:  I could not agree more, oh wise one.  This is an excellent, succinct movie review.  You have a job here, sir, if you ever want one.  p.s. Aunt Meg loves you very much.

[Netflix it | Buy it]

Genre: Animation, Kids, Comedy
Cast:  Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Gary Oldman, Seth Rogen, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman, David Cross, Lucy Liu, Michelle Yeoh, Dennis Haysbert

MOVIE: 50/50 (2011)

I was expecting this “dramedy,” about a 27 year-old radio writer, Adam (JG-L), who is diagnosed with a rare cancer of the spine, to be both funny and emotional.  Surprisingly, it ended up being mostly neither for me.

Adam is a quiet, serious sort of fellow, who, as the film opens, has just moved in with his incredibly lame girlfriend Rachel, and is about to go see a doctor about some back pain he’s had for a while.  The doctor’s visit goes badly — after a quick look at his MRI, the doc tells him he’s got a rare tumor in his back and that his odds of survival are 50/50 (hence: title).  Almost instantly, Adam’s life falls apart: his girlfriend dumps him after realizing she’s not cut out for standing by her man, his overbearing mother (the always-great Anjelica Houston) threatens to move in so she can smother him with mothering, and his best friend Kyle — well, his best friend Kyle mostly thinks this is the greatest news ever, as it means Adam can now play the “C-card,” and use his cancer to score chicks.

In theory, the movie then moves into a thoughtful combination of sadness and pain lightened up by goofy “bromance” comedy, as Kyle steps up to help his pal and the two begin bonding even more tightly via shared fear of loss.  The only problem is that it doesn’t really get either dynamic quite right.  The story goes too simply and predictably — Adam’s diagnosed, he goes through the usual five stages of grief, he shaves his head proactively in the obligatory cancer-movie head-shaving scene, and eventually, he accepts his disease and begins to fight it back.

Yet, for all the weight a story like this should have, it never really gets there.  It’s impossible not to feel anything for Adam — Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the master of looking pained, exhausted, and sympathetic — yet his character seemed underconceived to me.  Aside from one spectacular flash of anger, Adam is pretty much just. . . mopey.  His demeanor stays very even-keeled, which doesn’t make much sense given his diagnosis.  He never engages in any authentic emotional swoopage, and I don’t know a single person who’s had cancer who hasn’t had some spectacular emotional swoops from time to time. There’s a lot of power in emotional swings like that — and therefore, a lot of chances to really engage the audience in some shared gut-wrenching agony.  But to be honest, I felt like JG-L mostly just phoned this one in.

As for the “funny” parts, there are a few genuine laughs in there — maybe more if you’re a big fan of Seth Rogan’s schtick (meh) — but, if anything, the constant jarring yank from tender moment to goofy gag just made it impossible for either element to take hold.  It sort of reminded me of how a friend of mine reacts whenever I start crying about something — she immediately makes a joke to try to make me laugh, which I usually do, and then changes the subject to quash my emotional reaction before it gets too uncomfortable for either of us.  Which is great for me, because I hate crying and I don’t want to cry in front of anyone and thank god someone changed the subject before I made a fool out of myself, but it’s not terribly useful in terms of emotional connection and growth.

Overall, this is a very watchable film — I watched it, I didn’t hate it — but nothing special.  Which is kind of surprising, since the guy who wrote it, Will Reiser, based it on his own experience with cancer and his relationship with his best friend, coincidentally also played by Seth Rogan.  Was Reiser too afraid to go all-out with the heavy parts, for fear of making it too much of a downer?  And then too afraid to go all-out with the comedy, for fear of insulting those who have suffered greatly from cancer?  Whatever the cause, this movie just doesn’t seem fully developed somehow.

Disappointing.

[Netflix it | Buy it]

Genre: Drama, Comedy
Cast:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston

MOVIE: The Artist (2011)

Have you ever seen a movie so absolutely wonderful from start to finish that at the end you stood up and cheered?  Damn the people around you and their funny looks?

I have.

Highly, HIGHLY recommended.  I’ve never seen anything like this film (a silent movie about the end of the silent movie era) — I have never smiled so long and so hard during a film that my cheeks hurt (Dujardin’s grin is so infectious, you won’t be able to keep your own face still), I have never made such an enormous fool out of myself as the final credits rolled, and I have never left a theater dancing.  I did all those things with The Artist.  And I cannot WAIT to do them all again soon.

DO NOT MISS!  Now this is how you start a new year of movie-watching right.  Good goddamn, it’s a delight.  An utter delight.

[Prequeue at Netflix | View trailer]

Genre:  Comedy, Drama
Cast:  Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, Missi Pyle, Malcolm McDowell

MOVIE: A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011)

I’d never seen a whole Harold and Kumar movie until this one, but had seen enough pieces here and there to suspect I might have a good time.  And, as it turned out, though I didn’t run right home to rent the other two after seeing this one, I definitely got some solid laughs out of it.  In large part, I suspect, because I saw it with two incredibly sarcastic friends who delightfully refuse to take life too seriously.

The plot isn’t important here, but in a nutshell, Harold is about to get married and is no longer friends with his lazy, slovenly, going-nowhere pal Kumar.  When Kumar gets a gift addressed to Harold, though, he decides it’s time to visit his old pal’s new house and maybe say hello.

Of course, everything goes disastrously wrong, and when a series of events result in Harold’s father-in-law-to-be’s special home-grown Christmas tree going up in (pot) smoke, the two old friends find themselves on a midnight quest for a replacement that leads them through a variety of ridiculous situations and features a running gag about a baby who keeps accidentally getting high.  (We’re all going to hell, my friend commented, as the baby inhaled a bunch of cocaine and we laughed like crazy people.  Totally worth it, I replied.)

This is the first 3D film I’ve seen since Avatar where I felt like the 3D effects were fascinating and fun instead of merely intrusive, and here it’s largely because the 3D is used as a dumb gimmick on purpose.  Be prepared for oodles of marijuana smoke to come floating up so close to your face you can almost smell it (um, not that I’d know what it smells like, of course — hi, Mom!).  That, plus lots of other incredibly silly gags made this movie exactly what it needed to be:  an entertaining, brainless romp, with a smart and endearing edge (I say endearing because I went in not knowing Harold or Kumar, and left with a fondness for them that was almost sisterly in nature — good guys, those two.  Not what I was expecting, to be honest).

As funny Christmas movies go, you could do a lot worse.  I did get tired of a few of the gags by the end (endless rounds of ethnic jokes get old after a while for me, I confess), but it’s definitely worth a gander if you’re a fan of the other flicks in the series, or if you just feel like seeing something completely stupid this December.

[Prequeue at Netflix | View trailer]

Genre: Comedy
Cast:  John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Amir Blumenfeld, Paula Garcés,Danny Trejo, David Krumholtz, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Patton Oswalt, Elias Koteas

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