Ian T. McFarland

• Title: The Happening
• IMDB: link

A good film reviewer, like a journalist, should be unbiased when covering a subject.  If you’re walk into a movie theater with abnormally high hopes for a film, it might be more difficult admitting actual faults in the movie after it’s finished playing.

Well, I like to think I can keep myself reasonably unbiased; but I’ve been rooting for writer/director/producer/actor M. Night Shyamalan‘s extra loudly ever since he began to be unfairly trashed (circa his 2004 let-down, The Village).  So I walked into Shyamalan’s newest effort, Rated-R thriller The Happening hoping it would be a bright bastion of tense filmmaking that would force the haters to concede to Shyamalan’s talent.  And yet, even with my high hopes and willingness to overlook slight errors in the filmmaker’s work, I found myself actually laughing out loud at – not with – much of The Happening.

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What Happened?Read More »

• Title: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
• IMDB: link

Adam Sandler, for all of the attention going to Judd Apatow‘s posse, might still be the king of the Hollywood Comedy.  Every of the past five years, he’s released a mainstream comedy that’s grossed into nine digits, even though they’re all shallow attempts at humor that make the actors’ meager but entertaining first efforts Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore look like they belong on AFI’s 100 lists.  We would all like to see Sandlers latest, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, be a return to those mid 90s semi-classics; but it’s only a strange permutation of the mainstream, dry comedy that Sandler has been dropping on us for a decade now.

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‘Zohan’ a MessRead More »

• Title: Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
• IMDB: link

A movie as blissfully non-sensical as Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle isn’t the easiest act to follow up.  With random events like a raccoon attack, a cheetah ride and, what must be one of the greatest all-time film cameos, Neil Patrick Harris; White Castle was not just random but also one of the few comedies that is consistently funny.  Is it possible that a sequel could be just as random, clever and hilarious?  Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is proof that yes, yes it is possible.

No one saw the first Harold & Kumar for its plot, and there’s not much of a reason to see the second one for its story either.  But the set-up for Guantanamo Bay goes like this: our heroes are flying to Amsterdam for pot and poon when the ever wise Kumar, too eager to wait a few more hours, decides to light up on the plane.  But when a passenger mistakes his bong for a bomb, Kumar and Roldy are sent to the controversial prison named in the film’s title as terrorists.  But despite what said title may infer, the two are only incarcerated for a few minutes before they miraculously escape and set out on a journey to have their names cleared.

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High On LaughsRead More »