Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) returns for another misadventure as the bumbling fool travels to the south of France and ends up at the Cannes Film Festival. Emma de Caunes, Karel Roden, and Willem Dafoe also star. Check out the official site. The film opens everywhere on Friday. Larger trailer available in the Full Diagnosis.
Mr. Bean’s Holiday
N/A
This Week in Foreign Film Read More »
Three families all bid on the same house in this new comedic mockumentary about the untold funny world of real estate. April Barnett, Andrew Friedman, Colleen Crabtree, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kristin Pierce, Bruce Thomas, and Cedric Yarbrough star. Check out the official site. The film opens in limited release in select cities on Friday. Larger trailer available in the Full Diagnosis.
Escrow
N/A
This Week in Independent Film Read More »
lnto everyone’s life, and death, it seems a little chaos must fall. Death at a Funeral brings out all kinds of zaniness as friends and family gather to bury one of their own and end up nearly killing each other as things get further and further out of control. Director Frank Oz gives us one of the year’s best films and the best comedy of 2007 so far.
A death in the family brings together a group of mourners each struggling with their own lives and creates the catalyst for the hilarious and the absurd as nothing goes as planned.
The dutiful son Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen) tries to comfort his mother (Jane Asher), who is driving his wife Jane (Keeley Hawes) crazy with her constant snips, and prepare to give the eulogy everyone expects his brother Robert (Rupert Graves), the famous author from New York, to give.
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If I remember correctly, I decided that I was going to love Superbad the second I heard the title. Probably not a great thing for a critic to do, but at least I improperly fell in love with a movie that I can now justify falling in love with – Superbad is a romp through high school that, only one year removed from the institution, made me nostalgic for secondary education.
Superbad
4 Stars
You may have read my review of Knocked Up, in which I praised the film for being a hilarious but realistic look at the complications of real-life people and their relationships. Well, with apologies for being one of the zillion film-goers that will easily compare these two Judd Apatow-produced films, but Superbad is Knocked Up for teenage guys who don’t care about anything else more than loosing their virginity and sobriety – a comedy that, though spiced up to be a wide-release summer movie – is still mostly a real-life look at two best friends.
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Hey, do you remember that night in high school that you and your friends tried to impress some girls by buying them alcohol? Maybe. But do you remember that night in high school that you and your friends got hit by two cars, escaped the fuzz and danced with a girl who really felt the flow? Probably not, so it’s a good thing we get an entertaining, outlandish but still grounded comedy like Superbad so that we can experience such a night.
We’ve got Michael Cera and Jonah Hill playing two guys trying to seal the end of their high school careers by nailing the dream girls, only to find many a hilarious obstacle thrown in their path. Then, on the other side, we have first-time actor Christopher Mintz-Plasse playing the absolute geek who, amazingly enough, spends a Friday night with two cops drinking and tackling hobos. Let me repeat that for you: “spends a Friday night with two cops drinking and tackling hobos.” Okay, if the end of that sentence wasn’t enough for you to decide that you need to see Superbad, I don’t think any other clause I could write will be, so don’t be afraid to stop reading this review entirely.
Screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have been writing a the script since they were in high school ten years ago, and it shows. The final product is packed with so many flawlessly executed jokes, there’s no way even the funniest screenwriters today could have written this script in any less time. Though the first act primarily serves to set up the characters and their mind sets, it continually adds more and more laughs per minute until you the end, at which point you can’t believe how much your roaring, doubled up in your seat. The humor mostly comes out of the dialogue of the actors, but for Mintz-Plasse’s character’s story, just the set-up is enough to make you howl your lungs out. Every laugh is outrageous, but still possible enough; and thanks to the strong characters and their actors, it it all works in the end.
There’s no ass that’s easier to kiss in Comedy than that of Judd Apatow, so I can’t help but feel like a tool for heaping on another load of big wet ones on his newest film. But you know what, when that ass belongs to a guy who is behind the majority of all the notable comedies from the past few years, consider these lips taken.
‘Superbad’ Feels So Good Read More »
The documentary, as narrated by Queen Latifah, follows a handful of arctic creatures. The main focus of the film is the separate stories of two animals: a polar bear named Nanu and a walrus named Seela. The documentary begins with their births and development and follows each of them through the first eight years of their lives as they grow, mature, and have children of their own. Somebody cue up “Circle of Life” from The Lion King.
As a documentary for young viewers it does a good job of setting up the life cycles of its main characters and explaining how the changing climate in the arctic is effecting everything. Though adults won’t really find any new information, the film does work as a good primer for kids. It is well shot and compiled, including many scenes which you wonder how close the camera men got to their subjects, and for adults wanting something educational to watch and discuss with their youngsters this will suffice.
What doesn’t work? The documentary is geared to young children and although Latifah never comes off as condescending, at times it does seem to talk down to kids. It is also filled with some juvenile fart humor that anyone over the age of ten will grow tired of quickly enough. And finally, the film is filled with musical cues that are a little too cute for me. An example, when discussing the family of walruses, “We Are Family” begins to play.
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