1 Razor

Just Skip It

  • Title: Just Go With It
  • IMDB: link

As a critic I’ve seen my fair share of romantic comedies over the years. Some are cute, some are sweet, some are funny, and far too many that are dumber than the celluloid on which they’ve been shot.

Fans who feel Adam Sandler has gotten too far away from his roots (where he made ridiculous comedies without a semblance of reason) are in for a treat. Sadly the rest of us will have to struggle through the painful cinematic misfire that is Just Go With It.

Sandler stars as Danny, a plastic surgeon who, on his wedding day, learns his wife-to-be has been cheating on him. He takes his sorrows to the local bar where his wedding ring and white lies about his long-suffering dysfunctional marriage turn into years of bedding a number of young hotties that rivals Wilt Chamberlain.

Everything in Just Go With It is based on lies, and not even good ones. The main plot begins when Danny sleeps with a beautiful woman on the beach (played by Brooklyn Decker, whose bikini gives the film’s only good performance).

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Gulliver’s Travels

  • Title: Gulliver’s Travels
  • IMDB: link

A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT

I’m not sure, but I’m willing to bet the central idea for putting Jack Black in a remake of Gulliver’s Travels was for the express purpose of having him fight a giant robot in the town square as the miniature masses looked on. As ideas go, this one is less than inspired (but, then again, so is the rest of this hapless film).

How you take the talents of Jack Black, Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, and Billy Connolly and create something as thoroughly inane and painfully unfunny as Gulliver’s Travels is a mystery. This might be the dumbest movie I saw this year.

Black stars as slacker mailroom worker Lemuel Gulliver. To impress news editor Darcy Silverman (Peet), for whom he’s had a secret crush for years, Gulliver plagiarizes various travel articles earning him a spot to write for the paper. (I can’t imagine how such a well designed plan might blow up in his face.) His first assignment takes him to the Bermuda Triangle. (Cue ominous music.) After sailing into a storm Gulliver finds himself in the land of Lilliput, a kingdom filled with people less than 6-inches tall.

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Superman #703

  • Title: Superman #703
  • Comic Vine: link

Wow. Just, wow. This might be the most hamfisted story writer J. Michael Straczynski has ever written (and if you’ve seen the last couple seasons of Babylon 5 you know that’s not an easy thing to accomplish).

After an opening scene where Superman basically tortures a random citizen we move straight into the Man of Steel lecturing Batman about needing to look out for the little people. Take a moment and think about that. Superman lecturing Batman about looking out for average citizens. Really? REALLY?!

If that isn’t enough we get the exact doomsday scenario Dick suggests could happen (Superman being attacked by a super-powered crazy in the middle of small town/suburban America) – in the same issue!

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G.I. JOE: Rise of CRAP

  • Title: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
  • IMDb: link

gi-joe-rise-of-cobra-posterLet’s get this straight right from the get-go: I had no real expectations with this film except wanting to leave without getting too bored or having the film make my eyes bleed. One out of two isn’t bad. Even with the bar set so low G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra finds a way to slither underneath like champion limbo dancer Hermes Conrad.

Based on a toy line and 80’s television show Rise of Cobra plays like one long Michael Bay action reel (think The Rock, if it were directed by Zack Snyder). It’s got the brains of the old cartoon down cold (ridiculous premise, tons of vehicles and ammunition) but hardly any of its style.

It doesn’t help the Cobra never really exists in this film. Instead we’re given a well-funded unnamed group of terrorists. It is also problematic that the baddie chosen to put center stage isn’t Cobra Commander (almost completely absent from the film), or even the unmasked Destro (Christopher Ecclestion), but the Baroness (Sienna Miller, because I guess Kate Beckinsale was too expensive).

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The Transformers have Fallen and they can’t get up

  • Title: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
  • IMDB: link

transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-posterI hated Michael Bay’s first Transformers, and this second installment is more of the same only longer, louder, sleazier, and (if possible) dumber.

Part Deux is filled with lazy humor, cheap gags (such as multiple shots of humping dogs and robots), a confusing and ridiculous plot (which is so inane characters twice have to stop and explain it not only to us but each other), big, though not too impressive, special effects, and little else. It’s obvious that Bay and screenwriters Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman love robots (wait, it took three of you to write this movie?). What isn’t obvious is if they give two shits about Transformers, or their fans.

Once again we’re given a plot which has more to do with Sam (Shia LaBeouf) learning a life-lesson and Megan Fox looking hot than Autobots or Decepticons. In fact the Decepticons aren’t even the big baddie here, it’s the Fallen. What is the Fallen? Well, you see, he’s one of a race of seven Primes, ancient Transformer brothers… (the sound you just heard was me dying a little inside).

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