Emily Blunt

The Muppets

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Muppets
  • IMDB: link

the-muppets-posterIt’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights. It’s been a long time since the The Muppets took Manhattan, had a great caper, or set their sites on an original movie. Sure there was that attempt to give Gonzo his own film, and the series of movies adapted from literature to star The Muppets over the years, but for the first time in a long time, with no small part to Jason Segel, The Muppets are back.

The story begins with brothers Walter (Peter Linz) and Gary (Segel) traveling to Los Angeles with Gary’s longtime girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams). Although the trip was initially set as an anniversary getaway for the lovers, Gary brings Walter along to let him realize one of his dreams by visiting Muppet Studios.

Walter is crushed to find the studio in disrepair and horrified to learn that an oil tycoon (Chris Cooper) is set to take ownership of the property and destroy it. The Muppets have only one chance, the contract leaves a clause that they can buy back the studio before the deadline if they can raise $10,000,000.

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The Adjustment Bureau

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  • Title: The Adjustment Bureau
  • IMDb: link

the-adjustment-bureau-posterIs your life your own? Does fate need an extra push? Is there a grand plan? Is someone watching? Loosely based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau attempts to answer these questions when one man looks under a curtain he wasn’t even supposed to know existed.

When we meet U.S. Congressman David Norris (Matt Damon) his career isn’t going quite as planned. On the eve of a lost election, while working on his concession speech in a men’s restroom, he meets a beautiful young dancer who will change his life in more ways than either of them can imagine.

David and Elise (Emily Blunt) make an immediate connection only to be separated for years by fate… or something else. A chance encounter years later is also derailed and that’s when David comes face to face with “The Adjustment Bureau.” For reasons left unsaid, the Bureau don’t want David and Elise together, and will do everything in their power to stop this deviation from their mysterious plan.

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Gulliver’s Travels

/ / Movie Reviews
  • 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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The Young Victoria

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  • Title: The Young Victoria
  • IMDB: link

The Young Victoria is a solid effort from screenwriter Julian Fellows (Gosford Park, Vanity Fair).

Emily Blunt proves capable of capturing a young woman on the verge of controlling an empire and struggling with advisers, her mother’s power-hungry lover (Mark Stong), and her own ideas for her country’s future.

And yet, something is missing.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed The Young Victoria. The sets, cinematography, acting, costumes, all demonstrate talent and a keen eye for the period.

Maybe I’ve just seen too many of these paint-by-number historical dramas, or perhaps this film does too little to distinguish itself from all the others.

The film is an attempt to show Victoria (Blunt) blossoming into womanhood, her rise to power, her early years as Queen, and her romance with Prince Albert (Rupert Friend). And it does exactly that, and nothing more.

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Sunshine Cleaning

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Sunshine Cleaning
  • IMDB: link

Sunshine Cleaning, much like it’s lead actress, is quirky and pleasant to watch – even if it does get a bit hokey at times.

Hitting a mid-life crisis, Rose (the always perky Amy Adams) spends her days cleaning homes of the wealthy and her nights in a cheap hotel room with her married high school sweetheart (Steve Zahn). She sums up her existence late in the film: “I’m good at getting guys to want me, not marry me. That, and cheerleading.”

Things aren’t much better at home where her ADHD/OCD riddled son (Jason Spevack) has just gotten kicked out of another school, her father (Alan Arkin) is involved in yet another get rich scheme, and her sister Norah (Emily Blunt) has just gotten fired from yet another job. Hmm, I sense a pattern here.

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