For Your Enjoyment
By Troy Haines
It bears mentioning that before seeing this movie, I had heard from many sources that it was absolutely awful. I find that your preconceptions about a movie have a lot to do with your enjoyment of that movie. For example, I have never anticipated a movie as much as I did “The Fast and the Furious” and consequently it was a terrific letdown, whereas I hadn’t heard a single thing about “American History X” and it became one of my all-time favorite movies.
Perhaps it is because I expected “The Mummy” to be terrible going into the experience that I found myself reluctantly enjoying it for the first 45 minutes. It recaptured some of the silliness and fun that the first installment had (and which was lacking from part two, which I have nothing at all positive to say about) and Brendan Fraser’s return performance as hero Rick O’Connell actually managed to capture my attention. Fraser’s performances are wildly varied, and range from the positively horrendous (as in “Monkeybone”) to the sublimely amazing (see “Gods and Monsters) so I didn’t know what to expect, but he came through admirably.
Outside of Michelle Yeoh’s performance as Zi Juan (which was one of the worst I’ve seen) nothing much bothered me about the first half of the movie. Even Maria Bello’s horrible British accent didn’t detract. Bello is always great, but she isn’t British, not even by a stretch.
So after seeing the beginning I was wondering why there was so much negativity about this movie. Then I found out. In a pivotal fight scene with the emperor, played by Jet Li (what is he doing in a movie like this?) the good guys enlist the help of some local Yetis. That’s right, I said Yetis. After one Yeti kicks the Emperors general over an upright and another Yeti signals that the extra point is good, I knew why it had been so poorly reviewed.
The movie went on to receive all of its negative commentary. From bad sight gags to low-brow body function jokes, “The Mummy” fell on its face in the second half. Even the sometimes spectacular locations were offset by sub-par special effects. One thing that can be said about this movie is that while it did receive a PG-13 rating (for adventure action and violence) it seemed very family friendly for the most part, so you can take the kids. Grade: C-
“Step Brothers” breaks
Ferrell’s slump (kind of)
Will Ferrell makes me laugh. I’m not unique in this, he makes most people laugh. That said, there are only so many times you can break into spontaneous random songs or threaten to punch someone “square in the mouth” before it gets old. There are only so many underdog sports star movies you can do as well (Kicking and Screaming, Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory, and Semi-pro combined to make the idea get a little old), and “Step Brothers” had plenty of both. As a matter of fact there was not one, not two, but three random burst-into-song scenes and countless physical and verbal sparring matches between Ferrell and co-star John C. Reilly, so the movie did grow old quickly.
Like most of Ferrell’s movies since “Anchorman,” this one was one part hilarity and four parts filler, and it did rely heavily on ad-libbed material from both Ferrell and Reilly. It was much better than most of Ferrell’s recent movies, however, and at times it was extremely funny. John C. Reilly absolutely ran away with the movie and left you seeing Ferrell as an afterthought.
As with “Semi-pro,” this was a production that broke away from the typical PG-13 format and gained an R rating for language, and the attempt at using vulgarity as humor once again failed. All in all this movie is worth seeing, but expect to spend some time checking your watch and waiting for the next laugh. Grade: C+
This week on DVD
“Doomsday” — This futuristic conglomeration of “28 Days Later”, “Mad Max”, “Escape From New York”, “Resident Evil”, and “Timeline (that movie where Paul Walker travels through time and becomes a knight, I’m not even kidding) takes all of these films worst elements and creates a mongrel that no one could like. Gory to the extreme, this is yet another example of a movie simply trying to be as gross as it can. Skip it. Grade: D+
“The Mist” — Frank Darabont has made both “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile” film adaptations of Stephen King’s books, and they were both fantastic. It was therefore very surprising to me that this movie completely missed the mark set by those two films. Based on King’s novella of the same title, “The Mist” could have been great, but it came up short in part because of horrible visual effects and a completely unnecessary ending that was nothing like the book. It seemed that Darabont wanted us to walk away being as depressed as possible, and he accomplished it. The movie did have Thomas Jane, who turned in a fairly good performance, and Marcia Gay Hardin was spectacular in her portrayal of zealotry and it’s parallel to madness, and the movie was kind of entertaining. Grade: B-
“Awake” — This was the surprise of the group for me. The premise of the movie, which is about a young billionaire who finds himself awake during a surgery in which the doctors are planning to kill him, but he is unable to do anything about it, is a bit flimsy. Decent performances by Hayden Christensen and Terrance Howard carry the movie fairly well. There is also a small role by Christopher McDonald, who I always enjoy, which is quite good. Add to that Jessica Alba in a role that is a departure for her and a script that has plenty of well thought out twists, and this movie was not half-bad. Grade: B
In case you missed it
On occasion I will do a brief piece about something that you may have missed which should definitely be looked into. In most cases it will tie in with something else in the article and in this case it’s Hayden Christensen. If you have never seen “Life as a House” (2001) I definitely recommend doing so. It is an incredibly touching story about a man who finds out that he is dying and decides to take the opportunity to rebuild his broken life. The main character, George, is played by Kevin Kline in an Oscar-worthy performance. George uses the time he has left to build a house, and the experience reunites him with his troubled son (played by Christensen). This movie is a gorgeous and heartfelt work, and I highly recommend it.
