Review: Crossroads

Plot: Three adorable, precocious little girls bury a shoebox filled with all their hopes and dreams for the future. Several years later, upon their high school graduation, the girls return to dig up the box, just like they swore.  Only problem is? Well, they all kinda hate each other now. One of them grew up to be Britney Spears, the other grew up to be a trashy trailer park gal with a lisp, a baby in her belly and a heart of gold (Taryn Manning), and the other one is now a bitchy Queen Bee type (Zoe Saldana). So even though they hate each other, they still dig up the box and then pretty much out of the blue, they decide to take a road trip together to California. Seems the trailer park gal wants to take part in some kind of singing competition, the Queen Bee wants to go see her boyfriend and the Brit would just love to see her estranged mom who lives in Arizona. Only problem? They need someone to drive them there. Luckily there’s a generic good-looking guy hanging around town who may or may not have been in jail for murder. After all, what could possibly go wrong for three young ladies traveling cross country with a suspected homicidal maniac? Oh …

Thoughts: Well, luckily for our three leading ladies, “Crossroads” ain’t that kind of movie. Turns out the guy is not a killer and in addition to being extremely, generically handsome, he also has a heart of gold.

                Oh well. You get lucky sometimes.

                So, let’s see. “Crossroads.”

Mixed bag of acting, weak, shallow and cliche story, a total lack of focus, but the adorable Taryn Manning would almost, almost make me OK with watching it again many years from now.

                People throw around the term “star vehicle” to describe movies built for the sole purpose of putting over an actor or actress. Never before has that term been so accurate. Everything in “Crossroads” exists solely to serve Brit.

                Everything in the movie is hers for the taking. Spoiler alert, she gets the generically handsome dude, even though he started out sort of friendly with the trailer park gal. While she’s at it, Brit also takes the trailer park gal’s lifelong dream of becoming a singer and gets to perform at the big singing competition.

                Somehow, through all those trials and tribulations, the trailer park gal never loses her spunk or her positive outlook on life. Even after she has a miscarriage. Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah, her baby dies. There’s some random heavy stuff in this movie.

                This girl gets so much crap dumped on her throughout the movie (she was raped earlier in her life, too, told you about the heavy stuff) it’s mind boggling that trailer park gal never just absolutely loses her mind.  Especially when she has to sit there and listen to the other two girls complain about their lives.

                Oh boo-hoo Brit, your mom doesn’t love you and Queen Bee, your boyfriend cheated on you.

                Needless to say, it’s kind of hard to care about the other two leading ladies. I did really like the trailer park gal though. Taryn Manning is a cutie and how could you not like such a punching bag of a character?  

                Let’s not forget the fact that there’s really no reason for these three girls to be together. They haven’t been friends for years, in fact, Brit and the Queen Bee are depicted as basically enemies at the start. Yet all that goes away almost for good at the first mention of the word road trip.                     

                In addition to the clunky story, “Crossroads” just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as a movie. It’s meant for younger girls, I guess, due to Brittney being in it, but there’s underage drinking, premarital sex, endless examples of parental authority being ignored. Not a great message to send to kids. Also, Britney dancing around for long stretches of time in her undies sends a weird message too.

                Allow me to get philosophical for a moment. Perhaps, like the soundtrack’s big hit “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” “Crossroads” is stuck in the middle. It’s got too much adult stuff to work for kids and is too mind-numbingly hollow and Britney-centric to be geared towards adults. So it’s stuck somewhere out in the middle, not really doing much of anything for anyone.

                The few times Britney gets to stretch her chops as an actress are kind of a mixed bag. She’s got one good scene with the generic good-looking dude after her mom rejects her, but she’s got plenty of other clunkers that cancel it out.

                The rest of the cast, including Dan Akroyd as Brit’s loving, but overwhelming father, is completely forgettable outside of Manning. Everyone else, feh!

                Worst of the Worst

                Britney and the generic good-looking guy sit around a piano to turn a poem she wrote into a moving, beautiful song. Well, they try anyway. The song’s terrible and they’ve got the exact opposite of chemistry.  The scene is super uncomfortable to watch and man is that one of the most childish and stupid songs ever written? Brit, lose the heavy-handed messages and stick to catchy pop tunes.

                There you go, “Crossroads.” Bumblebee tuna.  

Review: My Soul to Take

Plot: Sixteen years ago, the town of Riverton was haunted by a sadistic killer with multiple personalities known as the “Riverton Ripper.” Eventually, the cops tracked him down and sort of killed him maybe? See, when they found him, he’d already stabbed himself a bunch of times, then they shot him a lot, then they put him in an ambulance but the ambulance crashed and then it exploded. But despite all that, the mystery remains: Is the Riverton Ripper dead?? I’d frigging hope so, otherwise the guy’s real name must be Clarke Kent. Anyway, on the night he may or may not have died, seven kids were born. Legend has it each kid got one of the Ripper’s personalities. Flash to the present day, the kids are all obnoxious and in several cases, really disgusting, borderline evil teens. Shockingly, someone starts offing the kids one by one. Is the Ripper back? Or is one of the kids doing the killing? Or is it someone … else? Spoooooky!

Thoughts: I’ve watched a lot of movies for this blog, and I’m not lying when I say almost all of them have been pretty poorly written. I mean, for god sakes Tommy Wiseau wrote one of them and I’m almost positive he’s insane.

                And yet, I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that made less sense than “My Soul to Take.”

                The biggest problem is Wes Craven. I mean, he wrote, directed and produced it so yeah, this is clearly his fault. I feel confident saying that this is the worst piece of crap he’s ever attached his name to and this man has attached his name to lots of junk over the years. 

Everything sucks. I'm not sure about the acting, I think it mostly might be Craven's horrible writing, but it's still not a great cast.

                Craven can’t figure out what kind of movie he wants “My Soul to Take” to be. Is it a slasher? Or a psychological thriller? Supernatural something or other? It’s got elements of all three sort of jumbled together into one big nasty stew.

                In the plot summary I mentioned each of the seven kids got one of the Ripper’s many personalities. Of course, one of those personalities is a psychotic killer, so we can assume one of the kids is a killer (or is the Ripper still alive???). That’s one. The Ripper also had a personality that was very artistic, and we learn one of the kids is awesome at designing costumes. That’s two.

                Other than those two examples, Craven completely ignores this plot thread. And the artistic one I had to piece together for myself while I was brushing my teeth this morning so for all I know that wasn’t even intentional.

                There’s also a lot of spiritual hooey about condors and how they eat the dead and supposedly absorb the souls of their meals. Turns out, one of the kids must be part condor because he has this power also. I mean, he doesn’t eat people, but I guess when people die nearby, he can absorb their essence. I uh… guess. I’m flying without a net here because none of this gets explained very clearly. It’s all in the movie, but Craven doesn’t seem that interested.

                Look, let’s forget about all that and just focus on the only thing Wes cares at all about: teenagers and their stupid f’n problems and relationships. This is his wheelhouse.

                We spend ample time finding out which girls our main character Bug (Max Theriot) wants to date, and we get to see him in class and presenting a project for Biology class, and him hanging out with his best friend, dealing with bullies. All this time wasted on trivial issues may have been better served trying to make sense of the rest of the plot maybe? No of course not! Kid problems!!

                Also, “My Soul to Take” does something unforgivable in my book. In the movie, the kids are constantly shown wandering around their high school, sitting in courtyards and things but are almost never in class. This is not how any high school works. If you don’t want to show kids sitting bored in class, make it the weekend or after 3:30. No public high school on the planet in the year 2005 just lets students roam freely for hours at a time.

                Somewhere around the third act the movie decides it’s a slasher again and so Craven grabs his other security blanket: talky endings. He actually does the “Scream” ending again. You know, the one where the previously ruthlessly efficient killer can’t stop talking about his/her grand plans and suddenly forgets how to kill things? Wes you lazy basterd. You (and Kevin Williamson) used the same frigging ending in four “Scream” movies and a werewolf movie, then you used it by yourself in “Red Eye,” and now this? Are you serious?

                I can’t even. I don’t know. The story is such a disaster, the directing is a mess. The opening sequence is an absolute joke well before the ambulance randomly explodes. I’m not even sure how bad the acting is because the material the actors are given is such a cluster f, it’s not super fair to judge the kids.               

                Still, I’ll assume it wasn’t great. Either way, the characters are all horrible clichés. The psycho with the abusive dad, the other psycho with the killer dad, the cute blonde, the rapey jock, the religious freak. Don’t care about any of you. 

Worst of the Worst

                At one point the killer says: “F you and f your unborn baby.” True story.

                I guess the real worst scene though is the opening. It’s full of so many quick cuts and fakeouts that it’s impossible to follow. Cops make insane decisions like embracing seemingly dead serial killers. And the frigging ambulance blows up. Perfect storm of craziness.

Review: Son of the Mask

Plot: Jamie Kennedy is a manchild who dresses up as a giant turtle and entertains kids for a living. Apparently, he wants more from his life than all that and aspires to be a cartoonist. Jamie Kennedy’s wife (the delightful Traylor Howard) somehow is oblivious to the fact that she’s hitched her wagon to the personification of arrested development and actually wants to procreate with him. One day, the family dog brings home a creepy old mask, which just so happens to have been forged by Loki, the Norse god of mischief. Jamie Kennedy wears it to a party, becomes possessed by the spirit of the mask, bangs his wife, gets her pregnant and poof there’s a baby. Pretty soon Kennedy gets left to watch the baby on his own and he starts to notice that the kid has special powers. So he has to deal with that while also working on a big cartoon pitch for his boss and fending off Loki who just wants his mask back, but no one will give it to him for some reason. Oh yeah, and at a certain point, the family dog decides to literally go to war with the baby over Kennedy’s love and affection. So that’s a thing that happens.

Thoughts: OK, so full disclosure here: I’ve never actually sat down and watched the original “The Mask” with Jim Carey. I’ve seen bits and pieces here and there, and I vaguely remember something about a cartoon TV show that I may have spent some time with, but the first movie, nope. Flew under my radar. 

I did, however, see “Mask” starring Eric Stoltz as a deformed teen at least twice during my childhood and was pretty well traumatized by that, if that counts for anything. That probably explains a lot actually.   

So maybe I’m missing out on something here. I don’t know, but “Son of the Mask” seems really, really dumb.

Bad acting, nonsense script, accidentally a major downer. Yeah I'll be happy to avoid it again. Miss you Stoltz!!

 

I’m not sure who the audience is for this kind of movie. I’d say it’s meant for kids because the humor is ripped straight from the pages of every “Looney Toons” script ever. But it’s also kind of dark, considering Kennedy essentially spends the entire second act and most of the third one as a complete raving lunatic, gradually succumbing to the pressures of work and family. I mean, there’s enough cartoon explosions to keep the kids happy, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to spend so much time in your kid’s movie telling kids just how much they ruin everything. Seems like a mixed message.    

I guess if you’ve ever watched “Looney Toons” and thought: “This is great, but I wish there were less animals and more people in this,” then “Son of the Mask” is very much for you. You one guy, you.

I’ve never really been on board with Jamie Kennedy’s brand of humor. I mean, I guess this is his cartoon phase, and it’s way better than his nerdy-white rapper phase, but it’s still not all that funny. Even still, he finds time for a quick rap/R&B number anyway, because it’s what he does.

Also, I just got really weirded watching him turn into a psychotic person. Like I said, it’s super uncomfortable and it seems really out of place in a movie I can only assume is meant for kids.

                I spent a lot of my time wondering why this was happening and by this I meant the entire narrative of the movie. Loki’s father is the all-powerful god Odin, yet said all-powerful god refuses to help Loki find the mask. Why? Because, that’s why. Also, Jamie Kennedy doesn’t seem to really want the mask or care about it at all, so why not just give it back to Loki?

                For a lot of the middle of the movie, the baby is portrayed as the main villain, driving Kennedy totally nuts just for the heck of it. Yet, instead of asking Loki for help, Kennedy runs from him! Why? Until the very, very end, Loki doesn’t do anything to make himself seem like a bad guy. In fact, for most of the movie, he seems OK, he just wants his mask back.

                Alan Cumming, who plays Loki, is wasted here, though he and Odin do slightly resemble their more popular counterparts in “The Avengers,” costume-wise.  So that was fun.

                Worst of the Worst

                There’s an elaborate sequence in the middle of the movie where the family dog, who’s wearing Loki’s mask, sets up a massive trap for the baby. We’re talking Mouse Trap style nonsense here. Oh, the baby’s CGI, by the way. If you’re the one person who still thinks CGI babies are funny, then here’s your “Schindler’s List,” I guess. Anyway, so the CGI baby tricks the dog into its own trap. It’s just a total knock-off of every Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd skit ever. Funnier with cartoons.

I can’t in good faith recommend any actually watches this movie. I didn’t laugh, I was kind of depressed  and creeped out by the middle part of it, and the rest is just boring.

Bumblebee tuna.

Review: Cursed

So, “Cursed.”

                You know, the tendency when you have success with something is to push it as far as you possibly can. Perhaps horror director guy Wes Craven and his screenwriter pal Kevin Williamson should have just quit after “Scream.”

                After all, it’s sort of hard to top defining an entire genre of movies --- for better or worse --- for an entire decade.

                But they didn’t quit. The duo churned out two sequels to “Scream,” where a killer in a mask stalks sexy youths, then a werewolf movie, where a werewolf stalks sexy youths and then they went ahead and made another “Scream” just for good measure.

                And “Cursed” is a weird movie. Williamson and Craven clearly seem to be going for the same sort of wink-wink, nod-nod humor that worked so well for most of the first “Scream” movie.

                Only, instead of slasher conventions, this time their focus is on Hollywood culture. Which I guess is pretty funny to two guys who work in Hollywood, but not so much for the rest of us.

Clunky acting, bad script, lame visuals make for a movie I'd like to steer clear of watching again.

                I’m going to go ahead and spoil a lot of this movie, so if you haven’t seen it run! And don’t stop running until you find a place on the internet that talks about new movies.

                Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg play a brother and sister, still sort of grappling (but not too much) with the deaths of their parents. Ricci is a producer or something on “The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn,” while Eisenberg plays a nerd. Shocking.

                One night, while driving back from the city, the pair get in a car accident after a massive wolf hits their car. They careen into another car, driven by Shannon Elizabeth, who’s sporting some very unfortunate bangs. Long story short, the wolf eats Shannon and bites Eisenberg and Ricci, cursing them to become werewolves. Unless they can find a way to break said curse.

                Oh yeah, there’s also a few useless subplots thrown in the mix for luck, I guess: Joshua Jackson trys to open up the least night-clubiest night club in the history of night clubs (lots of wax sculptures, no bar?), a high school bully who turns out to be gay for some reason, etc., etc.   

                Any way, the sort of main werewolf here is a crazy, back-stabbing publicist. With the right kind of ears, you can almost hear Williamson saying “Geez, publicists, amirite?” and then high-fiving Craven off screen.

                Towards the end of the movie, after her treachery has been revealed, the publicist narrowly escapes being shot to death by an entire squad of cops. Now, Christina Ricci’s character won’t stand for that. For one, she never liked the publicist to begin with, (because publicists, amirite?) but also because Ricci thinks she needs the publicist dead to break her werewolf curse.

                  She lures the publicist --- who’s now completely in werewolf form, by the way --- back by talking about how she has bad skin and a fat ass. Being a super-vain resident of LA, the wolf-publicist can’t stand for this and comes back to flip off Ricci, only to be promptly gunned down by the army of waiting police officers.     

                I didn’t get the movie’s humor and I’m not totally sure Williamson knew what to do with it either. He has characters deliver all sorts of painfully flat lines like:

• "That's enough with the biting!"
• Ricci: "All the good things in my life keep going away," to which Josh Jackson replied in a manly fashion: "I'm not going anywhere."

                And the thing is, he’s got a pretty talented cast. He just ends up making them all look pretty bad. Well, that’s not entirely true. Eisenberg makes himself look pretty awful with his half-assed scream during the carwreck scene and Milo Ventimiglia is the least convincing high school bully of all time.

                Eventually, we get the usual twists, turns and monologues during the climax that we’ve all come to expect from Williamson and Craven. Turns out the publicist wasn’t the main, main werewolf, but that’s only a surprise to the characters. The movie telegraphs pretty clearly who the real one is going to be, and even if it didn’t there are only so many characters it could be anyway. Personally, I was pulling for Kilborn, but alas, no.

                Once revealed,the real big wolf on campus predictably spends the finale sorta trying to kill Ricci and Eisenberg and sorta just trying to talk their ears off. I have no idea why our filmmakers are so fond of this plot device, but they must be head-over-heels for it because they’ve used it five times now.

                Mostly though, “Cursed” was just pretty yawn-inducing. The plot wound its way down a familiar path, never doing anything even close to the fun and clever stuff we got early on in “Scream.”

On top of that, I didn’t get the humor, the performances were clunky and the writing made them look even worse.   

Worst of the worst

See: Christina Ricci tells werewolf she has a fat ass. 

There it is kiddies, “Cursed.” Don’t blink or you might miss a mustache-less Ron Swanson early on as a helpful cop. Definitely the highlight.

Bumblebee tuna.

Review: The Hottie and the Nottie

Well, the easy way to do this review would be to spend the next 900 words or so trashing Paris Hilton for being a horrible actress and a worse person and so forth.

                But I’m not going to do that. For one, because I like to do things the hard way or as I like to call it, Colin’s way.

                Secondly, I don’t hate Paris Hilton all that much as an actress. I mean, she really does lack any sort of talent, but still I have to give the girl credit for starring in a personal favorite: “House of Wax.” I’d call it a guilty pleasure, but I feel no guilt about loving that movie. It’s a cheesy good time and it has Jared Padalecki in it. Recipe for success.

                So, let’s get that out of the way right at the top. Paris sucks. She’s not an actress and she spends more of the movie posing than she does playing a character.

                Done. The rest of the people involved in “The Hottie and the Nottie?” Uh-uh. Paris is a drunken party girl, but the rest of you people are supposed to be professionals, so what’s your excuse for this mess?

Acting is bad, but script is worse. Pedophile undertones are more like ovetones. Can't see the need to watch this one again.

                That’s the thing. Paris took a lot of flack for this movie, but even with a competent leading lady, it would still be a total cluster f from start to finish.

                The biggest culprit is the script from Heidi Ferrer.

                In the movie Paris plays Christabel, a super-hot girl that every guy in town wants to bang. She’s best friends with a gal named June (Christine Lakin), who is the polar opposite. June has all sorts of funky moles, deformed toenails and too much hair in places where you don’t want any and not enough in the places you do.

                Enter Joel David Moore as Nate, a tall, lanky, nerdy loser who was obsessed with Paris when they were kids together in the first grade. Only the first grade though, somehow they never saw each other after that. Maybe he switched schools or something, the movie never specifies.

                Anyway, he’s maintained that obsession well into adulthood, occasionally looking longingly at a picture he has of Christabel he’s kept all these years. From when she was a small child. In the first grade. Take a minute to let that sink in. It’s an adult man making lovey eyes at a picture of a little girl. Yeah, so aspiring screenwriters take note: Probably not a good idea to make your leading man look like a raging pedophile. Unless that’s what your movie is about, in which case, go sick.

                But Nate’s not supposed to be a pedophile. He just really, really seems like one. And even if you somehow manage to ignore that massive strike against, his character still isn’t very likeable. More on that later.

                Christabel has vowed not to sleep with any more dudes until she can find June a man of her own. Nate seizes the opportunity to set June up with any sort of random wackos he can find, even performing do-it-yourself electroshock therapy on one guy to convince him June’s actually hot.

                So this goes on for a while and spoiler alert. Eventually June undergoes a “She’s All That” style makeover and it turns out, under the extra body hair and moles and green teeth, she’s actually cute. Shocking!!!

                Nate ends up spending lots of time obviously flirting with June and even kisses her once she gets prettied up. Despite all that, he spends almost as much time with June talking about how he wants to bang Christabel.  So he also kind of comes across as a huge scum bag in addition to the earlier pedophile thing.

                Underneath all that mess, I guess there’s supposed to be some sort of positive message about inner beauty, even though June only gets anyone’s attention by completely overhauling her whole outer appearance. But yeah … themes are hard so whatev.

                Apologies to Joel David Moore, but he’s wildly miscast as Nate. In no reality or dimension of time or space would Paris Hilton ever be attracted to him and all of the trendy facial hair configurations in the world will never hide that fact.                

                 “Hottie and the Nottie” also has a character type that never fails to drive me nuts: the chubby, overtly creepy, sort of goofy but probably a date rapist best friend, in this case it’s portrayed by someone who actually calls himself The Greg Wilson. Seriously. I hate this type of character so much. I’m looking at you “Good Luck Chuck.”

                Honestly though, there’s no reason the plot of “Hottie and the Nottie” should ever happen. None of the characters have any reason to spend any time together. The Greg Wilson was Nate’s best friend also in the first grade and the first grade alone. Somehow though he’s more than willing to put his life on hold and help this essential stranger --- Nate --- bang another total stranger --- Christabel.

                Like I said. Paris took a lot of heat, and she is a miserable actress and an easy target, but as far as the problems with “Hottie and the Nottie” go, she’s somewhere more in the middle. 

                Worst of the Worst

                The scene where Nate and June share deserts while sitting romantically close on the floor together. He spends all this time flirting with June, leading her on and then even kisses her, but somehow still has the balls to ask her to help him bed Paris. If you didn’t despise Nate by that point in the movie --- keep in mind, he’s basically been painted as an accidental pedophile --- you definitely will after that.

                Bumblebee tuna.