My Week In Movies Is Back!

The Last Song (2010)[PG] I don't know much about ol' Nick Sparks but judging on what I've seen from trailers of his other movies and the back of the dust jacket on the handful of his books my wife has lying around the house, Mr. Sparks was certainly on auto-pilot when he slapped together this light teen drama. I'm pretty sure he cranked out this story in a couple of afternoons, one of those afternoons being spent on the toilet. The first hour of this Miley Cyrus vehicle is pretty bad. There are alot of generic situations being set-up and there is a few too many "falling in love" montages for anyone movie to handle. But right around the one hour mark something clicks and the story does take an interesting turn. Although it still meanders it's way around another 40 minutes of cliches, the characters are all sweet enough to pull you to the finish line. Greg Kinnear is especially charming as Miley's dad and for those of you who can't stand the sound of Hannah Montana's voice - the only vocal performance she gives in the movie is over the end credits. Rated PG for one bad word (uttered by Miley which I guess makes it all the more shocking,) the romance between Miley and her boyfriend is kept only to kissing (with no mention of S-E-X) and the end deals with some emotional themes that might be too heavy for little ones, but I'm sure parents of most of Hannah Montana's core audience should find nothing objectionable with the content of this silly but ultimately sweet film.

Death at a Funeral (2010)[R] This is a half descent ensemble comedy with Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan and Martin Lawrence providing most of the humor. The rest of the cast features Danny Glover, Kevin Hart, Luke Wilson and Zoe Saldana. It's one of those everything that can go wrong does go wrong kind of stories. Some pretty humorous events take place, most of the laughs are supplied via one-liners. This might sound like a strange criticism, but the film would be alot funnier if it didn't have such a "wacky" soundtrack. The score tries to emphasize the comedy, it almost plays like a musical laughtrack telling you this is supposed to be funny. It would have worked better if it were toned down a notch or two. Rated R for a truckload of F-bombs, drug use, some sexual banter and one instance of very literal potty humor.


The 41 Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshal and Felt Superbad About It (2010)[NR] This latest "parody" film is NOT from the guys that have made Epic Movie, Date Movie and the recent Vampires Suck...so I was hoping that maybe it would prove that parody is not dead. Unfortunately, this alleged send-up of Judd Apatow films is worse than a crap-lovin' film goer like myself could possibly imagine. There's a couple of clever bits here and there but for the most part, satire and parody are traded for vulgarity and scenes involving people being covered in every bodily secretion you can imagine. Bad, Bad, Bad movie! I cracked a smile only twice, once during the opening credits (I'm a sucker for faux credits) and once during the ending credits which lampoons the closing of Slumdog Millionare. Not that I need to tell anybody this, but don't waste the effort of focusing your eyeballs on this horrid film. The DVD is unrated and loaded with profane language, nudity and the accompanying sexual situations not to mention wall-to-wall attempts at gross-out humor.

The Juice of Miley

First it was a breakfast cereal and then it was her muffins and now Miley Cyrus takes over another portion of your balanced breakfast with her very own juice! Hannah Montana Juice is 100% juice because Miley wouldn't just lend her name to any ol' product! It has to be only the finest 100% juice for Miley Cyrus to slap her face on the bottle. This beverage comes to us from the folks at Langers, the #9 name in bottled juice!

I don't post these pictures because of some crush on Hannah Montana, I just think it's hilarious how much stuff they'll plaster her face on. Every once in a while a property will come down the pike that gets merchandised to death...I don't think New Kids on the Block, Pokemon, or Britney Spears ever had their own line of juice. Miley Cyrus is a trailblazer, folks!

My Week In Movies - Claws & Balls

Hamburger The Motion Picture (1986) This week I finally hooked up the ol' VCR back to the big TV in the living room after having gone without it since the great DirecTV/surround sound install of February `09. The first movie I popped into the cassette player was the classic 1980's T&A comedy Hamburger The Motion Picture which I recently purchased at a flea market for two bucks. This is one of an endless number of Police Academy rip-offs that I adored when I was younger. Instead of training to become police officers, we meet a group of young misfits who are all training to run their own Buster Burger franchise. They all take classes like Pickleology 101 and learn how to treat customers rudely. In classic Police Academy rip-off style, each of the characters has one personality trait upon which all jokes are hung. Among the new recruits at Buster Burger University are a fat guy, a nerd, a South American freedom fighter complete with strips of ammo criss crossed across her chest, a ladies man, and of course...a nun. One of the new guys is so irresistible to women that he keeps finding himself at the mercy of topless girls who want to have their way with him. This of course provides the film with plenty of opportunity to show off some bare skin. But unlike alot of other 80's teen sex comedies, this one is pretty funny. It also features perhaps the greatest big screen performance of Dick Butkus' career ( I mean, he was great as Klawicki on My Two Dads but that was just TV!)

Beach Balls (1988) Delighted to have my VCR back, I dug through my library of tapes and rediscovered another low budget sex-minded brainless film from the 1980's. Here's the plot: Charlie likes beautiful Wendy, but Wendy likes Keith - some dude from a local hair metal band. So to impress Wendy, Charlie lets Keith's band perform at a big party at his parent's house while they are away at an anti-rock n' roll rally. Ok, that's not really a plot as much as it is just something that happens but that's all this simple movie needs to move along through an hour and fifteen minutes of smart ass remarks, girls in bikinis and more than one extended performance from a terrible metal band. Whether it knows it or not, Beach Balls takes it tone and structure from the classic Beach Party movies of the `60's. This isn't a great movie, but as someone who has seen every movie with the word "BEACH" in the title, I'd have to say it's above average.

Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009) You at least have to give me credit for admitting that I watched this movie. I usually watch just about every Disney movie that comes down the pike, plus I'm always interested in a movie version of a TV show, especially when the show is still on. I'm not really a Hannah Montana fan, I've seen the show once (when Larry David was on) but I do have to confess I love the hell out of that song "Party in the U.S.A. Anywho...Getting back to the movie, Hannah Montana: The Movie was probably the first theatre going experience for alot of kids. The movie downplays the slapstick nature of the TV show and opens up the world to Miley/Hannah with a visit to her hometown in Tennessee where life is quite different from the Hollywood lifestyle she's used to. There's about a dozen songs in this movie, some G-rated romantic story lines and some stuff that probably makes more sense if you watch the show. In the end, it's a nice slow-paced wholesome movie that Disney is known for.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) Here's another movie I went into not knowing much of the backstory. I've never seen any of the other X-Men movies, in fact all I know about the X-Men is that Wolverine is one of them and I think Firestar and/or Ice Man from the old Spider-Man cartoon might have been in the X-Men at one time or another, I don't really know.

Wolverine kicked off the summer movie season this year and raked in...or should I say "clawed in"...close to $180 million domestically. What? Really!?! It's pretty much just two hours of Wolverine running around and killing people/things. I'm so sick of movies that rely entirely on CG. If you want to use computers to make a horse's mouth move while he talks...that's great, but two hours of fake explosions and monsters that jump around like cartoon characters doesn't really hold my interest. The only reason I saw this movie is because my 6 year old son was begging me to watch it. I'll give kudos to the filmmakers for not putting anything too inappropriate in this movie, but I found it to be a big snooze fest.

Party In the USA

I don't care if this song was made for 11 year old girls, I think it is one catchy fantastic little pop song!