The Jerk

I rented this movie last week just for fun. I haven't seen it since, oh, maybe 1986 or so, so I thought it might be amusing to see again. I remember liking The Jerk, but couldn't remember exactly what it was about.



It's amazing what 20 years will do to a person. Was Steve Martin ever funny? I know his latest movies haven't been very funny, especially Shopgirl ;) Okay, bad joke. I remember the last time I thought Mr. Martin was funny was probably his appearances on SNL.

There were a few funny scenes in the movie which actually had me laughing, but I wasn't laughing with the movie, I was laughing at it. It could be that you have to be in a certain frame of mind to truly appreciate what other people consider "a classic".

The story, if you haven't seen it, revolves around Navin's (Martin) rise from poverty in a poor black family to unbelievable riches, and then a steep drop back to poverty. Of course it's over the top, it's supposed to be, but stupidly so, just isn't my cup of tea.

I'll give it 5, but only because I either was having an off day and couldn't appreciate the 'funny', or because it was actually bad and doesn't deserve more than that. -- 5/10

Stay

I've been able to watch a few movies in the last while, one of them being Stay.

What can I say about Stay? A difficult movie, for sure. I have a conflicted view of Ewan McGregor. I can't make my mind up about him. In one movie I'll think he's fabulous, but in the next I'll think he was complete crap. Is it the director of the movie? Is he molding Ewan into the character he sees, and Ewan just goes along with it? Maybe that's it.



For this movie I think Ewan did a fair job. He wasn't great, but he wasn't horrible either. Ryan Gosling, on the other hand, played an excellent Henry. You could really believe he was as messed up as he was supposed to be.

So what was wrong with the movie? The now mandatory plot twist that every movie seems to think they must have. This one was a bit too obvious. If you watch the flashback scenes carefully enough it doesn't take much thinking to figure it out. Knowing the ending to a movie isn't exactly the best way to watch a movie. I will admit, I didn't know the ending until almost 1/4 of the way through, so the first bit was a fascinating bit of cinema.

The other problem? This movie had a bit of the "Lost Syndrome" Far too many questions with no answers to any of them. It wasn't that the movie confused me with a plethora of questions that I couldn't figure out, but it was frustrating to not have them answered in any way until the very end. I suppose it wouldn't have been the same movie if it didn't take this kind of direction.

It was an okay movie. Nothing I'd watch again, but I'm not regretting or wanting back the time spent watching it. --6/10

Chicken Little

Since I brought it up in the last post, I should probably say something about Chicken Little.

I'm not sure what it is about this movie that I loved so much, but I did. I really did. Not only did I love it, my wife loved it, my kids loved it, everyone that I've talked to that's viewed this movie has loved it. The comedic timing of the cast is superb. The quality of the animation is right up there with Finding Nemo and Shrek 2. Overall, it's just a great movie.



The lighting and textures of the movie are spot on. The 3D effect can sometimes be lost if the crew doesn't know what they're doing (see the last post), but this team obviously did. Stunning colours, textures, overall just visually pleasing to the eye.

Zach Braff, who I absolutely love in Scrubs, does an excellent job as Chicken Little. The rest of the cast, which includes Steve Zahn and Joan Cusack, also do an excellent job in their roles. Overall, the casting was well done.

Good comedy, good animation, the only reason I wouldn't give it a perfect 10 is... I'm trying to think. Nope. I can't think of a reason. It gets -- 10/10

Hoodwinked

I won't write a lot on this movie for a couple reasons. One - It was bad. Really bad. Two - If you can't say something nice.......

I actually heard from a couple of people that this movie was excellent, which in turn had me excited to watch it. In fact, the whole family wanted to watch it, so we did. I don't know if it's because we've been spoiled by excellent computer animated movies in recent years, and since they're excellent we come to expect a certain level of quality out of animation companies, but this movie was horrible. The graphics, and yes, I'll call them graphics, looked like they came out of a video game from 1995.

With recent movies such as Chicken Little and Finding Nemo spoiling us, I don't believe any company should shoot for such sub-par garbage.



The story. Oh, the story. Or, I should probably say, the lack of a story. I have a six year old and a five year old and they were both completely bored with the movie. So does that mean that the movie is geared more towards adults? My wife and I both wanted to shut it off after giving it 30 minutes. A clever plotline would have been nice if crap animation was the standard for the movie. Having the same story told four times actually had my kids asking, "Why is the movie skipping?"

There was nothing in this movie that made me, or my family, want to watch it. I won't watch it again, it won't be added to my DVD collection. I give it -- 2/10