Running Gags Were Best Part - Made of Honor Review

Dr. McDreamy. Patrick Dempsey, leading man.

My movie viewing partner leaned over to me, at the end of this film and asked me whether the main man was attractive or not. He told me "I don't get it. Is that guy considered good looking?" Given he thought this, he also couldn't understand why the main formal lead would want him at all, especially since he was "such an asshole." True she pined for 10 years, quietly, happy to be on the periphery of his life, happy to be his confidante, happy she was still around to be there for him and to support him and to share things with him without getting the nastiness this man inflicts on other women, She was special to him and though she wished she could be more, she had pretty much laid that to rest and moved on. She saw all that and he didn't, until he couldn't have her and he then wanted her and chases her and gets her and the movie ends there. Except I, as a knowing female viewer, jaded and wary, did not believe he had really changed and imagined after the film ended with the scene of them happy in bed and married that he would get bored in a month, be cheating and they'd be divorced and her final fear of them not even being friends would come to pass... But that last part is speculation on my part.

And that's pretty much the film really.

The parts that really got me were the superfluous characters and their running gags. I thought to myself they thought that was funny? as they showed grandma 3 or 4 times with the set of anal thunderbeads glowing around her neck that were given to her at the ill fated wedding shower which she continued to wear to many formal events after the shower where the looks on her family members' faces showed they knew what they were... guess grandma is what? Too fragile to know? Too determined to care? Has no other jewellery to wear? There is no good answer here. And the goofy guy in the gym? Lots of male bonding scenes and this guy, a geeky misfit with too short shorts and meek and mild trying to be hip and cool and he's always there, being goofy, like a sidekick but without the status. I always saw him in these scenes and don't even think he has a name. He's a gym hanger-on, and only with these boys. I thought for sure I'd see him at their wedding but he wasn't in the crowd shot. The movie didn't even tie up loose ends that were that obvious.

I did laugh uncontrollably at a scene where the groom to be, who is challenged to play basketball with the gang just so McDreamy can show him up (and look what a loser that guy is. He challenges him knowing the guy has never played the game before and McD plays it all the time with his friends. Is he that unsure of himself he has to beat him at what he knows? Please. But then, he loses.) After the game they go shower and all the boys take a look at the rivals gear and they are SHOCKED at the size of his gear. This had me laughing and I could not stop. How low will the film maker go from here (hadn't had the anal bead and grandmas scene yet)? What other cliche will they depict for us, the viewing public. ALL of them, every-one-you-can-think-of. Still though, it's not the worst film I've ever seen and that's the best recommendation I can give it.

BTW I liked McD in Enchanted. He was somewhat bland there too, like here, but the overall movie was way better and for the purposes of this blog will never be reviewed.

Made of Honor

Usually I put the movie's poster here, for this movie I have something much more appropriate:





Why is the title of this movie Made of Honor and not Maid of Honor anyway? I could understand if the hero was a builder of some kind, or even a handyman like in a Tim Allen vehicle. Or if "made" was some kind of masculinised version of "maid". But there's not even a play on words there.

I hated everybody in this movie, except Lucius Vorenus. I was quite frankly shocked to see him slumming here. Surely there must have been some generic heist movie he could have been in instead? Now, if only Titus Pullo had shown up to kill everybody else in this movie! That would have been something! Daytime soap operas periodically go through purges where they kill off a half dozen characters in overly dramatic fashion (don't ask me how I know this). I kept hoping that would happen in this movie. Something involving a gladiatorial arena would have been amazing!

Everybody in this film is completely unlikeable or they're good friends with someone who is completely unlikeable. Which makes them every bit as unlikeable. This is generally not a good thing in a romantic comedy.

This is pretty easily the worst romantic comedy since Dan in Real Life.

Chris - May 20, 2008

This week's Rotten Movie

This week's Rotten Movie will be: Made of Honor with a spectacular 12% on Rotten Tomatoes. Somehow this movie has managed to make a very solid showing at the box office despite terrible reviews.

This week we'll find out why.

4pm Tuesday May 20
Coliseum Ottawa
3090 Carling Ave., Ottawa

He Had Man Hands - Deception movie review

It's been a few days since I saw this movie. What has stayed with me? The sheer size of Hugh Jackman's hands. Massive! When he cradles the leading lady's head in his hands near the end of the movie it's like she's a tiny dolly.

I was intrigued by the sex club angle. More interested when the ladies were unconventional. They were successful, not clingy or overly emotional, self-possessed and a range of ages and beauty. That actually made me feel better about this film and still does. Too bad it's all about aesthetics and not story.

Story-wise, well, there are a lot of holes in it. It tries to cover too much territory, tries to surprise you with a twist or two. Just try and tell me a story that's good okay? To take us half way through the film with the sex club angle only to find it's all a ruse for getting the guy to steal money for you, um, gee, you must be a freaking genius to have plotted all the minutiae that goes with that scheme.

The most ludicrous part of the whole movie is the ending. End it already! It went on and on and on. When the accountant horns in on the scheme and demands his cut, okay, they get the money, go to a park, a gun is pulled, the bad guy is shot by the recalcitrant femme fatale who walks away calmly, the survivor as well eschewing two suitcases with 10 million dollars in each leaving them lying on the ground in the public park. The potential couple are separated, give each other longing looks as she speeds away in a cab. A few minutes later they spy each other in the town square and the last scene has him walking to her. Too long. Too much. Too bad it's so predictable and anticlimactic. He should have been meeting someone from a sex club in Spain or something...become totally morally corrupt and suffer for turning his back on his law abiding life now that he's on the run or something. Well, maybe that's in the sequel.

Deception

No Deception here, I knew this one would suck! But I was secretly eager to see this movie because it stars Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor so it's actually Wolverine vs Star Wars!

How cool would that be?

Okay, it would actually be incredibly stupid.

Still way better than this movie.

Here's the problem with this movie and why it doesn't work (well, beyond the obvious other problems, like it's unbelievably stupid) and it's something that should have been obvious to everyone involved in this movie.

Ewan McGregor plays a socially awkward geek.

Full stop.

Now McGregor is no buff action movie star, but this is Renton for fucks sake! This is the guy who almost made the Star Wars prequels watchable.

It's not quite as egregious as the usual case of "Hollywood Ugly" where the poor plain girl is actually hotter than anyone you know in real life (hint to Hollywood, taking off her glasses and letting down her hair does NOT turn a girl who is actually ugly into a hottie) but it is pretty bad.

Jason Alexander? Sure.

Woody Allen? Sure.

McLoven? Sure.

The guys from Revenge of the Nerds? Sure.

Ewan McGregor? No.

No! No! No!

Ewan McGregor is just horribly miscast here. Almost as badly as Hugh Jackman was when he played a geek in Swordfish. But at least that movie was fun. And, well, Halle Berry... Cough, cough.


So the movie tries really hard to make us believe McGregor is this stereotypical nerdy accountant - Down to the horn rims, bad hair and gray suits. And it takes a long, long, long time to do so and go anywhere. At which point I'm just thinking, "Okay, okay, for the sake of argument I'll take your word for it, he's a geek, can we get on with the movie already?"

So Hugh Jackman is the much cooler friend who takes McGregor under his wing, including "accidentally" introducing him to this anonymous sex club. And what follows is what can best be described as...

Geek porn.

It's incredibly bizarre and after having spent all this time and effort trying to establish McGregor as this uber-nerd, who is the audience for this? Certainly not actual geeks - Clark Kent and Peter Parker may be geeks, but Superman and Spider-Man are NOT. That's the whole point.

Who wants to watch some geek bang a bunch of women? Which is what McGregor proceeds to do. But it gets even weirder than that. In this extended, Rockyesque montage of anonymous sex, the only two women McGregor hooks up with who have speaking roles are Natasha Henstridge and Charlotte Rampling. I don't mean to knock either of those fine ladies but let's face it, Henstridge is old enough to be someone's mother (not mine) and Zardoz was more than THIRTY YEARS ago!

So the whole thing has this very creepy MILFy feel.

In fact, while last week's 88 Minutes featured a middle aged Al Pacino pursued (in all facets of the word) by a bevy of much younger women, this movie went for the exact opposite niche with the younger, awkward man initiated by mature women.

Yes, that's right, Hollywood is turning into a crappy Internet Porn site.


Once again, this movie features a villain with a diabolical plot that is way, way too complicated which depends on crazy coincidences and dumb chance such as the hero falling in love with exactly the right girl while he is hooking up with a different woman every night! Wow, good thing he didn't have a predilection for brunettes or he doesn't actually prefer the Charlotte Ramplings of the world. Would be unfortunate if he fell for one of the other half dozen girls...

It's all a dumb ploy to blackmail McGregor into some embezzlement.

Here's the thing, the greatest, most successful and devastating conspiracy of modern times involved a bunch of guys learning to fly airplanes, hijacking some airplanes and then flying them into buildings. That's it. That's a plot. That's a conspiracy that can work. Now I've read as many comic books as the next guy (more) and these big schemes - They just aren't practical. You bribe the guy, cut him in on the action, threaten to shoot him or his family. Whatever. That is your plan. That can work. All this other stuff, that's just asking to have your glorious scheme unravel on you.


Even so, the hero's first big break in turning the tables? He happens to run into someone who actually knows Hugh Jackman's real name and background. That's it. The good guy gets lucky, and I don't just mean that as a double entendre.


The movie comes to a predictable, but still really dumb ending that just leaves us with a bunch of questions...

How does the naive, inexperienced McGregor get a phony passport in 24 hours? Yes, by the end of the movie he's been transformed like Olivia Newton-John in Grease but it's still not like he has any actual underworld connections, or street smarts, or anything.

And how do two characters, independently, acquire handguns off-screen in Spain? I understand they're rather hard to come by in Europe. Again those previously unseen underworld connections I guess.

Why does McGregor leave the second suitcase of money? Does he think that when the police investigate and find there were two men at the bank, and one got killed that they'll just forget about it because all the money is there? Since McGregor is going to now be a wanted man in Spain, wouldn't 10 million dollars, even if it carries with it some "heat" be a little more helpful than being penniless and without resources in a foreign country?

Is seeing all these terrible movies and writing this blog really a good idea?



Oh, and I won't even mention how funny it is watching an Australian and a Scotsman pretend to be New Yorkers.. That would just be a cheap shot.

Christopher, May 15, 2008

This week's Rotten Movie

This week's Rotten Movie will be:

Deception
Wednesday May 14, 4:20pm
AMC Kanata
801 Earl Grey Drive, Kanata

12% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's actually tied with Made of Honor but Decepion has been far less successful at the box office, so both a critical and commercial failure. Looks like Made of Honor is likely for next week though as nothing spectacularly bad has come out this week.

There is actually one lower ranked movie playing, Prom Night at 9%. However, no afternoon showings.