Mini movie review: This Is the End

This Is the End, the apocalyptic comedy starring Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill and Danny McBride and with guest shots of Michael Cera, Rihanna, Paul Rudd, Aziz Ansari, Emma Watson, Channing Tatum and many, many more, was not all I'd hoped for.  It started strong - the over-the-top party at Franco's house (pre-apocalypse) was quite funny - I particularly loved evil Michael Cera, finally breaking free of his type.  But once the world ended, the movie devolved into a bunch of the guys stuck in the house and yelling at each other.  I guess it's hit or miss for me with this Apatow-esque group's comedies: I loved Superbad but didn't much care for Pineapple Express, liked 40 Year Old Virgin but not Knocked Up, and so on.  It certainly looked like the gang had a great time making the movie, at least, but I found it monotonous - and the special effects were sucky.  These guys have enough money that they could have made the demons more sophisticated than the ones from Ghostbusters, for crying out loud.

Mini movie review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), is the mostly live action adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's beloved graphic novels, in which Scott Pilgrim, a 23 year old Toronto slacker, must do battle with hipster girl Ramona Flowers's seven evil exes in order to win her love.  I bought the books but have only read them once: they're very funny and hip and clever, inundated with Canadian 20-something hipster culture, plus local bands, plus video games.  Scott is cute and charming but really juvenile and thoughtless; Ramona is sometimes cruel; and the secondary characters are often more pleasant to be around than the main characters.

I thought the movie did a very good job of translating the books.  Michael Cera as Scott is self-centered and clueless, but also sweet (although the actor is growing out of his cute boyish looks and entering a more awkward phase).  Mary Elizabeth Winstead is pretty good as Ramona, I guess, but I'm not sure she's that good an actress.  Ellen Wong, playing Knives Chau, and Kieran Culkin, as Scott's gay roommate Wallace, steal every scene they're in.  And the line-up of Ramona's seven evil exes was well-cast (Chris Evans! Jason Schwartzman! Mae Whitman!), although Brandon Routh does nothing for me.

I enjoyed the videogame battles between Scott and the exes, something that seems so natural in the books - I do imagine that people who saw the movie without having read the books were like, WTF is going on?  My thoughts here are a little incoherent since I saw the movie a couple of days ago and things are slipping away from me, sorry.  But I had a lot of fun watching SPvtW: it's not deep, but it's pretty and interesting and fun, and pays a nice homage to the source material.  Ain't nothin' at all wrong with that.

Superbad - mini-review

Finally, finally, I went to see Superbad last night. I even got Mr. Mouse to go with me and, wonder of wonders, he didn't fall asleep in the theater: he's now 2 for 4, having stayed awake for Superbad and Knocked Up, but having fallen asleep (and snoring) in Little Miss Sunshine and the second Austin Powers movie. I guess he's an Apatow/Rogen fan. Well, me too!

Everyone who is interested in this movie already knows the plot: three high school seniors, two of them best friends since kindergarten and all three dateless dorks, go on a quest to obtain alcohol for a house party in order to score chicks. One of the guys, the dorkiest of all, manages to get a fake I.D. and becomes "McLovin," a 25-year old Hawaiian organ donor. (McLovin rules, by the way.) It's a cleverer, funnier Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, sans Neil Patrick Harris, but plus some actual sweetness not usually found in movies with this many dick jokes. And, boy oh boy, are there dick jokes! I can't imagine how much fun the filmmakers had when they sat down to imagine and then draw the dozens upon dozens of penis pictures for the two montages (all vital to the plot, of course). It's pretty friggin' funny.

Jonah Hill (also recently in Knocked Up and Accepted) plays Seth, an obnoxious kid who tries to make up for being a fat undate-able dork by pure brazenness, although there's honest fear underneath all his obscene bombast. Michael Cera plays Evan pretty much how he played George Michael Bluth on Arrested Development (sweet, loyal, often put-upon) but since exactly six people ever watched AD when it was on*, I suppose that's okay. The kid who plays McLovin is a total newcomer to the movies, apparently found at a casting call; he steals every single scene he's in. And while I've read reviews complaining that Seth Rogen's dumb cop was played too broadly to be believable, I still found him dang funny. He looks good too, like he's lost some weight.

What can I say about the language? A friend warned us that the language was really raunchy (something about setting a new record for the f-bomb, which I can't believe) but Mr. Mouse and I both agree that after watching a season of Deadwood, the Superbad language hardly registered. Not that we would recommend this movie to either of our mothers, mind.

At any rate, I really enjoyed Superbad and found it much funnier and better-paced than Knocked Up, which in turn I thought funnier than most of the dreck that passes for mainstream comedy these days. I hope this summer's successes help make Seth Rogen a real player in Hollywood. Oh - and the funk music is just outstanding! I'm going to have to raid the soundtrack for my iPod for sure.

* Go rent Arrested Development right now! Brilliant, irreverent and so very funny!