Yay! More art!
(politely sidesteps “Thunderstruck” segue…) Hope everyone had a fun, safe, intergalactic-alien-invasionless Independence Day! While you were more than likely enjoying wonderful weather and watching your local rich pyromaniac’s cavalcade of rockets explode in the night, I’ve been investigating what the movie-house has in store for us for this Friday. Once more, here are the GOT ME/LOST MEs.
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starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jennifer Aniston, and Kevin Spacey. Directed by Seth Gordon. Rated R.
This looks like it could be a really solid summer comedy, but I have mixed feelings going in. First, I’m pretty close to growing bored with the Three Stooges-inspired bromance angle that The Hangover popularized two years ago (and drove into the ground with its sequel earlier this season). It especially doesn’t help that two of these lead comedians – “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s” Day and “Saturday Night Live‘s” Jason Sudeikis – have already played bromantic chums before in last year’s underestimated Going the Distance (the pairing wasn’t anything that special – certainly not the best part of the movie). As for Bateman, he has proved many times competent as a leading comic straight man (most famously with “Arrested Development“). In other words, it’s nothing new. I look more forward to his next dramatic project after seeing his smart supporting work for Jason Reitman in both Juno and Up in the Air.
But then there are the title roles of the bosses. I suspect all three – Aniston, Colin Farrell, and two-time Academy Award winner Spacey – should be the kind of scoundrels as fun to watch as Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. But y’know, no high expectations or anything…
GOT ME
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starring Kevin James, Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, and Ken Jeong. Directed by Frank Coraci. Rated PG.
I’ll just say it – most everyone is probably thinking it anyway… If Chris Farley were alive today, is this the kind of movie he’d be stuck constantly doing? Would he be less of a star than his friend/fellow “SNL” cast-mate Adam Sandler and depend on whichever concept from a past hit movie (in this case Night at the Museum) Happy Madison productions has stolen and watered down for his next headlining project? Would he still be pandering to the audiences who long for slapstick and sizist, mean-spirited jabs toward the overweighted? Similar choices have been made by other “SNL” alum of the same time – like David Spade, Kevin Nealon, and most notoriously Rob Schneider – so would Farley have sipped from the Hawaiian Punch drinking fountain too? (My apologies to those who were lost on that Mr. Deeds reference just now… and to those who got it.)
As unhealthy as it may be, I personally prefer to imagine the answer to these questions is “No.”
LOST ME
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starring Amber Heard, Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, and Laura-Leigh. Directed by John Carpenter. Rated R.
Allow me to just take a moment to wonder out loud why so many movies this summer – according to IMDb – are credited as being originally released in 2010. We’re already past the halfway mark for 2011 so I have to ask: How many more is Hollywood going to try to force us to swallow? They’re almost always movies that look as dismissible as this Carpenter spook-thriller that I’ve already read others dubbing “a poor man’s Sucker Punch.” Maybe now that the Oscars’ Best Picture race has changed again (more on my opinion of that in a later article), this trend will start to show signs of abruptly ending. Here’s hoping anyway…
LOST ME
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starring James Purefoy, Brian Cox, Kate Mara, and Paul Giamatti. Directed by Jonathan English. Rated R.
Giamatti is playing King John, but above all else, this looks to be an overact-a-thon between him and Brian Cox. Take a moment to compare this trailer with the one for Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins from earlier this year. The project should highlight how some filmmakers have the chops, the attention to detail, and the drive to make explosions and epic action sequences look authentically breathtaking and how some don’t.
LOST ME
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starring Bob Angelini, Bern Cohen, and Reagan Leonard. Directed by James Marsh. Rated PG-13.
A documentary about an experiment from the ’70s based around a chimpanzee who is adopted at birth from human parents and raised as though he were a human too. It looks to provide the viewer with an in-depth education on the results. I just hope it doesn’t fail to also elaborate that chimps are wild, abrasive animals that aren’t found in kennels or pet stores for very good reasons.
GOT ME
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Return next Monday or Tuesday (I always shoot for Monday) for the GM/LM for July 15th, 2011 which will include the anxiously awaited Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II with Daniel Radcliffe. If you regularly visit Twitter, feel free to follow @MEIER_in_a_CT and @gttmovies for even more of our cineplexcitement (and more stupid made-up words!).