Maythew Bonus: Theodore Rex (1995)

*
Director: Jonathan R. Betuel
Starring: Whoopi Goldberg

When I kicked off this series, I expressed my gratitude that Theodore Rex hadn't been included on the list. And then... oh, and then. And then a friend of my brother's found this "movie" on DVD and bought it for him. And then he made me watch it, which is why I now find myself reviewing this insult to narrative, comedy, extinct creatures, science, and the future. Join me, won’t you?

Theodore Rex stars Academy Award winner Whoopi Goldberg, Academy Award nominee Armin Mueller-Stahl, and the private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks. Damn right, I’m talking about Richard Roundtree. The story is set sometime in the future when scientists are able to bring dinosaurs back to life (and, somehow, make them human sized and give them the ability to speak) by cloning the DNA from fossils. The engineer behind this is Elizar Kane (Muehller-Stahl), whose plans to create a new Eden secretly also involves ushering in a new ice age, thus killing off humanity. Why does he want to do this? Because he’s a mad scientist. That’s all the reason one needs.

After a dinosaur is found dead in an apparent “dinocide,” the Chief of Police (Roundtree) decides to promote Teddy Rex, a gentle and kind of goofy T-Rex, from his desk job to temporary detective. He becomes the partner of badass cop Coltrane (Goldberg) and though she resents it at first ("He's a dinosaur!" she says over and over again, much as I did while watching this), they eventually find a way to work together to take down the bad guys and save the world. Oh, and also? Coltrane is, possibly, a robot or some kind of human-robot hybrid. Yeah, I don't know. I just know that at the climactic moment she shorts out and it's up to Teddy to finish the job on his own.

Words cannot adequately express just how stupid this movie is. To give you an idea of the level of thought that's gone into it, allow me to share this tidbit: characters who are working undercover? Work with equipment that is neon glow in the dark. That's just... fuck you movie! Also, there is a very brief moment in which I thought we were going to see a dinosaur puppet sex scene. It was scary.

Matt's Thoughts: 92 minutes of pure entertainment. This cinematic masterpiece left many questions unanswered: is Whoopi a robot? does this take place in our future, or our supposed past? why do all covert missions involve glow-in-the-dark, neon technology? Don't get me wrong, this was no Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit but I think it held it's own. Now let's never speak of it again.

... And, with that, I'm taking the next week off. I'll be back on the 21st with new content.

Maythew #10: Fanboys (2008)

* * *
Director: Kyle Newman
Starring: Jay Baruchel, Chris Marquette, Don Fogler, Sam Huntington, Kristen Bell

Who says you never learn anything from movies? Until seeing Fanboys I had no idea that there existed such a fierce rivalry between Trekkies and Star Wars fans (... Warsies?). I'm not someone who really understands the kind of obsessive fandom that those two franchises inspire but I found a lot to like in Fanboys. I'm sure there are plenty of little in jokes that I missed since I'm not part of fandom culture, but I still found it very accessible and very funny.

Set in 1998, the story centres on five friends: Linus (Chris Marquette), Eric (Sam Huntington), Windows (Jay Baruchel), Hutch (Don Fogler), and Zoe (Kristen Bell). While Eric has grown apart from the others since high school, the rest remain connected by their love for comic books and Star Wars. When Eric learns that Linus is dying, he realizes that he needs to find a way to reconnect with him before it's too late. He also wants to take the opportunity to make an impossible dream come true by dusting off an old plan they had had as children to break into the Skywalker Ranch. Windows and Hutch are game and the four set off on a road trip in Hutch's rickety van, which he fancies is the automobile equivalent of the Millennium Falcon.

Along the way, the boys have a series of small adventures, including a run-in with Star Trek fans, a drug fantasy involving an Ewok, an arrest, another run in with Star Trek fans, and encounters with William Shatner and hookers (not in the same scene). After being called to bail the boys out of jail, Zoe joins them for the rest of the journey and the five successfully break into Skywalker Ranch, which apparently has the worst security ever. Inside they find the Holy Grail of Geekery, including a copy of the as yet unreleased The Phantom Menace.

The film has a lot of affection for its characters and the world of fandom, which goes a long way. Fanboys are probably an easy target for mockery but the film isn't mean spirited in the way that it ribs the characters and instead celebrates their devotion to the mythology that certain pieces of work inspire. It has heart, in short, and a strange, disarming charm.

Matt's Thoughts: Fanboys is a love letter to Star Wars, and, as much as I glaze over everytime anyone starts talking about Star Wars to me, I think it's just awesome how unabashedly geeky these guys are about what they love. Each of the main characters are fleshed out in such a way that I would get along with them quite well, and I root for them in their pursuit, so I was taken by surprise when the film took that sharp turn from madcap romp around America to heartwarming tale of a friend's last adventure. It wouldn't affect me so much if they didn't make you care for these people, but, by the end of the movie, you really do care, and even though you know it's coming you just don't want it to. I never thought I would see camping out for the release of a new movie as a memorial for a fallen comrade, but it really works this time, and it becomes one of the films I could watch repeatedly and not tire of.

Maythew #9: Stone of Destiny (2008)

* * *
Director: Charles Martin Smith
Starring: Charlie Cox, Kate Mara, Robert Carlyle

Reviewer's dilemma: you see a movie that, while not "bad" really, is kind of bland and fails to make an impression on you. You can't envision yourself recommending it to anyone and yet it's so earnest and harmless that you're reluctant to give it an unfavorable rating. This is the mind space in which I find myself as I try to sum up my feelings on Stone of Destiny. It's a perfectly decent movie and yet for an inspirational story, all it inspired me to wonder is why a film with a premise so deeply rooted in Scottish nationalism cast an American actress to work an accent and play "the girl."

Set in the 1950s, Stone of Destiny centers on Ian Hamilton (Charlie Cox - incidentally, also not Scottish), a bright eyed college student with a dream of restoring the eponymous symbol to its rightful land. Since the stone is currently housed in Westminster Abbey, getting it back is a rather difficult endeavor, though others have tried. Nevertheless, Ian manages to get three others to join him in his plot - Kay (Kate Mara), Gavin (Stephen McCole), and Alan (Ciaron Kelly) - and convinces politician John MacCormick (Robert Carlyle) to provide financial backing.

The four students set off on their plan, intending to take advantage of Christmas time festivities to get to and remove the stone. Their plans unravel in fairly spectacular fashion and the fact that they suceed anyway proves the notion that some stories are so unbelievable that they can't be anything but true since no one would dare make them up. When you think of heist movies, you think of sophisticated plans carried out by expert criminals but apparently in real life all you need is really good luck.

Written and directed by Charles Martin Smith, Stone of Destiny is a bit odd in that it manages to be simultaneously fast paced and low energy. Even the celebrations surrounding the return of the stone seem muted, as if Smith is approaching the material from mere curiosity rather than from any kind of emotional investment (which may very well be true given that he's American). And yet, like I said, it's not a bad movie. It's competently assembled and performed; it just never finds its spark. So, if you're in the mood for a stunningly adequate film, I suppose this gentle caper is as good a pick as any.

Matt's Thoughts: I really, really liked this movie. Granted, there are some pacing issues, and the script isn't the strongest that it could be, but I just thought it was a really fun film. In a world where so many movies are pro-America, it's nice to see a movie so full of pride in a country across the globe. It's the ending, of course, that gets to me: rather than abandoning the stone of destiny in the churchyard knowing that the authorities are on their way, the heroes stand and wait their punishment, having fulfilled their quest to return what rightfully belongs to Scotland; it's their firm belief that theirs was a necessary crime that I find admirable, and I can't help but love every one of these people.

Maythew #8: Glenngary Glen Ross (1992)

* * * 1/2
Director: James Foley
Starring: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin

If you looked up "Actors' Showcase" in the dictionary, you'd find a still from Glengarry Glen Ross. There are few films that can compete with it in terms of the acting because the entire cast is simply at the top of their game. The writing is similarly stellar and though the direction left me a bit wanting, the film as a whole is wonderful.

The story takes place over the course of a night and a morning in a real estate office where things are desperate. Of the four salesmen, only Ricky (Al Pacino) is really in a good place while Shelley (Jack Lemmon), George (Alan Arkin), and Dave (Ed Harris) are all at the mercy of "the leads," a stack of cards held by office manager Williamson (Kevin Spacey) and doled out to reward good salesmen or punish bad ones. Only Ricky gets the good leads because only Ricky closes. Shelley needs a lead something desperate as he's got hospital bills to pay and the narrative arc that he goes through is amazingly played by Lemmon. He's such a sad, needy character that it's hard not to feel for him (though for a Simpsons watcher it's also kind of hard to look at him and not think of Gil).

While Ricky works on a mark, Dave comes up with a plot to break into the office and steal the good leads and then sell them. He shares his plan with George and then turns around and tries to blackmail George into breaking into the office for him, reasoning that he's the first person the police will look at and George is already an accessory to the crime just by listening to his pitch. Poor George.

The scene that everyone talks about, of course, is Alec Baldwin's brief appearance as the "motivational" speaker sent from downtown and the scene is indeed electrifying. There's a reason that it has taken on a life all its own, but the rest of the film is great too. Watching these actors playing off each other is never anything but a delight and the only real criticism I have of the film is that it never fully loses the stagey feeling that plagues so many stage to screen adaptations. The scenes often feel closed in, which works in some cases but is a bit distracting in others. All in all, however, Glengarry Glen Ross is a great film and one that has held up very well over the years.

Matt's Thoughts: They sure are good at swearing.

I love the fact that they don't let on who the theif is until the end, and you watch George throughout the film worried that he'll be carted off to jail for something that wasn't his own idea. I always wonder, in the end, if Dave is going through the motions of flipping out in an attempt to cover for the crime he thinks George commited, if he's furious because George told him he couldn't go through with it, and now thinks that he did and just trying to cut Dave out of the deal, or if he's just angry because someone else broke in before he and Dave had a chance to.

I always love Kevin Spacey as a villain, and I especially love that he's not really the villain in this movie; he's just a man doing his job. Shelley, on the other hand, is meant to be the sympathetic character, but I just don't really feel it. For most of the movie I do, of course, worry for him, but it's when he tries to pull one over on Williamson and grows evermore smug in his efforts to get Williamson fired, that I just feel very removed from the character. I just don't buy Shelley's pleas for mercy from Williamson after he just tried to do to Williamson what Williamson is forced to do to him, due to Shelley having done so in the first place.

As with many movies, I land on the side of K-Space.

Maythew #7: Session 9 (2001)

*
Director: Brad Anderson
Starring: David Caruso, Peter Mullan, Josh Lucas

If Session 9 had been the first movie my brother and I watched for Maythew, the series probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground. This is easily one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's not scary, it's not interesting either in terms of narrative or in terms of its visual aesthetic, it's just dull. Dull, dull, dull.

The plot (if you care and you shouldn't) involves an asbestos cleaning crew that has been hired to work in a long closed mental hospital. The crew includes Gordon (Peter Mullen), Phil (David Caruso), Hank (Josh Lucas), Mike (Stephen Gevedon), and Jeff (Brendan Sexton III). Jeff is new, Phil and Hank are constantly at each other's throats over a woman, and something is obviously wrong with Gordon. As for Mike, he quickly disappears from work to sit down in the basement listening to old tapes of a patient with multiple personalities.

The film tries to emulate the atmosphere of The Shining, making it appear that the building itself is having an effect on the actions and attitudes of the workers. Is the building haunted? Evil? Are former patients still lurking around, waiting to do damage? In truth evil is brought into the building by the workers, specifically Gordon who is in the midst of an intense mental crisis. As his inner turmoil begins to bubble to the surface, the situation for everyone else becomes increasingly desperate - whether they know it or not.

The problems I have with Session 9 as a film are myriad, but I'll try to narrow them down to a few. The narrative is not cohesive, for one thing, and the story feels like horror's greatest themes slapped together. The characters are paper thin and their motivations are never properly defined. Perhaps worst of all, the film simply feels lazy. It relies too heavily on the viewer's emotional response to other films and tropes from the genre without bringing anything new to the table. It feels like a student project, to be honest, and not a particularly good one.

Matt's Thoughts: Session 9...is a cinematic abortion. I have no idea what I thought this movie was, but it most definitely was not this.

The characters gained no development through the film, the storyline was non-existant, and the most interesting character can be found only in the deleted scenes.

Session 9 was a last-minute addition to the Maythew viewing list due to our local video store having an insanely poor selection. There were about 8 other movies that I would have rather seen that had to be cut from the list, and I'm pretty sure I just ended up hitting 'random page' on wikipedia and landing on this.

The most confusing part of the movie is that it has 'generally positive reviews' all over the internet. Session 9 ruined my chances at Maythew 2: Electric Boogaloo. I am, as they say, disappoint.

Maythew #5: Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

* 1/2
Director: Goran Dukic
Starring: Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon

There is a moment - exactly one - when Wristcutters: A Love Story becomes totally awesome. That moment occurs when it is revealed that "the Messiah" who has been talked about since the beginning of the film but whose identity has been kept secret by shots that obscure or hide his face, is played by Will Arnett. If only the Messiah's miracle had been performed to the tune of "The Final Countdown." I guess I'll just have to wait for the Arrested Development movie.

For the most part Wristcutters: A Love Story takes place after the deaths of its characters. Zia (Patrick Fugit), distraught over his relationship with Desiree (Leslie Bibb), takes his life by cutting his wrists and wakes in a place that is not heaven but not quite hell, just a worse version of life. He finds that he still needs to have a job and a place to live, still needs to eat and drink, and that a lot of things are pretty much exactly as they were before. He's so bored that he considers committing suicide again, but thinks better of it when he considers that committing suicide in suiciders' purgatory might cause him to end up in an even worse place.

He becomes friends with Eugene (Shea Whigham), a Russian rock star whose entire family committed suicide and thus are all together in the afterlife. When Zia learns that his suicide prompted Desiree's suicide, he decides to go off to find her and reunite and talks Eugene into going with him on a road trip. Although he has no idea where Desiree would have ended up, he's somehow able to intuit what direction they should be going and along the way they pick up a hitchhiker named Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), who insists that she's been sent there by accident since she didn't actually commit suicide. Eventually the trio ends up at the camp run by Kneller (Tom Waits), where Mikal's desire to see the people in charge and Zia's need to be reunited with Desiree converge.

Written and directed by Goran Dukic, Wristcutters occassionally displays a sharp, dark humor but the story itself is really lacking. It pretty much meanders from beginning to end and takes a long time to say very little. Although I think the cinematography by Vanja Cernjul is great, giving everything in the afterlife a washed out look that quickly and effectively establishes the atmosphere, that dullness ultimately permeates all other aspects of the film as well. There's no real spark here and as a result Wristcutters starts to fall flat almost as soon as it begins.

Matt's Thoughts: What I really want to know is, how does a turkey commit suicide? Or is its death also a mistake? Because seeing your thanksgiving dinner overdose would make for an incredible movie, in my humble opinion.

I understand that this film is a dark comedy, but part of the reason that the tone of the movie didn't quite hit the mark for me is the rule about smiling. Not only did they just introduce it at random, as though it were a well-known fact throughout the first half of the movie, but it kind of brought the story down for me. I knew going in that a movie wherein every character committed suicide wouldn't be happy-go-lucky, but I just sort of figured that they would be able to smile at some point. And after he had established that they were incapable of smiling in purgatory, he then finds his girlfriend and...they smile. Genuinely. Don't introduce me to an irritating rule and then break it.

I did enjoy it, even though I saw the ending coming from the get-go. And how pissed is his ex-girlfriend that, not only did his death lead to hers, but he then negated his own and replaced her with someone else? That's a spit in the face. But we're all okay with it.

Maythew #4: Leon (1994)

* * * 1/2
Director: Luc Besson
Starring: Jean Reno, Natalie Portman, Gary Oldman

First of all, many thanks to my brother for picking a movie that I've been meaning to see for a long time. Second, many thanks to Luc Besson for making a movie that more than lives up to its formidable reputation. Leon (alternately known as The Professional and Leon: The Professional) is not just a fantastic action picture, it's also a pretty great character movie thanks in no small part to the central performances by Jean Reno and Natalie Portman.

Leon (Jean Reno) and Mathilda (Natalie Portman). On the surface the two could not seem to have less in common, one a grown contract killer, the other an abused child. Quickly, though, Leon establishes their personalities so that they seem to be on an even plane (which, incidentally, makes their relationship mildly less creepy. Mildly). Leon may be an efficient and ruthless killer, but he's also remarkably childlike, watching films with wide-eyed wonder, and submissively deferring to his mentor, a mobster named Tony (Danny Aiello). Mathilda, despite her young age and inherent immaturity, is nevertheless a remarkably self-possessed young woman who is, in certain ways, more grown up than her protector.

Leon and Mathilda are brought together following the slaughter of her family at the hands of rogue DEA agents lead by drug addicted Stansfield (Gary Oldman). Mathilda narrowly escapes death and reasons that since Leon saved her life, he's now responsible for it. He's reluctant to accept this responsibility but she persists, just as she's able to persist in convincing him to teach her how to be a "cleaner." She's a quick learner but not so quick that she's able to carry out her plans to exact revenge on Stansfield and her actions put her and Leon in an impossible situation that can only result in a great deal of bloodshed.

First and foremost, Leon is an awesome action movie. Besson has a great eye for staging dramatic and memorable action sequences and the final blowout between Leon and an entire police force is incredibly well crafted and executed. Even more amazing is that his attention to the visual details has not come at the expense of the characters, who are distinct and allowed to have dimension (though, in truth, Stansfield is a character who walks a fine line between inspired and over the top and Oldman's performance is something you'll either love or that will take you right out of the movie). The performances by Reno and Portman are pitch perfect, finding all the right notes in the complex relationship between their characters. There is absolutely no question in my mind as to why Leon only seems to grow in reputation as the years go by.

Matt's Thoughts: Young Natalie Portman is a creepy monster child, and I do not care for her lustfulness towards grown men. I'm not saying that Leon should have kept his door shut and allowed her to die in the hallway, but maybe Mathilda could have just left the groceries outside his door and walked away, saying she just needed to deliver them. It would have made Leon's life much easier. Also, he wouldn't be dead.

I liked the movie, but, again, my main concern is creepy Natalie Portman child. I understand that she was bored and stupid, but telling the desk clerk that you're the 12-year-old lover of a hitman is not that great an idea, considering he's, you know, a hitman. I just can't figure out why Leon left all of his money to her. She ruined your life, dude.

But maybe that's just my child-hate raging.

Maythew #3: Dead Snow (2009)

* * 1/2
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Starring: Vegar Hoel, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kassen Rosten, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner, Jeppe Laursen, Jenny Skavlan

Rules for fighting Nazi zombies:
1. If you're in a group, don't split up
2. The time to try the cell phone to call for help is before the group splits up and you've accidentally set the cabin you're standing in on fire
3. Try not to set the cabin you're standing in on fire
4. Don't tap someone on the shoulder when they're in the middle of fighting a bunch of zombies (and, as an aside, what are you even doing there - you were supposed to be making your way back to the car!)
5. If your friend is about to be torn limb from limb by a bunch of zombies and you're standing about 20 feet away holding a weapon maybe you should, you know, help him out?

Dead Snow is pretty much what you'd expect from a movie about Nazi zombies, unless of course you're expecting any kind of explanation as to how said Nazis became zombies. Let's just take it for granted that it happening is a perfectly reasonable occurance, shall we? The film opens with a jaunty chase through darkened woods and the gruesome death of a young woman. The woman is (well, was) Sara who was to meet her boyfriend Vegard (Lasse Valdal) and their friends at her family's cabin for a weekend away. The others arrive at the remote locale the following morning, wonder where Sara is, and then get the drinking and debauchery started without her. It isn't until a mysterious man shows up in the middle of the night and informs them of the area's nasty history that they start to worry and shortly after that the bloodshed starts in earnest.

Dead Snow is a horror movie in the tradition of Scream, constructed with a lot of self-referentiality and a tongue in cheek tone. One of the characters, Erlend (Jeppe Laursen), is a movie buff and as a result there are plenty of references to other films in the horror genre as well as other films in general. For the most part, however, the story and the characters are secondary to a series of gory set pieces and the writing and acting is only as good as it needs to be to move you from one bloody scene to another while keeping your interest. It's not great art by any means, but it's a perfectly serviceable zombie movie that doesn't disappoint in terms of violence.

Final Observations/thoughts:
* I was always under the impression that I only needed to worry about zombies biting me - now I've got to worry about them stabbing me to death too?
* the stranger shows up to warn the group about how dangerous the area is and then... spends the night camping out in a tent in the middle of nowhere? Good idea mystery man!
* 10% of the Norweigan language is apparently English.
* Why so much with the eyes? Why???
* Nastiest. Sex scene. Ever.

Matt's Thoughts: ...I just...there's...I don't even...okay, first off, what kind of girl decides that the outhouse is the best place for romance? I mean, seriously, he was wiping his ass with that hand less than a minute before you put it in your mouth! HAVE SOME SELF-RESPECT, WOMAN!

There's not a lot to say about this movie that isn't just a halting string of monosyllabic non-words. This is the only zombie movie I've seen where no one gets eaten by the monsters, they just get torn apart and then the zombies play with their organs. They didn't even want to eat brains, they just wanted their gold back. I mean...they could have just asked, right?

And these friends are very unhelpful in horrendous situations. I mean, when you accidentally hatchet your girlfriend's neck, you could, y'know...put some pressure on the wound instead of just watching her die. So, I'm kind of glad that the zombies won in the end, because...these people didn't really deserve to survive.

This is the kind of movie that I'll suggest to watch with friends just to see their reactions.

Maythew #2: Big Fish (2003)

* * *
Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Billy Crudup, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter

If you think of Tim Burton's films as the cinematic equivalent of the Munster family, then surely Big Fish is the Marilyn of the group. Quirky but much more gently so than the rest of Burton's output, the film is something of a departure for the director, who really seems to be reigning himself in here. For the most part it works, though I don't think it quite achieves its ambitions.

Big Fish tells the story of a father (Albert Finney), his son (Billy Crudup), and the stories that stand between them. The son, Will, has grown up to be resentful of his father's storytelling abilities and feels marginalized amongst the large cast of bizarre and fanciful characters in his father's narrative. The father, Ed, insists that his stories are true and has no qualms about telling them over and over again. Now the father is dying and the son wants to seize his last opportunity to really get to know him, to know the truth behind his tall tales.

The flashback scenes, in which Ed is played by Ewen McGregor, unfold in episodic form, detailing his many adventures. He leaves his small town in the company of Karl (Matthew McGrory), a giant, stumbles into a utopia in the middle of the woods, meets his soulmate, joins the circus, goes missing in Korea and makes his way back with a set of conjoined twins, accidentally gets involved in a bank robbery, and so on. Will doesn't believe any of this but slowly finds evidence that, at the very least, his father's stories aren't complete fabrications. The line between truth and fiction becomes blurrier and blurrier until it seems that one can no longer exists without the other. As Will states at the end: "A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him and in that way he becomes immortal."

Based on the novel by Daniel Wallace, Big Fish is a charming movie but one that doesn't entirely work - or, at lest, doesn't work in the way that it wants you to think that it works. It is visually sumptuous and its exploration of the art of constructing a story is well done, but the relationships that should make up the heart of the film get short shrift. Except for Ed, the characters are secondary to the stories rather than the stories being used as a means of developing the characters. As a result the ending doesn't have quite the emotional punch that it could and the film itself doesn't resonate that much.

Matt's Thoughts: I really want to like this picture, but there's just something about it that I can't quite identify that's putting me off. I think that part of the problem is the fairytale aspect of the plot. We're lead to believe, at the beginning, that Edward is just fabricating insane lies, but it's when Sandra confirms that he had gotten lost during the war that we begin to think otherwise. It's only a little later when William is cleaning the pool and the big fish surfaces in the water, that he has this moment of realization that either his father has been telling the truth all these years, or that he has started hallucinating. The truth seems confirmed later still when Helena Bonham-Carter tells a story involving the giant tilting her house back to its original position.

It's the fact that, as the film closes, we're told that he was, indeed, exaggerating his tales for entertainment purposes, that you wonder if Helena's story was truly as majestic as it appeared, or if William had just exaggerated it in his mind's eye to fit it into the mold of his father's usual stories.

I think my problem is that I wanted it to be all or nothing: either full-out fairytale, or just insane lie after insane lie. But I can't really fault the movie for this, because, at it's core, it's the tale of a father and son; like Field of Dreams, but with fewer dead baseball players.

I didn't hate the movie, I just didn't love it either. But that might be because I find Miley Cyrus kind of irritating; although, in this role, she was still Destiny Cyrus...which is kind of more irritating.

Maythew #1: The House Bunny (2008)

* * *
Director: Fred Wolf
Starring: Anna Faris

If it accomplishes nothing else, The House Bunny begs the question of why Anna Faris isn't in more movies. She is a singularly delightful screen presence who has the ability to make even a terrible movie kind of worth seeing just because she's in it. The House Bunny is by no means high art, but it was much better than I was expecting and offers a nice showcase for Faris' considerable comic talents.

Faris stars as Shelley and explains in an opening monologue that her life has been exactly like a fairytale "only vastly different." An orphan who has never felt like she particularly belonged anywhere, Shelley eventually finds a home in the Playboy mansion, where everybody loves her except for one Playmate who totally wants to be rid of her. When Shelley turns 27, she's unceremoniously kicked out of the mansion and wanders aimlessly before ending up on a college campus and getting the idea that she could become housemother to one of the sororities.

The sorority in need of a housemother is Zeta, which is full of misfits and on the verge of losing its charter because they never have any pledges. Natalie (Emma Stone), the leader of the Zetas, argues that if Shelley can help them become more popular, they might be able to save the house and the others - including ultra feminist Mona (Kat Dennings), pregnant Harmony (Katherine McPhee), and back brace wearing Joanne (Rumer Willis) - reluctantly agree to give her a shot. Shelley teaches them how to throw great parties and attract boys and when Shelley meets Oliver (Colin Hanks), the girls show her how to attract him with her brains rather than her body.

The screenplay by Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz, who also wrote Legally Blonde and The Ugly Truth, is pretty weak and derivative. There are two mean girl/villain subplots that never really get off the ground because the film just doesn't seem that interested in them, the third act is a mess of quick reversals and changes of heart, and the middle section of the film is essentially a series of montages strung together by brief, plot-forwarding scenes. And yet... I enjoyed it despite these many, many flaws. I laughed a lot during this movie, particularly at the running joke of Shelley's trick for remembering people's names, which is all I will be able to think about whenever I meet new people from now on. Like it's protagonist, The House Bunny is dumb but absolutely endearing.

Matt's Thoughts: Barring the Scary Movie series, Anna Faris can do no wrong. A lesser actress might come across as mentally challenged in the role of Shelley, but Faris's comedic timing really saves the character.

While the plot is...obvious, and the B-plot involving Pooter's shenanigans at the Playboy Mansion was cut from the final film, I love this movie beyond words. Admittedly, I may not have the most cultured taste when it comes to cinematic masterpieces.

I do feel that the movie could have done more with the idea of changing one's-self to fit in among the masses. While Shelley's attempt to give the sorority a makeover in both style and personality is shown, at first, as an utterly positive situation, it's nice to see that the script at least attempted to show the error of her ways. On the other hand, Shelley is also given a slight makeover when she tries to become smarter to win the heart of a man. Because Shelley is the main character, and the focal point of the film, her makeover is the message the audience shall receive, and the end result is that Oliver is unimpressed by her attempts to grow wiser, and much preferred her when she was just a lovable moron. That's pretty much how I feel about this movie, too. It's stupid, but that's kind of why I love it.

Introducing "Maythew"

So here's the deal: my brother, Matt, has apparently decided that he should be in charge of picking some of the movies I watch in May and against my better judgment, I've agreed to let him pick 10 movies for us to watch together and review throughout the month. To his credit, the list he gave me was nowhere near as horrifying as I was expecting and he showed a great deal of restraint by leaving off Theodore Rex, a film neither have ever seen but which we talk about a lot. In case you're wondering, Theodore Rex is a film set in the future, starring Whoopi Goldberg as a cop whose partner is... a talking dinosaur. Yes, that really happened. Here's proof:



... Anyway, Maythew kicks off on Wednesday with his first movie pick.