Unfinished Business (3/10): Dumb and Dumber Eurotrip.

“Hello, I’m Mike Pancake.”

This quote is just one example of how uninspired the screenwriter was at the moment of writing the script for Unfinished Business. Of course he followed it up by making several breakfast references, but none of the jokes were actually funny. It’s a shame because Ken Scott had a stronger cast to work with here than in his previous collaboration with Vince Vaughn, Delivery Man, a film I didn’t really like but that I didn’t dislike either. I’d rather sit through that movie than watch Unfinished Business because this was incredibly dull, the jokes were lame, and the story was completely unfocused and all over the place. Delivery Man is a masterpiece next to Unfinished Business. It seemed like screenwriter Steve Conrad thought about several funny scenes he could include in a movie like having Vince Vaughn run in his wife’s jogging clothes, but he didn’t worry about giving any reasonable explanation for the scene other than having his young daughter confusing her mom’s clothes with his (like if that were a possibility). Actually the entire subplot with Vaughn’s family is unnecessary and shouldn’t have been included because it felt completely out of place. I’ve read some positive reviews and I respect them, but I honestly didn’t find this film funny and thought that it was a waste of a talented cast. My greatest problem was the lazy writing, the forced jokes and the unfocused story. 

In Vince Vaghn’s latest bromantic comedy he plays Dan Trunkman, a salesman for a big company who decides to quit and start his own small business after discussing with his boss, Chuck Portnoy (Sienna Miller). He offers the rest of his fellow co-workers the opportunity to come work with him and the only ones who follow him are Timothy (Tom Wilkinson) and Mike (Dave Franco). The only reason they do is because Timothy has been forced to retire because of his age and Mike was actually interviewing for a position which he didn’t get. Tom immediately invites them to Dunkin Donuts to plan their strategy. A year goes by and the three of them are still having their meetings there, but they are about to close their first important deal. In order to do so they must travel to Germany where they will meet Jim Spinch (James Marsden) and his assistant Bill (Nick Frost) to shake hands and seal the deal. Unfortunately the sale isn’t as closed as they had anticipated because Chuck has been interfering and trying to seal another deal with them. In the meantime, Dan’s kids Paul and Bess (Britton Sear and Ella Anderson), are having trouble in school and his extremely supportive wife, Susan (June Diane Raphael) needs his attention. Dan will have to try to balance his family life and his business, but things get extremely wacky in Europe where a sex fetish event is taking place at the same time as a global economic summit.

I honestly have no idea what Dave Franco was thinking when he decided to play this character, but I guess he never considered taking Robert Downey Jr’s advice of never going full retard in a movie. It’s hard to understand what he’s saying at times as he doesn’t speak out much and seems to mumble and make up words. Vaughn is playing the same character he has been playing in his latest comedies and I’m glad he is finally going to be doing something different in the upcoming True Detective series because he needs to try to break out from that tired formula which worked wonders for him in Wedding Crashers, but has gotten old now. Tom Wilkerson is a terrific actor, but his character isn’t funny at all. He plays an old man who is looking forward to getting divorced and having sex for the first time with someone he can love. Not even the reliable Nick Frost is given decent material to work with. The film is only 90 minutes long but you feel every second of them because most of the jokes miss the mark. The film is also incredibly unbalanced being on the one hand an irreverent business road trip and on the other trying to deliver an anti-bullying message which is never actually resolved and ends up being an afterthought. 

My Review: Neighbors (5/10)

"Do you think maybe we've gone too far? I'm a child of divorce and I sympathize with them."

I don't think director Nicholas Stoller nor screenwriters Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien went too far with the comedy in Neighbors considering it felt like a rehash of hundreds of raunchy comedies we've seen before. I was expecting a much funnier film considering Neighbors has a talented cast and it was warmly received by critics and audiences alike. Unfortunately, I laughed very little and was disappointed with how un-engaging the story and characters were. Seth Rogen is a hilarious guy, but there have been some rare occasions were I really didn't find him all that funny, and that was the case with Neighbors. Surprisingly I did enjoy Zac Efron and Rose Byrne's performances. They had the funniest scenes in the movie, but I just felt those scenes were too far spread out and that as a cohesive whole the film failed. I enjoyed Nick Stoller's previous comedies although I think his best one was his feature debut, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. With Neighbors, Stoller is taking a step down and giving us a comedy with no emotional attachment or interesting characters. Neighbors has plenty of obscene and vulgar humor, but I just didn't find it funny.

Neighbors centers on a couple who have just moved to a quiet neighborhood with their young baby girl. Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Rose Byrne) are enjoying their married life and trying to adapt to grown up life now that they have a child. Things take an unexpected turn when frat brothers move in to the house next door. Teddy (Zac Efron) is the president of the fraternity and his right hand man is Pete (Dave Franco). At first Mac and Kelly warmly welcome the frat brothers trying to act as the friendly and cool young couple. They even accept an invitation to party with them, but after several nights of heavy partying and loud music, Mac and Kelly can't take it anymore. They try to politely ask for the guys to turn the volume down, and when their request is ignored they call the police. Feeling betrayed for being rated on, the frat brothers declare war on the young couple and pretty soon one cruel act is responded by another as they go back and forth trying to outdo one another. 

The comedy didn't really work for me although I have to acknowledge some scenes that I found hilarious. My favorite scene was the one in which the frat brothers were having a Robert de Niro themed party, quoting some of his famous lines ("You talking to me?" "You've broken the circle of trust") from his movies. The closing scene at Abercrombie and Fitch was also hilarious, although I heard it was unscripted. There are few loose scenes like these that save the film, but as a whole I just found it boring and uninspiring. Rose Byrne is the real star of this film and she does steal every scene she's in, but it just wasn't enough for me. 

My Review: Now You See Me (4/10)

"First rule of magic: always be the smartest person in the room."

The latest film directed by Louis Leterrier (Clash of the Titans, The Incredible Hulk, and The Transporter) is probably one of his weakest efforts, only competing against Clash of the Titans. If the first rule in magic means you have to be the smartest person in the room, then the first rule to enjoy this movie is that you have to be one of the dumbest persons in the audience. The movie tries to make us think that the more we look the less we will see, kind of like telling us the more we think about the movie the less we will enjoy it. So it is trying to keep our mind centered on the nice tricks and great cast, but trying to keep us away from thinking too deeply at the absurdity of the plot. Now You See Me is all an illusion and the more you think about it the more you know that the tricks and twists are a bit beyond belief. It is a pity because I really like this cast (seeing Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine back together after the Batman trilogy was something I was looking forward too) and they aren't bad in this movie either, but the problem I had with it was that the screenplay was pretty weak and the tricks were unbelievable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against smart heist films that use magic and illusions, but this doesn't even deserve to stand against other films in the genre such as Oceans 11 that accomplishes this feat way better than this. The characters could have been developed so much better, but the film introduces them in such a lazy way that I didn't really get emotionally involved with them. I know all the movies don't have to be smart and believable, but at least those that aren't manage to engage and involve the audience in an entertaining way. I didn't feel that way about this silly movie. I didn't feel tricked either, I felt cheated on with such dumb twists. 

The film begins by introducing us to four different magicians that are all being recruited by some sort of mystery man. First there is J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) who is doing a classic card trick in front of an audience in the street and picking up a girl while he's at it. Then there is Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), who is hypnotizing a woman while blackmailing her husband. The third magician is Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) who is performing a dangerous stunt involving a pool and piranhas. And finally there is Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) a con-magician who distracts people with cheap tricks while stealing from them. These four magicians are all recruited by a mysterious man who gives them a blue print of some great tricks they can work on together. The film then jumps a year forward where we see these four magicians working on an act together in Las Vegas. They are known as the Four Horseman and they are about to pull a live bank robbery from the stage. This is where the FBI comes in as lead investigator Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) begins to pursue the case along with his assigned partner from Interpol, Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent). With no definite proof to arrest these magicians they must work together before their next heist takes place. For this, they enlist the help of Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), a profesional illusion exposer and former magician himself. But be warned, nothing is what it seems in this film as the twists begin.

I had high expectations for Now You See Me because it had an interesting premise and the cast involved was excellent. They are all really talented and honestly they did a good job with the weak script they had to work with. My biggest issue was the story which didn't make much sense. I won't mention the issues because I don't want to give away spoilers, but everything pretty much seemed false. I didn't believe the twists and turns the film took. I also thought the entire hypnotic sequences were kind of a cheat to explain how they could perform most of the tricks. The film really defies logic and I had a problem with that considering I never got emotionally involved with the characters in order to forgive those faults and simply enjoy the movie for what it is. I can forgive films that don't make sense as long as the audience is allowed to have fun with the premise and be entertained with what is going on, but that didn't happen with me. I won't be recommending Now You See Me to anyone, but I know some fans will have a good time thanks to the illusions and tricks that the director plays on us.

My Review: Warm Bodies (8/10)

¨You miss him…like a boyfriend…you miss your boyfriend? ¨

Jonathan Levine surprised me a couple of years ago with 50/50 and now he tries his luck on a very different genre in Warm Bodies. With the success of The Walking Dead television series the zombie genre is probably as popular as ever, but Levine does something different by turning things around. Instead of having us run away from the incoming brain eating zombies, he puts us inside their heads as we get to see things through a zombie´s point of view. The main character´s name is R and he is a zombie. We get to experience everything he is thinking as he narrates the film. This is probably what makes this film so fun and entertaining because we get to see this misunderstood zombie grunt and walk around so slowly while his mind processes things so quickly. Zombieland had already broken the predictability of the zombie genre by making fun of the premise, but Warm Bodies takes a different turn in that it makes the zombie one of the protagonists. These zombie eating villains might have a heart after all and we get to experience it in this romantic comedy. Nicholas Hoult, who is also the star of Jack the Giant Slayer, plays the leading zombie in a very funny way using a lot of physical comedy. The fact that he is given some very clever lines also helps this film. The screenplay was adapted by Levine himself from Isaac Marion´s novel and it is very loosely based on the Rome and Juliet story (the balcony scene pays homage to that Shakespearean play). Teresa Palmer plays his human love interest with whom she shares great chemistry. She is very talented and the two make this film work thanks to some very funny moments and a touch of romance. Warm Bodies is really well paced and has a little bit of everything, combining comedy with romance and action. It is probably my favorite film of the year so far.

In a near future zombies are now in the top of the food chain, and humans have been reduced to live inside closed walls. R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie living inside an airport with a bunch of other zombies. He seems to be a little tired of his daily routines which involve walking slowly around the airport, spending some time sitting around with his best friend M (Rob Corddry) just grunting at each other, and eventually going out to find something to eat. They have to eat, although they do feel guilty about it. R claims that eating a human brain is what makes them feel alive again as they can access the memories of that person. It is as close to feeling alive as they can ever get. One day they encounter a group of humans who are out looking for pharmaceutics. Julie (Teresa Palmer) is one of the members of the expedition along with her boyfriend, Perry (Dave Franco), and friend Nora (Analeigh Tipton). R ends up eating Perry and gets access to his memories. He ends up falling in love with Julie and decides to protect her from other zombies by spreading some blood over her face and asking her to remain still. R takes her to an abandoned plane inside the airport which he uses as his personal room full of items he collects including some records. R is a different kind of zombie, but this new connection he feels for Julie has made him feel more alive than ever. Not only R begins to feel alive again, but some of the other zombies seem to slowly be recovering their humanity. The problem is that Julie´s father, Grigio (John Malkovich), is the general behind the closed walls that is determined to exterminate all the zombies and they are running out of time.  

The film is perfectly well paced with some memorably funny and clever moments. The film is funny, romantic, and lots of fun. Levine seems to know his craft and he uses this well known genre as a sort of parable to how through all the new technology we seem to be living as zombies and losing real human connections with each other. This film reminds us of the power of human connection, but that is just one point that Levine tries to get across without seeming to preachy. The film has some very funny performances and some great moments as well. This isn’t a perfect film, and I probably enjoyed Zombieland a little more, but it definitely is a new spin on the zombie genre and it really worked for me. I have to give this movie a lot of credit for being so original and taking us inside the rotten mind of a brain eating zombie. Levine once again takes a huge risk here, but it really pays off nicely. One would never expect to be rooting for a lead character like this but you can´t help but sympathize for this guy. I had a great time with Warm Bodies!

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My Review: 21 Jump Street (8/10)

¨You know what they do to handsome guy like me in prison. It rhymes with grape.¨

I have to admit I knew nothing about the TV series before watching this movie, but I did find it to be one of the best comedies of the year. Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill were great together in this buddy comedy and the dialogue in this film was extremely funny although very vulgar (as Jonah Hill always is). 21 Jump Street, directed by the duo that brought us Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Phil Lord and Chris Miller, is a very entertaining and funny film. It had me laughing from the very beginning. I can’t say if it is anything like the series was because this is a buddy comedy and I understand the series was more of a mystery action drama. I guess if you were a fan of the series you might enjoy some of the references and cameos that showed up in the movie, but it isn`t important to know anything about it because 21 Jump Street works on its own as a very funny comedy. The script written by Michael Bacall (Scott Pilgrim vs. the Word) and Jonah Hill is very slick and funny. There are plenty of smart and funny dialogues throughout the film. I was entertained from the very beginning all the way to the very end so I absolutely recommend this movie.

Schmidt (Jonah Hill) was nothing like Jenko (Channing Tatum) in High School, Schmidt was more of a nerd while Jenko was the popular jock. Despite not being friends in school, they meet at the Police Academy and decide they can help each other out: Schmidt is good with the written test, but lacks the physical strength, while Jenko is in perfect shape but can`t pass the exams. The two help each other out and become best friends before graduating as police officers. Life in uniforms isn’t as full of action as they expected as they are assigned to guard a local park in their bikes. They are finally given the opportunity to go undercover at a local High School where a dangerous synthetic drug is being dealt with. They are only chosen because both still look young so Schmidt and Jenko find themselves back in school. Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) assigns them with their new identities and Schmidt is sent back to his parent’s house along with his new brother Jenko. At school their identities are swapped and Jenko ends up with the nerds studying advanced chemistry while Schmidt has to deal with acting lessons and sports. Somehow Schmidt begins to enjoy life as one of the popular kids in the group, while Jenko discovers what it`s like not to be popular anymore. Schmidt befriends Eric (Dave Franco) right away as he discovers he is one of the dealers, and also falls for Molly (Brie Larson) his acting partner.

The movie works really well thanks to the great chemistry between Tatum and Hill, and thanks to the smart script. I wasn`t really expecting this movie to be as good as it was so I was really surprised with how much I ended up enjoying this film. I left the theater with a big smile on my face. It is one of those movies which you won`t have any trouble going to see it again with other friends who haven’t seen it. The cameos in this film are also pretty great and I enjoyed each one of them. The movie also makes some funny references about itself so it actually acknowledges some of the ridiculousness of its plot which actually makes it even funnier. There is one scene where they are ripping off how movies from the 80`s are being recycled now due to lack of fresh ideas. 21 Jump Street isn`t afraid of laughing at itself and its silly premise, which ends up making the film even better. This is one of the surprise comedies of 2012, and I hope plenty of more come out this year.

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