My Review: Gimme Shelter (5/10)

"I'm just asking you for a little time."

Vanessa Hudgens' latest film, Gimme Shelter, is based on an inspiring true story in which she plays a pregnant teenager named Apple, who has been abused and felt unwanted all her life. I'm sure the true story is an inspiring one, and I admire Apple's strength to continue fighting despite all the hardships she went through. I also admire those people who took her in and helped her, but just because the real life story is inspiring that doesn't mean I enjoyed this film. The story has several flaws and feels very manipulative. It never felt authentic and I really had a hard time believing Hudgens' performance. An inspirational film should try to be less manipulative and feel more authentic and real, but the characters in this film never felt real. The dialogue in the film wa weak and everything felt rushed in such a way that there was no time to delve into what led to some of the characters changes in behaviors. It seemed like director, Ron Krauss, was rushing the story to its feel good ending without really stopping to analyze the pain and hardships Apple went through. These films are usually hard to make and very few are able to succeed in feeling authentic and this wasn't the exception. I wasn't sold by Hudgens' performance and that also hurt my appreciation for the film. It's a film with good intentions and an inspiring tale, but they failed to transmit it in a compelling way.

Brendan Fraser plays Apple's father who she has never met because he was only 19 years old when he left her mother, June (played by Rosario Dawson) pregnant. June hasn't been a good mother figure for Apple as she spends her time getting high so Apple has been in and out of shelters and foster care all her life. She has been abused several times, so she finally decides to leave her violent mother and find her dad. She finds him and discovers he's a big shot in Wall Street. Stephanie Szostak plays his wife and together they have two young children. They take Apple in, but have trouble coping with the fact she is pregnant. When they try to convince her to have an abortion, Apple is back in the streets again. After an accident, a nice Priest (James Earl Jones) visits her and convinces her to go to a shelter run by a nun named Kathy (Ann Dowd) who specializes in treating pregnant teenagers. This is where Apple finds a loving family for the first time in her life. The performances in this film were all hurt by the weak script. I didn't understand Fraser's character very well either and the story failed to transmit why he and his wife had a change of heart. Ann Dowd plays a very different character here than the one she does in The Leftovers so it was nice to see her in a much friendlier role. Rosario Dawson was convincing as a junky and abusive mother. There is not much more I can say about this film, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't good either.

My Review: R.I.P.D. (3/10)

"Until they pop, they look like regular people, so no one except us knows they're monsters inside."

The trailers made me think RIPD could be the MIB of this generation, but this film is nowhere near it. The comedy never delivers much laughs and the action scenes were mind numbing. RIPD is almost so bad that it is good, but it doesn't quite reach that level either. Director, Robert Schwentke (Flightplan, The Time Traveler's Wife, and RED), failed to bring Peter M Lenkov's Dark Horse comic to the big screen despite having Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds in the lead roles. These are two actors I really enjoy watching on screen, but they have made some terrible movies in the past as well. I haven't seen Reynolds in The Green Lantern, but this is probably on that same level. For Bridges this is probably by far his worst film although some people enjoyed his performance. He seemed to be making fun of his own performance in True Grit. The story was a little too wacky for my taste and the characters were all formulaic. We've seen these partners in hundreds of other films who are forced to work together but eventually grow on each other despite their differences. There are few surprises in this buddy comedy, which easily makes it one of the worst Summer movies of 2013. 

I will try my best to explain this whacky plot. Nick (Ryan Reynolds) is a Boston cop who is murdered by his partner, Hayes (Kevin Bacon). Upon his death he is recruited by the Rest in Peace Department. Proctor (Mary Louise Parker) explains to Nick what his new role is and introduces him to his partner, Roy (Jeff Bridges) a veteran in the force who has been dead since the 1800's, which explains his Wild West cowboy looks. The RIPD is responsible for hunting down dead souls who have escaped judgement and refused to leave the living world. Their job is to hunt them down and bring them back for judgement. These souls are disguised as regular people, but Roy teaches Nick how to discover and reveal their monstrous side with some Indian food. Nick and Roy aren't seen in the living world as their normal selves, they have avatars so no one they knew in their past lives can recognize them. Roy is a beautiful blonde (Marisa Miller), while Nick is given the body of a middle aged Chinese man (James Hong). This prevents Nick from making any contact with his widowed wife, Julia (Stephanie Szostak), whom he desperately wants to reach. Nick and Roy uncover an apocalyptic plot and will be forced to stop the monsters responsible before they achieve their goal. They will have to leave their differences behind and work as a team.

I feel like this is just way too much writing for such a dumb and mind numbing movie, but I can't quite figure out how the producers were willing to spend over 130 million dollars in this film without trying to come up with a better script. The villains in RIPD look way too cartoonish and the action scenes are extremely over the top. The funniest moments in RIPD have to do with the revelation of Nick and Roy's avatar bodies. The only problem is that you can simply watch it in the trailers and avoid seeing this movie. RIPD could've been executed better by a more talented director. I could forgive the stupid plot if the characters were better developed, but not even the talented actors could engage the audience with the material they were given. RIPD is one of those movies that you don't even worry about trying to get your time and money back; you simply hope that you can forget all about it and erase those cheesy images and dialogues from your head.

My Review: Dinner for Schmucks (5/10)

¨Vincent Van Gogh: everyone said to him, you can’t be a great painter, you only have one ear. And you know what he said? I can’t hear you.¨

I was expecting great things from this slapstick comedy that featured some of today`s best and funniest comedians, but the truth of the matter was that I left disappointed because it was painful to watch at times. Surprisingly despite starring Steve Carell and Paul Rudd there are very few funny scenes. Not even Zach Galifianakis was able to save the movie. All these actors have made much better films in the past and they usually are reliable actors, but this time around they failed due to a very weak screenplay. The movie was actually based on a 1998 French film named Le Diner de Cons and the screenplay was adapted by David Guion and Michael Handelman. Together with director Jay Roach (Austin Powers and Meet the Parents) they managed to do the impossible: turn these hilarious actors into your average wannabe comedians. There is no other reasonable explanation as to why this comedy didn’t work. They merely managed to create very uncomfortable situations and ridiculous characters. The moral of the story seems to be telling us how evil these men are who simply invite the most idiotic guests for dinner just to have a good time, but at the same time that is exactly what we are supposed to be laughing at. So they seem to be pointing at us and making us realize how wrong it is for the businessmen to make fun of these characters, but at the same time we are supposed to be laughing at them for being so stupid. Talk about being hypocritical this is number one.

Tim (Paul Rudd) is an executive who is working his way up in the equity firm. One of the top employees has been fired so Tim finds the opportunity to climb the corporate ladder. His boss Lance (Bruce Greenwood) is impressed by Tim`s new ideas and offers him the opportunity to replace the fired Jacobson, but first he will have to find the most idiotic person he can find and invite him for a monthly dinner he and his colleagues share called ¨dinner for idiots.¨ Tim knows this is his chance to impress his boss although he feels morally wrong about making fun of other people. Tim accidently runs into an IRS employee named Barry (Steve Carell) who happens to have a hobby: creating mouseterpieces (he imitates famous works of art with stuffed dead mice). Tim knows Barry is the perfect candidate for this dinner so he decides to invite him. Big mistake; Barry ends up pretty much stalking Tim and following him everywhere and at the same time destroying everything around him, including his relationship with his long time girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak). Julie, who works for an egocentric artist named Kieran (Jemaine Clement), is a very sweet girl, but when she finds out about the dinner she gets in a big fight with Tim. The situation gets worse thanks to a couple of mix ups with Barry and Tim`s life begins to go downhill.

I kept on waiting for the comedy to begin, but as the movie progressed I kept on finding it more and more mean-spirited up to the very end when the actual dinner takes place. The situations just kept on getting more and more awkward kind of in the same way Meet the Parents did, except this time without the comedy. It was hard to root for any of the characters because they were just poorly developed. Rudd seemed like a nice guy, but he would do anything to move up the corporate ladder and get the promotion, Carell was just too annoying and overly characterized to sympathize with, and Galifianakis was perhaps the funniest in the film but had very little screen time. Szostak was the only character I really liked, but she deserved much better than Rudd. By the end of the film I really didn’t care much what happened to any of them. The movie just ended up building a lot of unwanted tension without ever being funny. The screenwriters and director just went way too far out with Carell`s character and it was impossible to sympathize with him. They missed the mark by making his character really unlikeable and irritating. I’m always amused as to how these doomed characters always find some sort of enlightenment near the end of the film and somehow save the day. It`s as if Carell`s character is a completely different person at the end in order for everything to fit in its place. This is a forgettable film and another remake gone bad: definitely worth a skip.

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