Review – Date Night
When Shawn Levy landed on Hollywood with Just Married – tie for #1 on my Worst of 2003 list – he fit right in with a parade of truly terrible film directors who Fox continued to dredge up to take completely cookie cutter scripts and to add stylistic incoherence to the mess.
But the movie was a hit. And then, so was Cheaper By The Dozen, which was similarly shot as though by a college freshman with a video camera. This guy must be the greatest charmer in history in person… funny and clever. Steve Martin insisted upon him for The Pink Panther… which also became a hit after many re-edits and re-shoots.
And then, Night At The Museum… another major film comedian… another very high concept movie… and another piece of absolute shite directing work. And a massive hit.
I don’t recall any director this bad at the basic job of setting up shots and making the most of what is happening on the set having this long a run of big hits. Rob Cohen had misses. And comparing this guy to Cohen seems a shame, as Levy doesn’t seem to show any of Cohen’s unearned arrogance.
I was really hoping that Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, as likable a pairing as you could put on a screen, would get a stronger Shawn Levy after Levy had been behind the camera for two really big studio movies. But alas…
The script is okay. A bit of a mess. It is pure 70s textbook character comedy. Landis, Reitman, Oz… all did it way better than this. Fish bored in water, fish out of water, fish in trouble, fish exceeds expectations of self, fish can’t wait to get back in the tank for a happy life… with a twinkle in the eye, know that there is still magic possible.
What was sooooo frustrating about the film is that it could not have been more loaded. Besides the leads, James Franco and Mia Kunis as a cleverly-conceived couple, Wahlberg in a great cameo opportunity, William Fichtner and Ray Liotta as bad guys… and throwaway appearances by Taraji P Henson (Stunningly… STUNNINGLY bad role for a recent Oscar nominee), Mark Ruffalo, and Kristin Wiig. And on a side note, Levy found every wrong note for Olivia Munn to play, obviously casting her for her following, then delivering none of her natural charm or sexiness when all there had to be was a minor re-write.
But whenever I actually laughed or started getting happy about the film, this now-veteran studio film director started knocking out single-single-single-single sequences like a first-time filmmaker, losing all the juicy goodness of some of these comic performances. Every time the idea of the film was about to start flying… clunk, clunk, clunk.
Even in the third act, when there is a big stunt, it take s a second – in a long sequence – to adjust to the fact that this is happening in a movie where it doesn’t much seem to fit. But ok… let’s let the movie be what it wants to be. But then, this extravagance – which reminded me a lot of The Blue Bros… except that as wild as it was in TBB, it was much better – which offered the promise of being goofy fun was just badly done, except for the performance of J.B. Smoove, who was funnier than the direction deserved.
Look… not the worst movie in history. Not very good, but there are still a bunch of actors you really like. I wouldn’t tell people to avoid it at all costs.
But what sticks with me is that Levy is, simply, a remarkably untalented director when it comes to capturing what is happening on his sets. He must – right? – create a great relationship with actors. And they seem to be doing good work. But if it’s not on the screen, it doesn’t exist.
Few things frustrate me more in a movie theater than potential wasted. And Shawn Levy is the ultimate in that for me right now.
Heh… Whoa, David, way to blow ALL the surprise cameos; Had no idea half those people were in it (Wahlberg, Franco and Kunis are all over the ads, but the rest?)
Fey and Carell are funny and everyone in America will see this this weekend (especially if they’re dragged by wives who can’t get enough of Jim and Pam and NBC in general); Funny how they’re apparently tried to counter two leads who SCREAM television by packing the entire supporting cast with legitimate movie stars.
The equivalent would be a 1987 MAJOR RELEASE that would’ve starred Harry Anderson and Meredith Baxter-Birney, but with cameos by Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore and Denzel Washington.
Lex, they’re all mentioned on IMDb and nobody has made a single reference to “keeping the cameos a secret” (not like Zombieland for instance).
David, I agree with you so much. Shawn Levy has all those travesties and yet he still makes hit movies out them. How? Carell and Fey are the only reason to see Date Night. Their shticks go well together and it’s obvious that some of the funniest parts are adlibbed (the blooper credits prove as much), although somebody needs to give Franco and Kunis their own movie. Their spaced out lovers were by far the highlight.
I gotta say though, I wrote in my review that it “feels like it has come straight out of 1987 and would star Bruce Willis and Shelley Long at the height of their own sitcom fame.”
And not that DP or anyone will care, but I think David’s traditionally too rough on Rob Cohen. Obviously he makes the kind of movies I’m predisposed toward liking anyway, but “Fast and the Furious” and “XXX” are very well-made B-movies; “Daylight,” “Dragonheart,” “Dragon,” and even “The Skulls” are slicked and polished productions. I could even work up a half-assed defense of “Stealth,” which is junky and fun (and Bieltastic.)
If you don’t like him because he seems arrogant or toolish, that’s one thing, but he’s not an inept filmmaker, and certainly not as vanilla as Shawn Levy.
Sorry Lex. Dave is too nice on Rob Cohen.
Cohen is easily the biggest hack working director to come down the Hollywood pipeline in decades. Dragon was okay but virtually everything else he has touched is horrible. “Slick” and “polished” alone (even though I’d argue that his film aren’t very slick or polished) do not make a movie good.
Daylight is still one of the very worst films I’ve ever seen.
Cohen makes bad movies awesomely, which is better than being Shawn Levy.
I like Fey and Carell, but I’m really getting sick of them. I feel like Carell is the new Ben Stiller and in six releases a year in addition to his sitcom. Fey isn’t in as many movies but between her show and the media adoration she also feels somewhat ubiquitous. I for one will not be paying to see Date Night in theaters. Not when I can see those characters every Thursday night on NBC.
From Roger Ebert’s Weekly Review Email:
“Werner Herzog’s “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done” is a splendid example of a movie not on autopilot. I bore my readers by complaining about how bored I am by formula movies that recycle the same moronic elements.”
This line falls directly below Roger’s very positive, 3.5 star review of Date Night.
We are living in the Age of the Rat(ner). This guy’s success is not surprising at all.
I’d say Cohen is slick and polished, in the most generic way possible. Kind of like big budget tv. His movies aren’t entirely boring, but they’re not exciting or interesting either.
Speaking of tv, maybe Fey screams television but not Carrell, at least to me. I’ve never seen the office, but I have seen many of the thousands of movies he’s apparently made in the last few years. The guy’s a real movie star, even if he’s sort of a lightweight one.
KamikazeCamel’s right about the Willis/Long comparison though. This movie reminds me of “Blind Date.” If I ever saw this (I won’t) it would be for that supporting cast.
I’ve watched The Office (U.S.) since the beginning, so to me Carell is Michael Scott. He screams television. Maybe it’s just me but I feel like I’ve been seeing a whole lot of him lately. He’s funny and I like him, but I also think he’s pretty one-note.
I feel like Carrell is the new Ben Stiller and in six releases a year in addition to his sitcom.
I agree with the sentiment, but according to imdb, this is Carrell’s first on-screen role since 2008’s Get Smart. He starred in two films in 2007, Evan Almighty and Dan in Real Life.
Stiller had the Night at the Museum sequel in 2009 and Tropic Thunder in 2008. I’m not counting the actors’ animated films because they don’t appear on-screen, but I’m sure we saw them doing press. It appears that your fatigue for the actors has been building longer than you realized (time flies). Possibly its their ability to maintain a high profile, despite not being in many movies, that’s wearing out their welcome. Or maybe its the fact that they always play relatively similar characters.
For me Stiller fatigue was in like 2004, which I believe is the year he had six movies released. Right around there anyway. Carell fatigue is because of The Office, Date Night, and now Dinner For Schmucks and Despicable Me, plus 40 Year-Old Virgin being on cable 24/7. Oh, and my son recently watched Horton Hears A Who.
“KamikazeCamel’s right about the Willis/Long comparison though.”
For a second I thought you were referring to Die Hard 4…
“I’ve watched The Office (U.S.) since the beginning, so to me Carell is Michael Scott. He screams television. Maybe it’s just me but I feel like I’ve been seeing a whole lot of him lately. He’s funny and I like him, but I also think he’s pretty one-note.”
But he doesn’t have to be one-note. Just like Ben Stiller gets something like “Greenberg” or “Permanent Midnight” once in a while to remind you that he’s got more up his sleeve than yet another hapless doof, Carrell needs to find something more three dimensional like he did with his character in “Little Miss Sunshine”. Otherwise, yeah, it’s nothing but typecasting with the guy.
I don’t have a problem with Fox making an occasional Shawn Levy movie but they seem to be making NOTHING BUT Shawn Levy movies. He wouldn’t be out of place at the helm of at two thirds of the movies Fox has released in the last two years. They need to reign in the Zany or continue their slow morph into a more violent version of Disney.
Carell and Stiller are Terrence Malick and Daniel Day Lewis, respectively, compared to Kristen Wiig, who somehow manages to find time to do 17 movies a year despite starring on pretty much the most intensive TV show around. I know SNL goes on breaks here and there, but does Wiig just spend May through September doing a new movie every weekend?
Nothing against her, really (though bordering on being one-note of late), but getting into overexposure when a relatively “new” performer has more film credits since 2005 than Tom Cruise has had in his entire career.
Also, speaking of SNL vets and Wiig and Date Night-ish action comedies:
How come MACGRUBER looks like it was shot through a blast furnace? Guess it should be a treat that someone made an SNL comedy that looks vaguely cinematic like a real movie, instead of bright 1.85 pastels, but the “sheen” is so disconcertingly different from the way we’re used to seeing MacGruber, it’s like it’s not even the same character.
Like if they made a big-screen version of “The Office” but had Peter Berg direct it in desaturated green-tinted grain with lots of whoosh-pans and heavy metal cues. I was surprised that the MacGruber director is just one of those SNL writer/Samberg guys, because the “look” to the trailers is totally 1990 Renny Harlin.
Levy is Renoir compared to McG, who has raised ineptitude into a career that refuses to die.
Lex, I’d imagine that 1990 Renny Harlin is more or less exactly what the MacGruber team would want their movie to look like — but yeah, it is a little jarring to see good ol’ Forte (one of my favorite SNL players of the past decade or so) blown up in a big movie-movie sheen. It makes a bit more sense than your Berg-directed Office, though, as obviously they’re spoofing some bygone action cliches along with the MacGyver thing. Also, am I crazy to be dying to see this movie? Because I kind of am.
Wiig can be one-note, certainly — especially on SNL itself, where the writers indulge pretty much any half-assed tic-heavy recurring character she even half-suggests. But I have a good feeling about her MacGruber role, and loved her in Adventureland, cartoonish as she was.
Cadavra, I dunno, McG hasn’t made many movies that are much good (though I really enjoyed the first Charlie’s Angels and half-enjoyed the second one), and he certainly has that awful bright-green-grass, faux-ironic dancing-girls unofficial-fifth-member-of-Sugar-Ray music-video aesthetic, but I don’t get the sense that he’s incompetent so much as has pretty bad taste. Sort of like Michael Bay: his movies are more willfully bad than actually incompetent. I didn’t care much for Terminator: Salvation, but I have to say, there were several reasonably well-directed action sequences in that movie. I don’t get the kind of pure ineptitude that I get from Levy, or Adam Shankman, or Anne Fletcher, or even Todd Phillips. That’s what scares me about Date Night, which I’ll see based on Fey and Carell being a pleasure to watch just about anywhere: the worst fucking directors working in Hollywood not only get by, but seem to actively succeed in the big-studio comedy system.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, Rob Cohen and Brett Ratner are pretty bad, but again, they’re more a case of extremely pedestrian sensibility undermining everything they do than the purest form of incompetence.
I don’t know that Wiig is overexposed..most people wouldn’t know her by name, and a lot of her film appearances can be counted by the minute, on one hand.
The most mystifying thing for me about Rob Cohen is that in interviews, he’s often smart and articulate about art and filmmaking, and then he’ll go off into a ridiculous tangent about how he wanted to make XXX as a ‘cubist film’ and over-cut the action scenes as part of some kind of radical artistic concept. I mean, I guess he’s just ragingly pretentious and deluded, right? He also dresses like the world’s second-most faux-cool hipster poseur (the loathsome Marcus Nispel is #1).
Kristin Wiig will be starring in a rom-com that Universal just greenlit. No title. she co-wrote it. Apatow’s producing. I’m assuming this will be her rise to the top moment…or not. I have a soft spot for Wiig. I first saw her performing at the Groundlings theater in LA back in 2003. She was still part of the “second string” cast, not even joined the main group. And she was hysterical. I can remember specifically some of the improv bits she did and I still laugh.
Her and Bill Hader have the same problem. Their mimicry is so specific and detailed that they really don’t have a personality to shine off. Unlike, say Chevy Chase with Gerald Ford and Dan Akroyd with Jimmy Carter. Yes, funny impressions but we got a sense of the comedians take on them as well.
I don’t trust SXSW hype on anything. Fanboys are easily pleased. So I’m still pretty skeptical on Macgruber.
Cohen’s DVD commentaries are usually good for a laugh for that very reason. Always a bizarre mix of serious industry talk, spinning Eastern philosophy, then pushing-60 Rob saying something like, “The music and this club had to pass muster, ’cause I’m a real connoisseur of the club scene and we needed some dope-ass music like they play when I go to the clubs.”
“I really enjoyed the first Charlie’s Angels and half-enjoyed the second one”
I was the other way around – I thought the first movie wasn’t ridiculous enough to be fully enjoyable. The majority of the stuff was only hair or two over realistic (well, Hollywood’s version of “realistic”) so stuff like Drew dodging a bullet at point blank range felt jarring, like a Jackie Chan cop film suddenly breaking into full-on Crouching Tiger leaping around in trees.
Whereas the second threw itself gleefully into the realm of parody and had a more even tone throughout – even if that tone was “who the hell thought up this shit?”.
By the way, back in 2003 I thought Just Married was too mediocre and inoffensive to qualify as ‘Worst Movie of the Year’. I guess DP and I have different criteria. (I think I would have picked Darkness Falls, Legally Blonde 2, or…Charlie’s Angels 2).
Foamy, I felt more like the usual Hollywood slapdashery somehow resulted in a really fun movie with the first Charlie’s Angels: silly, but just tongue-in-cheek enough to work, with fun performances from the gals, plus a lot of eccentricity on the sidelines with Sam Rockwell and Bill Murray and Crispin Glover. It was like they created the tone of that movie on the fly. Whereas with the second one, while I enjoyed the silliness, felt more like they were consciously trying to imitate that tone, and made something more self-consciously over-the-top. I mean, the first one is plenty ridiculous with a lot of show-offy camera moves and super-saturated colors and slow-mo and all that. Then in the second one, Demi Moore can fly for some reason. I realize it’s probably splitting hairs, but the first feels weirdly effortless (especially for such a troubled production). And Bernie Mac is funny, but I far prefer Bill Murray. (Not really a fair fight; I’d prefer Bill Murray to most other comedians.)
Oh, and just for the record, if we’re talking worst movies of 2003: Dreamcatcher. 2 Fast 2 Furious. House of 1000 Corpses. The Order.
Oh, it’s totally a “your mileage may vary” thing. Sam Rockwell and Bill Murray were definitely better than anything Full Throttle offered, but for me having the seams visible where things have been thrown together is kind of a dealbreaker.
It’s one of the things that made Alice so aggravating for me – the film was presented in such a way that you could almost see the production decisions being made. “Okay, lets fastforward through the Victorian exposition because everyone wants to see Underland. Now lets jump between set pieces so we can introduce the characters. Put in a sequence with the Tweedles being carried off by a bird to show off the 3D…” It broke the immersion so I couldn’t enjoy it simply as a film.
Diaz was way hotter in the second one.
Winner, sequel. I did like that McG recreated the Shining bathroom in the first one, though. Also Jesse’s description of the “green grass, fifth member of Sugar Ray” aesthetic above is Lexian comic gold. GOOD DESCRIPTION.
BUT: House of 1000 Corpses and 2 Fast 2 Furious are borderline-excellent. Dreamcatcher is one of the worst things ever made though. Just Married was so harmless; KUTCHER POWER, and Brittany was adorable in it. Totally innocuous bad movie, no worse than any other generic early-00s Freddie Prinze-level romcom.
Dreamcatcher is one of my favorite movies from that year. It’s The Wicker Man, The Happening, or Battlefield Earth but without nearly as much incompetence.
I see that point… I own it on DVD, actually. It’s entertaining in its awfulness, for sure, but it’s still really, REALLY, insanely, unbelievably fucking bad.
DUDDITS POWER!
Depends on what you mean by ‘bad’. I think a lot of the choices in that movie are intentional, as opposed to the choices in, say, The Happening which are just mind-bogglingly confusing (“Why are you eyein’ my lemon drink?”)
I actually think The Happening and especially Wicker Park are very good, well-thought out movies that are exactly what their directors intended.
Wicker Man is unironically great… I wish it hadn’t become such a stupid Internet meme for easily-amused squares, as it’s certainly of a piece with LaBute’s canon and has a lot of profound things to say about gender relationships and feminism. It is a WORK OF BRILLIANCE.
speaking of wahlberg in comedy mode, the one i’m hanging out for is ‘the other guys’, looks like my cup of silly tea (even tho i’d grown weary of farrel from the looks of the trailer he may have freshened up a bit and snapped out of it). and how nice to see micheal keaton in there, a late in the game MK comeback would be lovely
(like ratner and all his middling ilk, rob cohen is the poster boy for the scourge of movie-making: not incompetence but complete and utter mediocrity)
“Wicker Man is unironically great… I wish it hadn’t become such a stupid Internet meme for easily-amused squares, as it’s certainly of a piece with LaBute’s canon and has a lot of profound things to say about gender relationships and feminism. It is a WORK OF BRILLIANCE.”
that explains a great deal
MIAMI VICE. Season 1. “Evan” – Directed by ROB COHEN. Peter Gabriel opening track “Rhythm of the Heat”. Closing track “Biko”. Crockett Drama + SLOW-MO MAC 10 coolness. Nuff said.
Also, Jeff…
I don’t know that Lawrence Kasdan is a fun or loose enough director for any of the goofy choices to have been wholly intentional. The man made Grand Canyon, after all… The idea that he was being ironic, tongue-in-cheek, or embracing the B-movie nature of the material seems about as likely as his thespian muse Kevin Kline convincingly playing a Latino coke dealer in a Hype Williams movie… I don’t think Kasdan’s wired to be anything but white, milquetoast, and Beverly Hills, so I think it’s his absolute befuddlement at trying to meld his bland propriety with utter lunacy that makes it interesting, NOT any embrace of the pulp disrepute.
I really, really don’t see how The Happening can be taken seriously as anything other than arrogant and misguided on Shyamalan’s part – I can tell that certain scenes in the movie were meant to be funny, like Wahlberg talking to the plant, but other things are obviously meant to be horrifying and ended up ridiculous, like the Youtube video of the guy getting his arms eaten by lions. Not to mention that nobody in that movie speaks like a normal human being.
And The Wicker Man is of a piece with LaBute’s canon, but that doesn’t mean it’s good (indeed, it probably means it’s bad) and again, just has too many bizarre choices that don’t work to be taken seriously as anything other than an amusing failure.
And why on earth did he get to direct Death at an African-American Funeral?
‘miami vice’ was a TV show
The opening scene with the two women on the park bench in THE HAPPENING is one of Shyamalan’s best. Everybody rides that dude because he makes movies that are EARNEST, not ironic, no matter how hard they try to ascribe the latter to his sensibility.
Also: Zooey’s eyes are two pools of beauty.
Lex, I don’t think Kasdan was trying to make a statement or embrace gonzo filmmaking or anything like that. I’m just saying that when I watch that movie, it feels more controlled and deliberately-made than the other movies we’re talking about, which are often just plain confused. Not confusing to the audience, the way a David Lynch movie or Memento might be, but internally confused.
having read Dreamcatcher before seeing the movie, I was very, very curious how they would “translate” some scenes to film…YES, the worst ways possible. I’ve only seen it the once and I want to see it again just to satisfy “was that really in the movie?” urge. I mean, did they really fucking think THAT was going to work?
2003 – Didn’t see Gili, or 2F2F, or League of Extraordinary Gentleman or Charlie’s Angels 2 or How to Lose a guy in 10 days. Did see American Pie 3 (yeesh) and Terminator 3 (dumb). And (i’m sure this will start someone off) The Hulk. I’ve never been to a theater opening night where everyone was so pumped walking in and couldn’t wait to leave by the end of it.
shit I forgot about Masked and Anonymous. It’s just as bad as everyone has said. Horrible.
Lex, that scene in you mentioned, and the later scene where people are stuck in traffic and more Happening happens, are both good scenes. That’s what we call ‘redeeming facets’ in the midst of an otherwise confusing and poorly-thought-out movie.
And everybody rides him because he developed a colossal ego as soon as he became successful.
2003 was a pretty awful year all around, the worst of the ’00s movie-wise and just about every other way. Its ’80s equivalent would be 1987, just an absolute dead zone of horrible music, horrible movies, horrible fashions, and a depressing time all around; Time has been kind to ’87, with its hair-metal kitsch and Secret of My Success/Less Than Zero mentality and stylistics… Maybe someday there’ll be a newfound appreciation for Matrix-produced, Liz Fair-scored, J. Lo-albums-dropping, Rodriego Prieto-lensed, green-tinted super-fucking-boring Master and Commander/Monster-moviegoing indifference…
(Bad Boys 2 and SWAT excepted.)
Oh, now I remember the true worst movie of 2003. Hopscotch mentioned it and it’s the only one on the list made by somebody who posts here (I don’t want to say his name and conjure him up).
And Master and Commander was also one of my absolute favorite movies of that year. Ahem, if I may, Weir power, ahem.
What have you got against Bob Dylan?
Levy’s output reminds me of Tom Shadyac’s, both of which started with modest budgeted comedies and then went very high concept, where the A-list actors and the concepts took care of business. Maybe Levy’s “Dragonfly” and “Evan Almighty” are to come.
The only words I ever spoke to Lawrence Kasdan were “I love GRAND CANYON.”
Kasdan deserves better than to be made fun of, Christian.
It’s been a long time since Kasdan has done something memorable, but the guy has had a light touch at times – I Love You to Death is one of the more underrated of the comedies of the ’90’s. Just a fantastic cast – Tracey Ulman is endearing and River Phoenix and William Hurt have never been funnier.
As for Rob Cohen, no doubt the guy comes off as an arrogant jerk, but he is not a inept director at all – The Fast & the Furious is very well directed B movie action pulp. I was just watching it the other night on BluRay (the DVD), and the movie just has some standout action scenes and fun dialogue. How can you not enjoy that first street race scene and the build-up to it? He also did a really nice job with that Rat Pack movie from the ’90’s.
Except that I actually love GRAND CANYON. One of the most misunderstood, underrated films of the 90’s.
geoff, re: cohen, i actually have a bit of a soft spot for ‘the fast and furious’, but even a mediocre bugger like cohen can stumble into chemistry and making a compelling b-movie once
he’s not inept, he’s just competent/mediocre like so many action directors these days, who make throwaway films you forget 5 mins after walking out of the dark. it’s the leap from mere competence to a compelling, original vision and the skill to infuse a film with soul and a memorable life of its own so lacking in the cohen – and mcratnerbaysommersetc – action arsenal in this CGI era
Crash: The First Generation.
And I will say compared to Justin Lin’s two craptacular Fast/Furious movies, Rob Cohen’s is like what would happen if The Road Warrior got together with American Graffiti and had sex on top of a rampaging elephant.
Justin Lin rules and I all but guarantee you didn’t see the last one. Guarantee it.
LIN POWER. DRIFT.
You’ve got me there, Lex. Since Tokyo Drift was a $10 nap, and since Finishing the Game was one of the least-funny comedies I think I’ve ever seen, I skipped it.
Maybe it was awesome!
It was.
So was Annapolis. Better Luck Tomorrow was pretty good too but would’ve been better with Latinos or black dudes.
forgot to mention before, sommers pulled a bit of a ‘tf&tf’ with ‘the mummy’, with its rather fun and goofy tongue-in-cheek action and compelling chemistry between fraser, weisz, hannah and fehr (sp?), but otherwise sommers has shown he couldn’t compellingly direct himself out of a paper bag so one has to deduce that ‘the mummy’ was a fluke and the exception rather than the rule, much as appears to be the case with cohen and his goofy, bass-thumbing fun ‘tf&tf’
I agree with you, Leah, the first Mummy is a fun romp and after that his skills seem to have devolved quickly.
GI JOE > MUMMY.
Modern colorful urban action ALWAYS trumps brown desert-set Indian bullshit. Which is why it was a bummer for Cohen to waste his squack-and-cars aesthetic dicking around in period China for HIS Mummy movie.
bass-THUMPING. bass-thumbing wouldn’t produce much of a driving boy-racer beat
Lex is wrong.
Also, I think anybody who uses the word ‘squack’ unironically should be thumped and/or thumbed.
Jeff, I am getting the impression you are not sufficiently stoked for K-STEW DAY.
I’ll be watching NEW MOON later tonight in my TEAM BELLA shirt if you wanna stop by!
If you send your address, I will definitely stop by. With a camera.
Masked was an absolute and complete mess. Terrible to have Bridges and Goodman share the screen again and have it amount to nothing. But I did love the scene where the little girl sings the times they are a’changin’ and there’s a melencholy look on Dylan’s face as if to note that the hope in that song is no longer in him and its all gone to hell. It almost redeemed the entire movie for me.
And as far as Kasden goes, Body Heat and Silverado had more blood flowing through their veins than 80% of eighties films.
I have to say, I just came back from Date Night and while it’s not great shakes at all, more amusing than consistently hilarious, I was surprised by how… not poorly-staged it was, at least compared to other Levy movies. The movie still sorta looks like crap — it’s one of the videoest looking digital-video-shot movies I’ve seen in awhile, especially for a movie that probably cost at least 30 or 40 million. And Dave’s observation about someone like Frank Oz: YES, absolutely. But Levy didn’t step on the funny bits as clumsily as he has in past movies. I remember shots in Cheaper by the Dozen and thinking, huh, maybe this would be funny in a wide shot and not a googly-eyed mugging close-up… or maybe the right cut could’ve made this a little funnier… not hilarious, but, you know, slapsticky and amusing. In Date Night, I didn’t find as many of those moments, maybe because the humor is a little more verbal. Not only that, there aren’t too many completely botched jokes. The movie certainly doesn’t try as hard as it could — the “weird” after hours-ish stuff should be weirder and creepier and more specific, not just a handful of stock NYC locations, a handful of apartments, and a handful of creeps — and as I said, the laughs aren’t huge. But there aren’t a lot of big jokes or laugh lines that completely die, and the faux-serious stuff has a bit more heart and humor than this type of movie usually can muster. I guess what it has, against some odds, is a sense of confidence. Maybe that comes from Carell and Fey being front and center and getting their famous/amusing friends to fill out the supporting roles, but whatever it is, the movie pretty much worked from me on its minor terms. Levy still isn’t a name I look forward to seeing in front of a movie, but he didn’t botch this to the degree I feared he might. I noticed more directing flubs in Baby Mama, which I enjoyed well enough but I think was actually even more in need of an official Fey rewrite than this one, where Fey and Carell seemed to rewrite as best they could as it went along.
Oh, and Lex, I’m TOTALLY with you on 2003 being the worst movie year of the aughts. I feel like the movie-year discussion comes up pretty constantly, and I’ve seen others trumpet 2003 as an unusually *good* year, I think maybe because they loved the crap out of Return of the King? I don’t know. I remember having a tough time filling out my top ten that year. I remember including the Matrix sequels (I understand the problems people have with them, but I think they’re at least extremely entertaining and visually inventive, even if they don’t match the just-a-teeny-tiny-bit-overrated first one) and Finding Nemo (one of my least favorite Pixars, though, again, very entertaining) and they would not have made the cut any other year of that decade. There are a few really excellent ’03 movies: Big Fish, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Once Upon a Time in Mexico (may be my favorite Rodriguez, oddly enough), Matchstick Men, X2, Elephant, Lost in Translation, American Splendor… but a pretty thin field overall.
Also, Lex, I’d think Liz Phair’s hotness alone would interest you, even if that 2003 album of hers is her nadir. All of her other non-Exile in Guyville records are actually way underrated though.
Also, Better Luck Tomorrow is fucking atrocious. Made my worst-of-decade list. I never got how that movie actually scored high-profile gigs for Lin.
I do not get the 2003 hate – it was a fantastic year at the movies: City of God, Master & Commander, Shattered Glass, Lost in Translation, Return of the King, In America, Thirteen. And that’s not including the truly fun genre stuff: Matrix Reloaded, SWAT, 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Italian Job. Yes, there was some crap – The Hulk, Mystic River, Legally Blonde 2, Daredevil – but it was a significantly better year than most.
THIRTEEN is one of my favorite movies of all time.
I was allowing for the fun stuff (I mentioned SWAT and BBII, and enjoyed many of the other popcorn movies). Matchstick Men is great. But I remember most of the “proper” year-end choices being especially etched in granite; Mystic River, 21 Grams, Master and Commander, Monster were all fine enough movies, but I’ve never had an urge to watch any of them ever again. That year seemed to be missing a big, sloppy, great-director full-throttle madman epic.
Much like 1996: Just seemed like a lot of solid, polite, mostly boring “Oscar” movies that no one watches anymore, but the popcorn flicks were fun. (Though I’m sort of of the mind that most of the big 2003 popcorn movies weren’t exactly Die Hard and RoboCop in terms of rewatch immortality… Probably not ten people in America have rewatched SWAT or OUTIM or FULL THROTTLE since 2005 Cinemax… Even Bad Boys II– most Bay movies live on round the clock on Starz and Encore, but that one doesn’t get much play anymore.)
Jesse: WHY CAN’T I and EXTRAORDINARY are the two best Liz Phair songs ever made.
By that I mean they’re the only two I’ve ever heard, and that they’re both on my Nano.
you guys are on shrooms. 2003 was bonza, also the year of such gems as ‘school of rock’, the station agent, oldboy, BAD SANTA, elephant, touching the void, in the cut, the cooler, triples of belleville, finding nemo, house of sand and fog, wrong turn, haute tension, open water, and perhaps more what i don’t know what they are. and verbinski’s original ‘curse of the black pearl’ was a good-fun silly swashbuckling blockbuster that should have begun and ended the entire ‘disneyland-ride-to-movie’ theme
Lex, BAD BOYS II is on USA every other month.
And, like it or not (I do), HULK is a big, sloppy, great director epic.
It’s Fox, the studio that releases 1 or 2 decent movies a year, what do you expect? Anything trailer they release with a shred of promise is invariably a red herring. Since Avatar, 5 straight films with below a 60 on MetaCritic. (btw this is Fox’s first non-kiddie affair in 4 months)
I absolutely loathe Thirteen. And I don’t like Hosue of Sand and Fog, Open Water, Haute Tension, or School of Rock (which I know was beloved by all).
aw jeff! we all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and so be it, but how can you dislike ‘school of rock’? i think you need some tummy tickles
Liz Phair couldn’t have sold out any more if she’d gotten some low rise cargo pants and danced around stage w/a Britney mic.
I concurr w/Dave’s review. And somebody else who mentioned same stock locations. I sat there thinking, Rreally? Didja have to smooth out every semblance of a rough edge?” At least things didn’t get so goofy that it comes across as being too stupid and implausible even for that movie’s own world.
It reminded me My Super Ex Girlfriend that Ivan Reitman directed, which may’ve been a funny movie, if it were 1985. Which reminded me of Our Family Wedding w/Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia. (Yeah, sure, I deserve what I got) But that movie would’ve been High-larr-ee-us, if it were 1979. I don’t know if we need to make the distinction between Fox and Fox Searchlight but I couldn’t help but wonder do they have like some ride at the Fox lot like they do at the Grammy Museum where instead of record your own song, they have record your own scene. They get the same set and the same extras, pull the scenario off of flash cards and then have to come up w/something before the next tour rolls through.
There was nothing magical about anything. The outtakes they ran during the credits weren’t funny. Well, one line by Fey. But it just solidified what a ho-hum experience it was.
Not sh#tty nor atrocious but nothing compared to what one would expect could fly out these actors’ butt on a good day. Sometimes I’ll watch an over glossed studio film and I’ll see remnants of what maybe the original concept or script may’ve looked like. Something quirky, raw, egdy, farcical but at least real. Not this one. Not even a hint of switching all the 1’s w/3’s on the pallet board.
But, it’ll make money and no one will ever stop to think about what could’ve been.
A true shame.
Leah, I would be fine if I were to receive tummy tickles. But when I saw School of Rock, the movie I saw wasn’t nearly as good as the movie everyone else apparently saw. For whatever reason, I am not a very big fan of Linklater.
hey fair enough. plus i can image if you’re not into jack black’s absurdest chubbly schlub shtick, ‘school oR’ could become quickly tiresome
Same here Jeffmcm. I spent the entirety of School of Rock wondering why an adult like Jack Black felt the need to constantly try to upstage a bunch of very talented kid performers. And the finale was every bit as obnoxious as it would have been had Hoosiers had ended with Gene Hackman suiting up in a team jersey, scoring 50 points, and nailing the game-winning three pointer at the buzzer.
Date Night = MEESTER + KUNIS = boner overload.
Lex: I wouldn’t call it overload, since they probably had 5 minutes screen time combined, but otherwise, I hear ya. I don’t watch Gossip Girl, but I’ve seen enough Meester that she is threatening to become my K-Stew. So watch what you say about my woman.
Yancy: Awesome. Leighton really is something… like a more charismatic version of the similarly hot Minka Kelly from FNL and 500 Days of Summer.
But when it comes to Gossip Girl, much as I dig the Meester, I’m Team Momsen all the way and Team Lively as well, so she’s all you.