Neighbors (2014)

3/5

Neighbors is an astonishingly stupid adult comedy starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron as feuding neighbors. I call it an adult comedy because of the content--which includes plenty of sex, drugs, and profanity--but it is really quite puerile in just about every other way. From uninspired acting to barebones characterization, the movie isn't so much a movie as it is a collection of gag jokes and juvenile pranks shot on screen. It's surprisingly similar in feel and scope to the movie Jackass, but with a little extra fiction added on. Even though it's not the most wholesome movie, the humor works. I was laughing the entire time. I won't say that I'm proud of it, but I certainly enjoyed the very vulgar Neighbors.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2004420/

This Is The End (2013)

4/5

This Is The End is a raunchy, vulgar, hilarious comedy written and directed by Seth Rogen. It is entirely his show, and he delivers the most over-the-top laughs you can imagine by going way farther than you'd expect. The plot follows two friends (Jay Baruchel and Seth Rogen) at James Franco's housewarming party when the apocalypse suddenly strikes. Our unfortunate protagonists are not taken up to heaven in the Rapture. Instead, they must fight hunger, distrust, and well-endowed demons in order to survive.

What makes it more clever than just an average comedy is that all the actors play quasi-real versions of themselves. They look the same and have the same name, but they don't behave the same way they do in real life. The best example is Michael Cera, in the most widely-divergent role of his entire career, playing himself. Even without that twist, it was still a lot of fun seeing a bunch of familiar faces in small cameos.

The cinematic properties are passable but forgettable. And nobody expects to be impressed by those things when they enter a theater to see a Seth Rogen film. Instead, the film stands on its humor, and Rogen is able to deliver side-splitting laughs. His timing is impeccable, whether we are simply witnessing bickering friends or being horrified by extravagant gross-outs and extreme sight gags. (I honestly cannot wrap my head around any reason for there to be so many demon penises on screen in any movie ever.) There were times when I finished laughing and realized I had not inhaled for the previous 30 seconds. Yes, my respiratory rate was literally 2 breaths per minute. This is an amazing movie that I highly recommend for anyone who is a fan of Seth Rogen.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1245492/

Kick-Ass (2010)

3/5

Kick-Ass tells the story of a normal high schooler (Johnson) who reads comic books and wonders why no insane prepubescent kid has ever tried being a superhero like in the comics. So he decides to try it. And gets his ass kicked. So bad, in fact, that most of his body is replaced by metal plates and his nerve endings are destroyed. But he gets videotaped defending a stranger and becomes famous via YouTube and MySpace, which attracts the attention of two real life superheros: Big Daddy (Cage) and Hit-Girl (Moretz). Things spin wildly out of control and what started as an experiment quickly turns deadly.

The movie has graphic violence and language. Their presence in and of itself does not concern me. What bugs me is that they use it repetitively for comic effect and, quite frankly, it gets old. Hearing an 11-year-old girl swear is only (potentially) funny the first time. As is seeing her disembowel someone; seeing it more than once makes it seem like she has a weird fetish or something. The piece's writing was fairly solid. The jokes were great (although some were quite predictable) and Cage's intonation and prosody were absolutely hilarious. The acting was surprisingly good. However, Kick-Ass's real life relationship just didn't strike me as very compelling or original. I just didn't care about what was going on in his personal life. All in all, however, this movie is engaging and exciting. It takes a relatively old genre and spins it in a new direction. And it does so with humor and no sense of boundary. And for that it deserves at least some credit.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250777/

How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

4/5

How To Train Your Dragon by DreamWorks is a phenomenal animated film on the same level as most Pixar movies. The plot follows the young Viking Hiccup (Baruchel) and his great warrior father Stoick (Butler) on an island plagued by dragon attacks. Hiccup isn't like the other Vikings--he's scrawny and uses his brain to invent weapons instead of wielding giant hammers and axes--and his father lets him know how disappointed he is in him because of it. Wanting to kill a dragon and prove to his father that he's a manly Viking, he tests out a new weapon on an elusive dragon species called the Night Fury. He strikes the dragon down, injuring the tail so that he can no longer escape. He has the opportunity to kill the dragon but discovers that he can't. He sees the dragons with the same fear that he felt and realizes that they're just like him, instead of the evil creatures he's been taught must be killed on sight. But that is just the beginning of this epic tale.

This movie is an exhilarating and memorable ride. Despite a few bad puns, the writing is exceptional. I was a huge fan of the repetition of certain phrases that, when placed in different contexts, showed new meaning. I liked the play on words with the concept of "dragon training," and how it did a complete reversal from what it was in the beginning of the movie. To me, the writers clearly treated this film with care, intellect, and a faith and respect in their audience that is a rarity in "kids" movies these days. That kind of attention to detail was present in their incredible graphics as well, even though I didn't see it in 3D (I think they give me more headaches than they're worth). Without going for the cuteness of Pixar or the realism of Beowulf, they managed a charismatic and charming style that feels appropriate for the subject matter and wholly original.

There were a few things I didn't like about the movie, however. First, Baruchel's voicing of Hiccup was irritating. By about 10 minutes in, I just got annoyed at his whiny, monotonous tenor and wished he was played by anybody else, even Michael Cera. Second, the fight and reunion with his father felt written and didn't quite ring true, although it nonetheless contained some tearjerking ability. Third, there were some aspects of the plot I didn't (and still don't) get, but they're relatively minor and don't really hinder your enjoyment of the film. This movie goes wholly recommended by me, because it has just about everything you could ask for in a film, including the all-important entertainment value.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892769/

Role Models (2008)

4/5

Role Models stars Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott as Danny and Wheeler, two advertisers for Minotaur energy drink. Danny hates every new trend and saying and he picks fights with everyone who uses them. He's in a rut, and when he tries to shake things up with an impromptu and rather lame proposal to his girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks), she dumps him. In a fit of anger, he does some highly illegal things in the Minotaur truck with Wheeler, and they both get sentenced to do community service with the Sturdy Wings mentoring program as punishment. The rest of the movie is the expected, predictable journey of maturation and development that Danny and Wheeler undergo, with the requisite melodramatic loss of trust and triumphant winning back of love.

Still, the movie manages to impress. The humor starts off a little subdued, but quickly builds with incessant, nearly ubiquitous sexual innuendo and laugh-out-loud situations. The writing is phenomenal, throwing in little jokes and asides that give the movie flair and individuality and ensuring you quote it long after its ending. There are no major complaints I have from a technical standpoint. The one thing I didn't like was the two bits of nudity in the movie; they were completely unnecessary, thrown in for seemingly no other reason than because they already had an R rating for language and figured they might as well get more bang for their buck, literally. At the very least, the use of nudity wasn't distasteful or overindulgent, so for that I'm thankful. Anyway, I have only very minor complaints with this altogether enjoyable and entertaining movie experience.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430922/

Superbad (2007)

3/5

Superbad is about two best friends trying to get laid at a big high school party before they graduate and go off to different colleges. I don't really know why it's called Superbad, since it's quite good. It's a funny movie, no doubt about that. I'm just disappointed after seeing the much more mature 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Mature in terms of character depth and story development. It seemed to me that those movies had a central emotional and thematic core around which the rest of the movie took place. Not so here; it really is as shallow as the plot outline I described above sounds. Additionally, 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up were much more grounded in reality. But Superbad was so utterly ridiculous. It started off with people talking and being angry and hilarious, which I loved, but quickly deteriorated to the most ludicrous situations you can imagine. I got more and more dejected as the movie went on. But it is so funny. If you like to laugh, watch this movie. Seriously. It is amazing. And I had no idea penis drawings could be so hilarious.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0829482/