New Year's Eve (2011)

2/5

New Year's Eve is the bland, uninspired follow-up to Garry Marshall's mediocre Valentine's Day. There is no story to speak of. There are instead about a dozen trite, overused blueprints of ideas that are empty and meaningless. They are all instead vehicles for the two dozen stars to be themselves on camera and try to make money without doing any acting whatsoever. The movie over-relies on archetypes, movie tropes, and celebrity status. Lea Michele sings. Jon Bon Jovi sings. Robert De Niro plays a gruff old guy with regret. And Sofia Vergara plays a sexy lady with an accent. It's the same thing we've seen over and over again. (And Sofia Vergara was significantly funnier on Conan than in this movie.)

The best thing about this movie is the Zac Efron and Michelle Pfeiffer storyline. It had cutesy charm, much more than I expected. But even their portion of the movie lacked motivation and backstory. The other thing I liked about it is a line Josh Duhamel says (although he is in fact just quoting his dead father, and it seems to come out of nowhere): "What would you do today if you knew you wouldn't fail? Now go out and do it." Despite all the ridiculous star power in this movie, it holds no power and deserves only two stars. Avoid.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598822/

Life As We Know It (2010)

4/5

Life As We Know It is a tender, heartfelt romantic comedy that hits all the right notes. When Peter (MacArthur) and Alison (Hendricks) Novack die in a car accident, their two best friends are given guardianship of their 1-year-old daughter, Sophie. Holly (Heigl) is a driven, organized entrepreneur and chef; she is taking out construction loans to expand her pastry shop into a full-out restaurant. Messer (Duhamel) is a suave womanizer living the life every guy dreams of: he watches basketball games for a living and gets free dinner and drinks from women who want to sleep with him. Out of their love for their friends and the child, they accept. But fitting into their roles as Sophie's parents is much more difficult than they anticipated.

The acting in this movie is superb. Duhamel was the best part about When In Rome, and he's the best part about Life As We Know It too. He has charm and wit, but lacks the sleaze you'd associate with someone who supposedly sleeps around with every woman he can find. One of the negatives about this movie is that I just didn't find him convincing as Messer. He somehow changed the character into someone likable and sympathetic. I doubt that the person on screen was the same person scripted. Luckily, Heigl is his match, revealing an understated but explosive personality. She is not what you'd expect, given her professional, work-obsessed appearance and relative lack of a personal life. Yes, she wants a family, but she wants it on her terms, not thrust on her like this.

I spent a paragraph describing the characters because characters are what make a movie like this successful, endearing, and memorable. They are imbued with humor and played with honest emotion. Their intricacies and complexities are precisely brought to life on screen. The rest of the technical details like dull cinematography and subpar editing just fall by the wayside when you see this movie. No, I didn't laugh as much in this movie as I did in Going the Distance, but this one did pull at the heartstrings a little bit more. This may not be the movie for everyone, but you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by some of the scenes in this movie.

Note: There is a crucial scene near the climax/finale dealing with a phone call. The phone that rings is an original Sprint Palm Pre with all original webOS UI, and I don't think I have ever been so excited to see anything or anyone in a movie in my life. I literally jumped out of my seat and started hitting my girlfriend's arm to get her attention as I giggled like a little schoolgirl. I have no idea why. I also noticed that my favorite Parker Jotter pen and Oxo mug made cameos, which was pretty cool as well.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1055292/

Killers (2010)

2/5

Killers is such a stupid movie. When I first saw the trailer, I thought that it might be cool. As time went on and reviews came out, I got less and less excited for it. If I had just waited for my interest to dwindle to nothing, I might have spared myself from watching this stupid movie. It follows the awkward relationship that develops between awkward CIA agent Spencer (Kutcher) and awkward computer nerd Jen (Heigl) after awkwardly bumping into each other in France. Spencer is there to kill someone while Jen is there vacationing with her alcoholic mother (O'Hara) and overbearing father (Selleck). They get married and, several years later, Spencer discovers that a bounty has been placed on his head. All of his neighbors start attacking him with machine guns and kitchen knives like something out of Hot Fuzz, only bad. There are also a few side stories that are worthless and a final "twist" that would have been obvious if it made any sense.

Now that you know how stupid the plot is, I can tell you how stupid the rest of the movie is. The characters just don't work. At all. None of them. The two leads have absolutely no chemistry together; it's like they're talking cardboard cutouts. There was no passion, even in their arguments. There's very little romance and there's very little comedy (although the movie as a whole does provide some moments to laugh at, like the alcoholic mother, before you come to the depressing realization that alcoholism has become a punchline). The pacing is atrocious and the special effects are terrible. The gunfights and car chases failed to keep my attention (although the hand-to-hand combat was actually not bad). It's not the worst movie in the world, but I would seriously ask anybody who was intrigued by the trailer to just step away and let this one go. (The only reason it is not 1 star is that it didn't offend me in any way.)

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1103153/

The Ugly Truth (2009)

3/5

The Ugly Truth is a fairy predictable romantic comedy that pairs a very attractive female lead (Heigl) with a very unattractive male lead (Butler). Speaking of unattractive leads, I bet PS I Love You would make me vomit, because it has the ugliest leads I can possibly imagine. Anyway, back to the movie at hand. The hackneyed plot takes the crass, arrogant know-it-all (like Harry in When Harry Met Sally) and forces him into a romantically flawed relationship with a neurotic obsessive-compulsive (like Sally). Of course they get on each other's nerves at first, then they find themselves falling for each other, then they both make mistakes and hide their true feelings, and then finally they redeem themselves and have a happy ever after.

There were some really funny parts, I have to admit. In particular, the baseball game and the dinner with corporate personnel had me cracking up in my seat. Still, the characters were dumb, unoriginal, and unappealing. I felt the exact opposite of how I felt about the characters in Knocked Up; instead of loving them, I hated them. The writing, about the crude, one-track minds men have, was nothing new, inventive, or inspiring. It was just the same old, same old. There were a few shots I thought were cool or interesting, but they were fairly hard to spot and didn't really do much to elevate the movie past its other flaws. All in all, it's the romantic comedy you expect. If you know you're gonna like it, check it out. If you know you're gonna hate it, pass.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1142988/

Knocked Up (2006)

4.9/5

Knocked Up is an incredibly hilarious movie about a one-night stand that turns into a pregnancy. From a simple story comes incredibly rich and developed characters and healthy doses of humor and heart. You go to see this movie for the jokes (and I was laughing the entire time), but the staying power rests in the deeper meaning and take-home message about life and love. Unlike other comedies like Hot Fuzz, when this movie tries to make a dramatic point, it feels like part of the movie and not a side note. The flow in this movie as the mood shifts gears is fantastic, aided by excellent music choices. My favorite parts were when people were arguing, because it seemed like that's when the characters were most themselves and the details and subtle mannerisms showed. That was also when I laughed the hardest. The writing in this movie was not exactly brilliant or original, but the stellar acting brought it to life. Being a fan of The Office, I especially loved seeing Darryl from warehouse, Ryan the temp, and Steve Carell make cameos. And Alan Tudyk from Firefly. I especially loved all the references to other movies, not just in dialogue and background sets, but also in plot and shot constructions.

There were some things I didn't like about the movie, although infrequent. First, much of it was simply too graphic. Random boobs were wholly unnecessary. And why they showed a newborn crowning is a mystery to me. A bit out of place in this comedy. Second, many of the side characters and side plots, while very funny, simply took away from the movie instead of adding to it, except in length. Sometimes characters' moods and motivations shifted and changed with little explanation, although it was never too unreasonable. Every so often something you thought was small would turn out to be extremely important and vice versa, which sometimes felt like forcing the plot in a certain direction in an otherwise fluid script. Also, the cinematography and editing were nothing to write home about, not that you would think they might be. All in all, however, a very entertaining movie that's more than just a stupid comedy.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0478311/