Theoria

Before moving on to the most recent weekend, I’d like to fill in gaps – movies I missed in the first installment of “The Weekend in Film.” In addition to the afore-reviewed movies, we also watched the following:

Drop Dead Sexy – Easily the best movie we watched that weekend, which likely explains why we forgot it considering the environment of crap in which it was watched. Jason Lee plays a combination of My Name is Earl and Brodie Bruce. He’s a stupid petty criminal with an even dumber sidekick, played by Crispin Glover, who is quite convincing as a gravedigger whose IQ tops out at 65. If you like moderately amusing movies that no one including the producers, directors, actors and best boy key grips who worked on the movie itself have seen, then I heartily recommend this.

Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story – Sort of like Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but without Vince Vaughan and the guy who piloted Serenity, but with Andy Bernard from the American version of The Office or, again, like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, but without Will Ferrell and Borat, but with Robert Riggle (the “TV Funhouse” guy from SNL). There’s likely a comparison to Blades of Glory in there, but there’s no one else of any note in Blackballed. Essentially its fame to infamy to fame again story – just like Ricky Bobby, but about paintball. The best part of the movie was Jack McBrayer – one of those people who is either an imbecile or just plays one on TV. He was an imbecile in this movie as he is on Tina Fey’s really, really bad TV show. D.J. Hazard, who I first thought was supposed to be a white supremacist, looks a bit like the sociologist Frank Pearce (who is certainly not a white supremacist – evidently Frank’s picture is no longer on the website).

Now we can turn to the movies we watched this weekend:

Just Friends – It took us forever to remember that we watched this. (I should point out that I even ate a bag and a half of chips and couldn’t remember watching it. Further, we had to go through all the movies in the “On Demand” listing to find out what we watched.) That is a pretty apt characterization of the film. Easily Ryan Reynolds’ worst movie since either The Amityville Horror or Foolproof. His work here in no way compares to his role as Male Nurse in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Hannibal King in Blade Trinity, or Van Wilder in Van Wilder. The movie also stars Chris Marquette as “The Younger Brother,” who looks more and more like a young John Cusack everyday. (All the same, we don’t forgive him for cheating on Joan in Joan of Arcadia.) Ana Faris is also in the movie playing the role of Ana Faris By Another Name. IFC in Canada used to have an advertisement telling us that life is too short for movies that suck. Amazingly, one of the fake movies that suck had the exact same plot as this one. Personally, I’m waiting for the real version of the fake movie that has some boardroom exec saying “questions are not answers” and another saying “are you afraid of the bogeyman?” Ryan Reynolds completists should see this, but likely no one else. (I can only hope that there aren’t any Amy Smart completists out there.)

Heartstopper – Filmed in Hamilton – and it shows. Robert Englund is in the movie (most famous for being Freddy Krueger). Like most things from Hamilton, this movie should have stayed in the donut capital of the world. Look for Amy Lalonde in the role of Triage Nurse – you might recognize her from Colgate, Leon’s and Kit Kat commercials. Others may recognize her as the “hostess” on Scream who replaced the good “hostess.” She takes acting lessons and it shows. (She might consider watching Ham & Cheese to see her future.)

Hard Candy – Has Ellen Page (Kitty Pryde from X-Men: The Last Stand; the rebellious daughter in the first season of ReGenesis [season three premier tonight, by the way]; and reprising her role as the rebellious daughter in Wilby Wonderful), Sandra “Oh! Oh! Oh! I Won!” Oh from Grey’s Anatomy, and the guy who dances with Claire Danes in that Gap commercial. This movie really hit home because it dealt with issues – albeit in a surprising way – that I’ve seen repeatedly on Oprah and 20/20. I’m not sure what the “hard” part of the “candy” refers to: the only deserts featured in the movie were all rather soft (layer cakes, ganaches and truffles).

Shaun of the Dead – While amusing, I think it was the case that I didn’t understand much of the movie. They were all British and while they use the same words we use, their words seem to have a very different meaning. That makes it quite hard to understand – I hear the words and I hear that they form coherent, grammatical sentences, but rarely do I understand them. Further, I didn’t know who any of the people were listed in the credits as “Himself” or “Herself.” I think it is a completely different world over there. The only person in the movie we recognized was the British version of Pam from the British version of The Office. I didn’t say it during the movie, but I thought Shaun looked a lot like Morris from E.R.. In comparison to the American “of the Dead” movies, this one seemed to be far less about zombies (“the zed word”) and more about the relationships between the people.

As always, reviews were partially conceived during the original viewing of the films, hence some of the better jokes are not mine, but Blythe’s.