The Big Year is the sort of vehicle that will cause critics and audiences alike equal difficulty in discerning why and how it ever got made in the first place (which is not necessarily a bad thing). An indie film in all but budget, stars, and well... 20th Century Fox, it's a slow, meandering "comedy" that isn't exactly funny, and doesn't offer much insight when it comes to what it thinks you ought … [Read more...]
Hall Pass, which bills itself proudly as being a film by "the directors of There's Something About Mary," is a fest of inanity so far gone down the road of "drunken stupor filmcraft" that at around the 30-minute mark it becomes apparent that most of the script was assembled by pasting together cocktail napkin scratchings. The general premise of Hall Pass, if utterly removed from the film, is … [Read more...]
Marmaduke stars Owen Wilson as the lovable Great Dane who is always in trouble. When his owner Phil (Pushing Daisies' Lee Pace) decides to move to California for a new job, the family isn't happy, and Marmaduke doesn't know what to do with himself. Forced into a good deal of time at a ritzy dog park by way of Phil's new boss (William H. Macy), Marmaduke discovers that he's in with the misfits. The … [Read more...]
Ben Stiller's second foray into the world of museum artifacts springing to life is a fun, summer romp, but it suffers somewhat for the loss of the initial plot arc. There's a lot going on, but it's mostly in the 'excuse to have another movie' category, and not really much that serves a storyline. Since we last saw him, Larry Daley has moved on from his life at the museum. He's now an … [Read more...]
Ben Stiller's second foray into the world of museum artifacts springing to life is a fun, summer romp, but it suffers somewhat for the loss of the initial plot arc. There's a lot going on, but it's mostly in the 'excuse to have another movie' category, and not really much that serves a storyline. Since we last saw him, Larry Daley has moved on from his life at the museum. He's now an … [Read more...]
