Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Steven Berkoff, Rufus Sewell, Christian De Sica, Allessio Boni, Daniele Pecci, Giovanni Guidelli, Raoul Bova
Elise Clifton-Ward (Jolie) is involved with a shady character who ripped off the mob for a couple billion dollars. But Scotland Yard wants him for back taxes of about 7 Million. He sends a message to Elise to take a train to Venice and to find someone on the train of his size and general appearance. She chooses Frank Tupelo, a Math Teacher from Wisconsin who’s on a vacation. By randomly selecting him, she sets off a series of misadventures in his poor life. Both the good guys and the bad guys think he’s the one their looking for, and everyone is out to kill the poor guy. Elise kind of likes him and she regrets getting him into this mess, but every time she tries to help him get out, she gets him pulled in deeper.
Suspenseful and exciting, it’s an action flick from start to finish. The scenery is fabulous, first in Paris, then in Venice. The train ride is also gorgeous. This is not a classic and the two leads are pretty good (Depp pulled it off) but he’s playing a silly sad sack loser who’s in way over his head most of the time. Angelina is beautiful as usual, but so very, very thin that it’s distracting. She must have a 12 inch waist. But still, all in all, it’s a pretty fine movie. I loved the setting and the background. I loved the twists and turns as you try to figure out who is up to what. It’s very exciting and the action parts, boat chases through the canals of Venice and the like. I really enjoyed the film, and am willing to overlook the few flaws in it. The best way to get into this is to just relax and enjoy the ride and not spend too much effort trying to figure out what’s going to happen before it does. It’s must more enjoyable to just sit back and take it all in. The hotel in Venice is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen! What a nice way to spend an afternoon.
James Marsden, Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Katt Williams, Bette Midler, Neil Patrick Harris, Sean Hayes, Wallace Shawn, Roger Moore, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Clarke Dun can, Chris O’Donnell, Jack McBrayer, Fred Armisen, Kiernan Shipka
The battle between Cats and Dogs has been going on for centuries. But in this war, one feline took it a step too far. Kitty Galore, formerly an agent for MEOWS (a cat spy organization) has gone rogue and has a plan to bring her canine enemies under her power, but also to take down the rest of the cats, and rule the world of cats and dogs herself. She uses and evil invention (a low frequency signal only dogs will react to) to turn dogs into her own personal slave robots. They must do what she says. She had an ugly hairless cat henchman sent off on a the quest to conquer the world. The rest of the cats and the dogs have to band together to try to overthrow her and save mankind!
I really did not like this movie at all. I didn’t think any of it was really funny, and although they had tons of stars lending their voices to the characters, there story is really bad. They are mostly puns. Roger Moore’s character, for example, is named Tab Lazenby. How cute. Make fun of another Bond actor. The plot is like a bad “Pinky and the Brain” epsiode, except that Pinky and the Brain was somewhat funny, and only lasted about 15 minutes at a shot. Truly I would much rather attend a Phineas and Ferb marathon that this film! It would be much, much more entertaining.  It was so boring that I could hardly make it through.  Seriously, 1950’s Saturday Morning adventure cartoons were more interesting than this stuff. The original Cats and Dogs came out a decade ago. What happened in the 9 years that have passed since then? Why this stinky sequel? I don’t think a little kid would be able to enjoy this film.
Optimum Releasing, Imagine Entertainment, Spyglass Entertainment
Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Channing Tatum, Queen Latifah, Clint Howard
Ronny Valentine(Vince Vaughn) and Nick Brannen (Kevin James) have been best friends since college days. They run a small independent auto shop where they’re working on an add-on for an electric car to give it the big roar and vibration of the muscle cars. They’ve won a chance to talk to GM about this and this looks like the big break they’ve been looking for. But something happens that threatens everything. Ronny sees Nick’s wife kissing someone else. Should he tell? What will happen if he does? This is the dilemma that faces a lot of friends. The old, “kill the messenger” routine. This gets a lot fouled up before everything comes to a head. Will Nick and Ronny survive? That’s the dilemma.
The Dilemma is a pretty funny movie. But parts of it are tragic. We know that Ronny has his issues, and he seems to think it’s his job to resolve everything himself. We think the problem will be that he witnessed something and jumped to a funny conclusion, but this is not the way the movie goes. Who has the biggest issues after all? Well, I guess everyone does. It’s a very deep film in addressing the goodness and the deficiencies in all the characters. These people are human. Vince Vaughn plays it for yucks the way he always does, but he pulls of the sad eyed little boy very well too. This is a similar role to “Chuck and Larry” for Kevin James as well, the goodhearted nice guy who gets the worst of it. Many folks felt Jennifer Connelly’s role is way beneath her talent, but I don’t think so. She is one of the key cornerstones of the film and without her character for Vince to play off of, it would have turned out a lot weaker. If anyone is miscast in this pic, it would be Winona Ryder, but I think she did a pretty good job with it, and deserves credit for making the bad guy still likable. All in all, this is a nice date night out movie. I think both men and women will like it. There’s enough romance and relationship issues for the ladies, and the men will like the pratfalls, sticky situations Vince finds himself in, and of course some sweet cars!!! Basically I think this has something for all the adults, and I thought it was a really fun romantic comedy.
Jenna Proske, Matt Lanter, Diedrich Bader, Chris Riggi, Ken Jeong, Anneliese van der Pol, Mike Mayhall, Rett Terrell, Stephanie Fischer, Nick Eversman
Vampires Suck is a spoof of the popular vampire movies, but mostly the Twilight series. Becca Crane (Jenn Poske) is a high school girl who has just move to Spork to live with her father Frank (Diedrich Bader). She meets two guys that appeal to her, and she’s having trouble deciding between Edward Sullen (Matt Lanter) and Jacob White (Chris Riggi). Things all come to a head at the prom with everyone out to bite Becca.
This is a typical spoof movie like the Scary Movies, Meet the Spartans, The Disaster Movie, and many others. This is a pretty decent spoof of the Twilight series and is pretty decent. There are some pretty funny scenes here, and the obligatory cameos of other characters, but this is a bit different in that they don’t over do that. It actually stays pretty close to the Twilight series and rags on that for most of the film. Of course Ken Jeong is here as Daro. It seems he gets to be in every satire these days. 🙂 Some of the other characters are right on and it points out the silly moments of the originals. I love the scene where Edward is on trial and Becca is trying to save him. She mentions “There’s Edward” and the Team Edward girls pop out all excited and screaming “Where?”. Suddenly the Team Jacob team shows up and hits the Team Edward girl in the face with a shovel. Gee, I’ve always wanted to do that! It was refreshing.
Truly, this is not a classic piece of film making and will be forgotten long before the Twilight series does, but for now, it’s kind of fun to watch on DVD. It didn’t do great at the box office, but it more than covered the budget spent on it, and so was successful. Now that it’s on DVD, that’s the perfect way to enjoy this piece of satire if you like those kinds of movie. I had a good time with this.
Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Charlie Day, Jason Sudekis, Christina Applegate, Ron Livingston, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Jim Gaffigan, Natalie Morales, Kelli Garner
This romantic comedy is about a couple, Erin (Drew Barrymore) and Garrett (Justin Long) and their attempt to keep their love alive even though they are separated, one in California and one in NYC. They meet in New York City and hit it off. Garrett is trying hard to make it in the recording industry, but currently has a menial job. Erin is a wannabe reporter, who thinks she has a great chance for a real reporting job, but it isn’t to be, so she decides to head out to California to finish her degree. They are both anxious to keep their relationship alive, but neither wants enough to give up their dream. So they decide to live on opposite coasts and see each other when they can.
This is a very interesting approach to the chick flick genre, because most of the movie is told from the gentleman’s side of things. Also, they are in “like” with each other, but it doesn’t seem deep enough to keep it from being mostly superficial. This is an unusual approach to the one typically taken by movies of this type. We get to care enough about the characters that we are concerned with what happens to them, but if it doesn’t work out it’s not going to be that devastating to anyone, even us as voyeurs to their situation. To top it off we have really good secondary characters. Erin has a grumpy and constantly criticizing sister Corrine (Cristina Applegate) and Garrett has a friend in Box (Jason Sudekis) who doesn’t give very great advice all the time. They provide a lot of the comedy relief for us. The way they meet is really cute. Erin is playing “Centipede” in a bar, and Garrett is a fantastic of that came. He interrupts her attempt at the high score and finds out that she is the one he was chasing for the top score all along. Can you build a relationship on the love of a video game? Well of course there is a lot more going on than that.
What we have here is a chick flick that is ok to take a guy to. It’s clever and witty and Drew and Justin work well together and make such a cute couple. By the end of the film we really like them. I enjoyed it. It’s not a great film, but is quiet an enjoyable romantic comedy and I recommend it.
