Ed's Review Dot Com

Fox 2000 Pictures, Regency Enterprises, Bagdasarian Productions,

Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney, Jason Lee, Bella Thorne, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Tony Hale

Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, and their potential step brother are under the impression Dave (Jason Lee) has gone to Miami with his new girlfriend to propose to her breaking up their happy home. They decide to set out for Miami to try to stop it, but after getting thrown off the plane by an angry air marshall, the guys have to hit the road to try to get there in time, falling into lots of problems while being chased by the marshall who wants to take them in.

Some of the previous sequels have been pretty poor, but this one is surprisingly good. The story is clever and the songs are current hits. There’s no Chipettes here which is a good thing I think. The locations are fun, and the story is cute. We’re very familiar with the voices and the characters now, so we can just jump in and get rolling right away. The jokes are Chipmunk jokes, so they’re pretty corny, but all in all it’s a fun ride across the countryside. I am glad that they made this one, and I really enjoyed it. I can recommend this one as the least sucky of the whole recent bunch of Chipmunk flicks and it’s really a enjoyable experience. I liked it.

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Animal Logic, BBC Earth, BBC Worldwide,

John Leguizamo, Justin Long, Tiya Sircar, Skyler Stone, Charlie Rowe, Angourie Rice, Michael Leone

In a troubled time when volcanoes separated the kids from their family, a little dinosaur takes the lead to help his friends to safety and to avoid disaster. This lifelike 3D film gives the viewer the privilege to see what life is like in the days when dinosaurs ruled the world.

I believe this film relied on the 3-D gimmick to give viewers a thrill as they watched “The Land Before Time” with Pixar like 3-D animation actually in 3-D. It is a really neat technique, but I’m watching on a small screen TV in 2-D. Without the 3-D effect perhaps I missed a lot of the story. I found it to be a blatant ripoff of Little Foot’s movies. To further disrupt my attention on the movie, the dialog and voices were really childish and didn’t seem to fit at all. The story lagged a lot, and wasn’t very exciting. There is one demographic though that will love this movie. That would be very young kids, boys especially. There is an age around 5 or 6 where boys seem to get enamored with dinosaurs and they can’t get enough. At this point, they’re going to love this movie. It was really made for the young boys, and that bunch is going to be very pleased with it. Rent it for them, and let them watch to their heart’s content. But you probably won’t want to sit through it together. I think they were hoping the 3D trick would bring older folks with their kids and grandkids out to the theater in droves. That didn’t happen, so go ahead and get it for the dino fans under 12, but they probably have never seen “The Land Before Time” so perhaps you’ll want to rent that for them instead.

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Lagniappe Films, I’m So Sorry Productions, Mega Playground,

Justin Long, Evan Rachel Wood, Keir O’Donnell, Busy Philipps, Sienna Miller, Peter Dinklage, Brendan Fraser

Sam (Justin Long) is a writer, feeling lonely and attracted to the pretty coffee barista, Birdy (Evan Rachel Wood), he sets out to win her by studying her Facebook profile. He find out everything she likes, then pretends to be the perfect guy for her. In the beginning, it’s just a joke, but when he finds himself really falling for her, he can’t decide whether to come clean or keep up the charade in this romantic comedy.

This had a lot of promise with the great cast of characters in this film, but it’s basically the story of Sam and Birdy, and I must admit I’m not really a huge Justin Long fan. I’m not sure why I’m not, but it’s partly the material he gets, but perhaps more likely the fact that he seems like a 30 minute sitcom actor rather than a leading man in a feature film. Although the movie was not at all the worst I’ve seen lately, it just didn’t strike me as that great. Something in the chemistry is off, and these two just don’t seem to be a pair. The story is not all that original, and this concept has been done over and over before the Facebook days with other methods of finding out what the girl likes and pretending to be that. Facebook is not that “hot” these days, and so it’s not novelty enough to be able to be a unique enough hook to bring you in. Besides, without being friends with a person, you can’t see all these details about someone. But that’s just poetic license here, really, and the problem is just that we don’t like the characters enough to really care about what happens to them. If you’re in need of a rom-com, this one is certainly watchable, but I would not go out of my way to search for this one. It’s just mediocre at best.

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KODA Entertainment,

Justin Long, Tyler Labine, Jess Weixler, Addison Timlin, Frances O’Connor, Shelley Long, Evan Jones, Michael Landes, Peter Syvertsen, James Detmar

Lumpy (Tyler Labine) is a wild guy, overly loud and obnoxious and best friend of Scott (Justin Long) and his new bride Kristin (Jess Wixler). Lumpy overdoes it as usual and messes up their wedding reception, but shocks everyone by dropping dead overnight. Scott and Kristin have to call off their honeymoon to go back to Minneapolis in the middle of winter to bury Lumpy. But as they try to put the event together, they learn that there was a lot more to their friend than they ever knew, and he was leading an entirely different life than they ever knew.

This was a rather surprising and off-beat movie. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I suspected Tyler to over play the loud and obnoxious friend, but he did one of the best performances in the film. There were other interesting characters that made the story better as it went along. In fact, Justin and Jess played the leads in this film, and they were shallow, annoying, and somewhat boring throughout, and were the weakest part of the movie. As I stated in the beginning, I wasn’t expecting a lot from this film, and so I was not sorry I watched it. Truthfully it was better told than I expected. Lumpy, who really is the main character in the story, dies in the beginning, but his life and times are the heart of the story. As such, it’s a story of a guy John Candy like…the lovable loser, even though he isn’t around that long. So the movie is a decent rental, not a great film, but well worth the time watching it on video. It’s a little different, and so that keeps your interest. I can mildly recommend this as a rental, and I did enjoy watching it.

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Relativity Media, Virgin Produced, GreeneStreet Films,

Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Jeremy Allen White, Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Justin Long, Leslie Bibb, Uma Thurman, Kristen Bell, Bobby Cannavale, John Hodgman, Halle Berry, Seann William Scott, Elizabeth Banks, Stephen Merchant, Nicole Polizzi, Johnny Knoxville, Richard Gere, Jack McBrayer, Kate Bosworth, Gerard Butler, Terrence Howard, Chloë Grace Moretz, Josh Duhamel

Charlie Wessler (Dennis Quaid) is a washed up producer who is going nowhere. He weasels his way onto the studio lot to pitch his latest idea for a blockbuster Hollywood film to producer Griffin Schraeder (Greg Kinnear). Unfortunately it is a series of extremely inappropriate sketches. This movie is basically a really far out series of unrelated stores tied together with the efforts Charlie makes to get his idea turned into a movie at all costs, even at gunpoint with hostages if necessary in this hilarious star studded off-the-wall comedy.

Outrageous is an understatement for this film. The sketches are the most inappropriate stuff you have ever seen. This movie has it’s roots in the classic 1977 “Kentucky Fried Movie” but rather than just being short sketches, this one ties it all together with Dennis Quaid’s efforts to get this piece of crap made, even though Greg Kinnear is going to do everything possible to make sure that doesn’t happen. What happens is a series of extremely funny bits with a TON of major stars. I don’t know how they talked all these people into being in this crazy film, but it must have been a real blast making it. It gets so out of hand, and goes where no film has gone before. I really enjoyed the craziness of this film. It is really out there. You have to be able to deal with the gross subject matter as nothing is off limits, and it’s really nasty sometimes, but the outrageousness of it is what makes it really funny. If you remember Kentucky Fried Movie, and if you enjoyed that, then you’re sure to crack up over this one.

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