Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

I Try to Have Fun.  Otherwise, What’s the Point?

Today’s movie was way more difficult to see than it should have been, and Friendboss Josh is to blame.  We had been trying to see this movie for nearly a month before we could finally find the time.  First he couldn’t go because of a “butt thing.”  I’m still not sure what he meant by that.  Was it a proctologist appointment or a sex thing?  Probably both.  Then his girlfriend, the Whitney Bird, lit the bathtub on fire.  Seems impossible, right?  I mean, the thing shoots water.  The next week he was abducted by aliens.  He called it a family reunion, but when I hear about a collection of Mexicans, I just assume.  The last week was my fault because I had a creative writing class to attend where I learned how to make up ridiculous stories to cover for your bad memory about past events and how they kept you from movies.  Then Friendboss Josh and I went to see Kick-Ass 2, based on a comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr., written and directed by Jeff Wadlow, and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jim Carrey, Lindy Booth, Clark Duke, Donald Faison, Steven Mackintosh, Monica Dolan, Robert Emms, Augustus Prew, John Leguizamo, Olga Kurkulina, Daniel Kaluuya, Tom Wu, Andy Nyman, Morris Chestnut, Claudia Lee, and Iain Glen.

After the events of the first film, Dave Lizewski has retired from his hero persona Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but quickly finds that regular life is not to his liking.  He decides to take up the mantle of Kick-Ass again, but this time he’s not going to rely on the fact that he can’t feel pain and actually get some training from the younger, but far better trained Mindy Macready, also known as Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz).  Elsewhere, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is still sore at Kick-Ass for killing his crime lord father in the first movie.  He reacts by dropping his hero persona, Red Mist, and instead becoming the first real-life villain, the Motherfucker.  When Hit-Girl’s guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), finds out that she’s still fighting crime, he makes her promise him that she’ll stop, and will stop hanging out with Dave.  Lacking the help and training of Hit-Girl, Kick-Ass joins a hero team called Justice Forever, led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey), and including Night-Bitch (Lindy Booth), Doctor Gravity (Donald Faison), Battle Guy (Clark Duke), Remembering Tommy (Steven Mackintosh and Monica Dolan), and Insect Man (Robert Emms), but continues to try to get Hit-Girl back to her calling while she’s trying to understand how to be a normal girl.  Oh yeah, and the Motherfucker is trying to kill them all.  They should worry about that too.

I was a really big fan of the first Kick-Ass movie.  Going into this one I was made nervous by how poor the reviews were for the sequel, but I found the movie much more enjoyable than the other critics.  Not as good as the first, and there were some problems, but it was still worth watching.  But I’m fond of the idea of real life heroes since I semi-constantly consider it myself, but soon find that my superpower is extreme laziness.  The story was nothing entirely special, but it was interesting.  There was the whole revenge plot that drove the movie, but also the real life scenarios of Hit-Girl trying to figure out being a regular kid.  Most of that seemed like it would be really insulting if I were a lady.  Especially the whole conversation in the bedroom with the other high school girls talking about how hot and bothered they get for some Beiber-esque gay boy (redundant?) they watch on TV.  And then it works on our hero, Hit-Girl!  I’m not saying this deduction about women isn’t accurate, but it does seem vaguely sexist.  And accurate.

The performances in the movie were well-realized.  I liked these actors in the first movie; how could I not like them again?  The answer: shut up!  I’m writing a review here!  This is not a discussion!  Aaron Taylor-Johnson did a great job as Kick-Ass.  He plays it very grounded in reality, as it should be played.  But he’s also a bit of an asshole.  I understand that Hit-Girl was badass and that you probably weren’t going to get much better or be able to save the day without her, but on another level you’re trying to convince a little girl to continue risking her life.  Also, he wasn’t really that bright.  You keep hearing stories about this villain the Motherfucker and all the bad things he’s doing, but you don’t even bother to go look at his Twitter feed or his Facebook page to see what he looks like and maybe piece together that he’s that kid you were friends with and then killed his father?  It’s been a while since I’ve seen the first movie, but I feel like you might have his street address.  Speaking of the Christopher Mintz-Plasse character, this motherfucker’s whining was really getting on my nerves in this movie.  Lots of people’s dads are killed by bazookas, but they don’t all need to whine through the whole movie like a petulant teenager … like the one you’re portraying in the movie…  It was just annoying, okay?!  Chloë Moretz remains quality as Hit-Girl in this movie, but it did bother me that she was not being Hit-Girl through most of the movie.  I understand the emotional reason for it, but I also wanted more of her kicking ass.  Even though one of her moments of ass-kicking was really gross (the moment with the Sick Stick for instance) and one of them was unrealistic for this type of movie (the “last resort” thing at the end).  Jim Carrey was very good in the movie, and I was also very happy to see John Leguizamo again.  I feel like I haven’t seen him in years.  I had no idea who Olga Kurkulina was before this movie, but she sure was scary in it as Mother Russia.  Her scene of laying waste to all those cops was epic.  And since we’re on the subject…

One other thing I noticed in this movie is that the cops were the absolute worst.  I dislike but understand that they decide to put a stop to all people wearing costumes, but it seemed like they only caught the ones doing good.  Worry about them second!  Even if you have the opportunity to catch one that’s trying to do good, instead go after the ones that just killed 20 of your guys on a residential street.  THEN worry about the good ones.  Even when they were trying to do good, the cops sucked at it.  Bad guys break into a funeral and lay waste to everyone and the cops (with guns) are so much more useless than the regular people with baseball bats, sticks, and purses filled with bricks.

Kick-Ass 2 might not have measured up to the first movie, but it certainly exceeded the critical response I have seen for it.  It’s a solid movie with a story that’s nothing too mind-blowing but is definitely good, some pretty great action when it happens, and some great performances.  I’d recommend seeing this movie in theaters, but you wouldn’t be hurting too much if you waited for a rental.  Kick-Ass 2 gets “This 15-year-old girl just owned your ass” out of “Robin wishes he was me.”

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This Is the End (2013)

Take Yo Panties Off!

Based on the poster alone, I had no interest in seeing today’s movie.  I liked the people I saw on the poster, but I’ve seen them all in movies that were both great and awful, so the poster alone couldn’t really capture my attention.  But that’s why they make trailers.  When I started seeing the trailers for the movie, my desire to see it took to a sharp incline.  The trailer wasn’t laugh out loud funny, but that could be a good thing in this case.  The trailer should just show the potential for the movie; not spoil the best jokes.  And that’s what this trailer did.  Plus, the premise seemed fantastic.  But Friendboss Josh already had an appointment to see this movie with his girlfriend, the Whitney-Bird.  So we went down to the theaters to catch Man of Steel instead.  But that shit was sold out.  Good thing for me, Friendboss Josh values his friendshipbossship with me more than he values vagina, so we went to see This Is the End, written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and starring Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Emma Watson, Michael Cera, Jason Segel, David Krumholtz, Paul Rudd, Mindy Kaling, Martin Starr, Channing Tatum, Kevin Hart, Rihanna, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Aziz Ansari.

Jay Baruchel goes to Los Angeles to visit his friend Seth Rogen.  After a celebratory day of smoking weed and playing video games, Rogen suggests that the two of them go to a party at James Franco’s house, but Baruchel doesn’t want to go because he doesn’t know or like anyone at the party and worries about being left alone there.  Sure enough, upon arriving to the party Rogen goes off on his own, leaving Baruchel in uncomfortable conversations with people like Michael Cera, Emma Watson, and Rihanna.  Rogen and Baruchel walk down to a store to pick up some snacks, but their shopping is interrupted when blue beams of light grab some of the shoppers and drag them up to the heavens.  Then the fuckin’ apocalypse happens, instantly killing many of the celebrities at Franco’s party, leaving Rogen, Baruchel, Franco, Craig Robinson, and Jonah Hill alone in the house to fend for themselves.  They ration out what little supplies they have and go to sleep for the night.  When they wake up, they find that Danny McBride had crashed the party and fallen asleep in a bathroom upstairs, and had come down and prepared all of their food for breakfast.  How will this group of sheltered celebrities be able to survive the reckoning?

I feel like I won’t have very much to say about this movie.  What I will say is this: this is probably the best comedy I’ve seen in a very long time.  I just can’t think of very many funny things that I could put in a review about something that was keeping me laughing super consistently for the greater majority of the movie.  There was a moment to make me laugh out loud at least once every five minutes.  That’s one hell of a ratio!  I barely ever laugh in movies, so that should tell you just what I think about this movie.  I would say that it could be easily argued that the story was a little underwhelming.  It was mainly just an excuse to get these really funny people into situations they could improvise jokes about.  But a comedy doesn’t really need to blow you away with story.  One of my favorite comedies is Airplane! and that’s really all that movie is.  I’m not going to come back here and write a review about the fact that its story wasn’t spectacular when all it was trying to be was a comedy and it kept me laughing.

The cameos in this movie are crazy.  They have ridiculous celebrities in this movie.  I liked most of those people and was tickled to see them in this, and I even really liked the celebrities that I don’t normally like.  Rihanna had a funny moment with Michael Cera, Channing Tatum had an amazing joke, and even though I don’t like them, the Backstreet Boys reveal was pretty awesome, albeit unnecessary.  Jay Baruchel was a little whiny in the movie, but he was also plenty funny.  Seth Rogen was hilarious.  I did think that it didn’t make sense for people to act like he wouldn’t get into heaven if he used Jesus’ name in vain.  He’s Jewish!  They don’t care about Jesus!  James Franco had plenty of funny moments as well.  I especially liked the story he told about Lindsay Lohan thinking he was Jake Gyllenhaal and him telling her to call him the Prince of Persia.  Danny McBride is always a strange character for me.  He never really plays anyone likeable, but he’s really good at playing that character.  And he made a great joke about Franco being gay.  I would say if there were anything bad to say about the cast of this movie it would be that Emma Watson had too small of a part in the movie.  She was great in the movie, and the parts she was in were pretty hilarious, but I want to look at her at all times, and I also want to have a little resolution to what happened to her.  After she leaves, we never see her again.  I assume there’s no way she could go to heaven because she portrayed a witch in 8 movies, so that’s means she’s for sure Hell bound, but the movie never said for sure.

I really can’t do much in a review of This Is the End.  I cannot add funny to the funniest movie I’ve seen in a long time.  This movie was created by a bunch of professionally funny people, and I do this for free.  The story was an interesting idea, but a little simplistic, but who cares because it was mostly there to set up some really funny people being funny.  This movie kept me laughing all the way through, giving me only brief pauses to catch my breath so I wouldn’t die while watching it.  You definitely need to get out to see this movie as soon as you can.  I can’t imagine you’ll regret it.  This Is the End gets “The power of Christ compels you!” out of “I’d be pretty bummed if I don’t at least get a bite of the Milky Way.”

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Pitch Perfect (2012)

You Have Juice Pouches and Rocky!

I feel like as much of me that wanted to see today’s movie did not want to see it.  It looked like it had just as much opportunity to be cute and entertaining as it had to be painful and predictable.  My inner torment led to me not bothering to see it in theaters and even ignoring it every time I saw it at a RedBox, but my finger came close to clicking that button numerous times.  The push that I needed came from my friend Ashley Janet, who requested the movie.  That would be enough to cause me to finally watch and review Pitch Perfect, based on the book by Mickey Rapkin, written by Kay Cannon, directed by Jason Moore, and starring Anna Kendrick, Skylar Astin, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, Rebel Wilson, Ester Dean, Alexis Knapp, Hana Mae Lee, Adam DeVine, Utkarsh Armbudkar, Ben Platt, Freddie Stroma, Jinhee Joung, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, John Benjamin Hickey, John Michael Higgins, and Elizabeth Banks.

Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) is a bad girl wannabe DJ, angry at daddy for getting divorced, and for forcing her to go to college instead of pursuing her dream of going to Los Angeles to produce music and then failing and winding up doing porn.  I feel like I would’ve liked to see Anna Kendrick in that movie instead, but that’s not how this one goes.  Instead, her dad talks her into giving college a shot and joining some clubs to have the college experience.  One of the heads of the accapella group, the Barden Bellas, named Chloe Beale (Brittany Snow) catches Beca singing in the shower and forces her to join the Barden Bellas, still reeling from their failure last year where the other leader of the group, Aubrey Posen (Anna Camp), throws up all over the stage.  Beca joins the group with the black lesbian Cynthia-Rose (Ester Dean), the white whore bag Stacie Conrad (Alexis Knapp), the quiet Asian Lilly Onakuramara (Hana Mae Lee), and the Australian comic relief Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson).  Problematically, Aubrey refuses to take any chances and deviate from the song they’ve been performing forever, and they’ll need something new to beat last year’s champions, the Treblemakers.  Also a problem, Beca’s reluctant love interest, Jesse Swanson (Skylar Astin), is a member of the Treblemakers.

I kind of went into this movie thinking I’d hate it, which was probably the reason I avoided it for so long.  The greater majority of the movie helped me believe I had been making the right decision.  It’s just too predictable.  I imagine I could’ve written a rough outline of exactly how the movie was going to go down if you just handed me the setup.  There’ll be some dumb reason for the “bad girl” to join the team, there will be some friction, then a falling out, then a tearful reunion, and they’ll win and she’ll get the boy.  And the story itself isn’t even realistic, or at least I hope it isn’t.  If there are indeed places that take accapella so seriously, I’d be much more comfortable acting like they don’t.  They have accapella Fight Clubs!  But none of that is me telling you my feelings about the movie in general.  I have buried the lead and fooled you all.  This movie still managed to charm me, strangely enough.  Sure it was predictable and lacked anything resembling a surprise in the story, but it was cute.  I guess the story itself wasn’t what did that for me, but we’ll get to what did later.  Some of the dialogue was good, and some was bad.  I never was really able to tell whether or not the shitty puns they used all over the movie were aware of themselves or not.  It seemed a lot like a whole movie of “Cheer-ocracy” and “Cheer-tator” from Not Another Teen Movie.  One of the groups was called the Treblemakers, and there was a whole section where they talked about a “Toner,” which is apparently a musical boner.  That was pretty terrible, but the payoff of Anna Kendrick saying “That’s my dick” got a chuckle out of me.  I also thought the line about juice pouches and Rocky was pretty adorable, but I feel like most of the credit goes to the delivery.  I also took issue with the vomiting in the movie.  It happens a couple of times, and I assume it was for humor’s sake, but I just thought it was disgusting and juvenile.

The music and I started out at odds, but eventually it swayed me.  The music wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, being a great deal of pop music that I either didn’t like or didn’t recognize.  But I started getting into it around the time of the “Riff-Off,” when they started mixing up pop songs with some 80’s rock in some very appealing ways.  The music kind of won me over from that point.  I did get mad during the Riff-Off, when Beca started rapping at Jesse and her whole team seemed dumbfounded by what she was singing.  These people practically dedicate their lives to music and they can’t recognize No Diggity?  Even I recognized that song!

I think what wins me over the most about this movie is the cast.  Anna Kendrick is extremely likeable.  Good-looking and great actress.  Her character motivations were slippery for me at times.  I don’t know why the “bad girl” would be so tolerant of the leader girl’s controlling way of running the group.  I believe her father only said she had to “try” with the group thing, and her character didn’t seem like the type to tolerate that crap.  If she had joined a Face-Punching Society and decided it wasn’t to her liking, I’m sure he’d be cool with her leaving the group.  I also wasn’t a fan of Skylar Astin.  I didn’t think he was nearly charming enough, and didn’t really believe that Kendrick’s character would find him that interesting either.  I didn’t even know if he was supposed to be a good singer either based on the part he sang when the other kid asked him how his voice was.  He turned out to be a good singer, but I felt like a better take could’ve existed there.  It was a little pitchy, dog.  Of course, all of these things might be me being bitter because I didn’t get to make out with Anna Kendrick.  Who could say, really?  Rebel Wilson is typically funny, and it wasn’t much different here.  I felt like she was trying too hard in parts, and some of her better jokes were in the outtakes, but she held up the comedy really well.  I was also a fan of the slutty girl in the group, Alexis Knapp.  She was really hot and said a lot of things about sex, so it’s pretty easy to get me on your side with those credentials.  Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins had a pretty good job in this movie too, playing the announcers.  They just got to chill in a booth and say ridiculous and funny things, but it was enjoyable.

Pitch Perfect did nothing for me by way of story, being too predictable and cliché while seeming to be well aware of both.  But over time the movie melted my cold heart with great performances, beautiful ladies, some genuine funny moments, and some pretty fantastic music that was able to draw me in even though it wasn’t really my musical tastes.  I’m not going to act like I didn’t raise my fist in the air at one point in this movie.  I can’t help it when a certain song is playing.  It’s a reflex at this point.  I’ll probably wind up buying this movie and maybe even downloading the soundtrack, although I think the music wouldn’t do as much without the visuals.  For you, I’d recommend at least giving it a shot by renting it.  Pitch Perfect gets “I set fires to feel joy” out of “I can’t concentrate on anything you’re saying until you cover your junk.”

WATCH REVIEWS HERE!  YouTube  OTHER JOKES HERE!  Twitter  BE A FAN HERE!  Facebook  If you like these reviews so much, spread the word.  Keep me motivated!  Also, if you like them so much, why don’t you marry them?!